John Cox at Wild About Houdini just did a short post titled, L.A. Daily Mirror pinpoints Houdini’s plane crash,that shares a well-researched article by Mary Mallory about Houdini’s The Grim Game.
John also shares the following information from the TCM film festival which was news to me as well when I heard it:
At last Sunday’s premiere of The Grim Game restoration, the sons of director Irvin Willat told me their father said the camera plane, which he was in, was also struck and “went down” with the others. This is the first I’d ever heard of the crash involving three planes.
This needs some more research. Hopefully the sons of director Irvin Willat can elaborate some more.
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It is highly possible that the camera plane while filming was “struck” with debris from the shattered wooden propellers of the other two planes that threw bits of wood, metal and fabric around the sky. And then landed (“went down with the others”). I know that the Camera plane landed in the bean field at 18th Street and San Vicente Boulevard where Christopher Pickup’s plane with Robert E. Kennedy went down. David E. Thompson’s plane came down at 26th Street and Santa Monica Canyon, where it flipped over on its back. BTW: All three planes took off from Cecil B. DeMille’s Mercury Field.
Joe–take a close look at the photo of the two colliding planes in John’s blog. You can clearly see (propeller?) damage on the upper wing of the bottom plane. Something appears to be dangling from the upper plane. What is that? Is it Kennedy? A piece of the lower plane that’s flying in the air?
Thompson’s upper wing tore into Pickup’s landing gear. That is Kennedy dangling from the upper plane.
Egads! I imagine he must have been scared out of his mind! Dangling thousands of feet high, a whirring propeller underneath him and out of control.
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