Combat America

In January, 1942, a TWA DC-3 carrying Carole Lombard home to her husband, Clark Gable, crashed into Pitosi Mountain outside Las Vegas killing everyone on board. Gable was so distraught at the loss that he bought a motorcycle and drove wildly through the canyons of Hollywood trying to kill himself. For months he drank and ranted and raved to anyone who would listen. He enrolled in the army, was commissioned a lieutenant, and continued his suicidal streak by making a recruitment film about the 8th Air Force aerial gunners, accompanying them on their bombing runs over Germany. Gable's long lost film, Combat America has recently been made available on tape, and given all this background information, it should be a fascinating archival treasure. Unfortunately, the folks at Antiquary Video give us none of the important historical and biographical context which I have just mentioned. They just show the training film without so much as an FBI warning. It takes awhile to realize that Gable is narrating, and initially we don't know if this is a Gable home movie, a documentary or some kind of war propaganda film. I am certain that the historical importance of this 1943 film will be totally lost on younger viewers who know next to nothing about Gable, or about the history of WWII. A brief studio introduction at the beginning of the video explaining the context of Combat America would have helped. Recommended, with reservations, for larger military history collections. (R. Ray)