A fatal outcome off the chance flipping of a coin.An eerie premonition of forthcoming death.
An air disaster of unfathomable circumstances.
A Brooklyn-born beauty with brains and talent, Beryl Heischuber (E.C. later changed
her last name to Wallace)
met Earl Carroll when she was still in her teens, after he picked her from a line of other
hopefuls for his upcoming 1928 New York Vanities.
She had been enamored with him since the young age of 13, after hearing the
soft-spoken producer on a local radio program.
During the show, Carroll had slipped in
a recruitment pitch, inviting talented beauties to "meet him on stage at his local
theatre", which backfired, landing him in hot water as a "seducer of young women."
Beryl, not understanding what the controversy was all about, began
dreaming of one day becoming an "Earl Carroll Girl" herself.
When his long time romance with beauty Dorothy Knapp
fell apart during the disastrous stage production of Fioretta
, Beryl stepped in as Earl Carroll's new star and the two were inseparable companions ever since. In 1938, Carroll
opened his landmark Earl Carroll Theatre and Restaurant on Sunset Boulevard, in the heart of
Hollywood. Stars flocked to the new theatre, passing beneath the neon-written words, "Through
these portals pass the most beautiful girls in the world." Beryl was the lead star of the show, but
also worked as an actress, appearing in about twenty films through the years. While they were mainly
bit parts in B movies, Beryl didn't mind.
Her true love was singing and performing in elaborate
production numbers at Earl's theatre.
In 1948, Carroll was in the final planning stages
of opening a larger theatre just one block east of his current location. The new one would rival New York's
Radio City Music Hall and cost upwards of $15,000,000. The theatre would contain three huge
revolving stages, one with wood flooring, one for ice-skating numbers and one with a giant
water tank for aquatic routines. The site would also include a motion picture theatre, television
studio, and executive office tower with underground parking for over a thousand cars.
United Airlines, Flight 624 was a scheduled coast-to-coast flight, originating in San Diego, California (with stops in Los Angeles and Chicago). The trip to New York would take approximately 12 hours. A business call the morning of departure nearly altered the duo's plans. Carroll reportedly let the decision of what to do rest solely on the flip of a coin. Beryl was the one who actually flipped it (at Earl's joking suggestion). Heads, they would stop in Detroit. Tails, they would stick to their original plan and go on to New York. The coin came down tails. It was a fated gamble that would cost both of them their lives.
The plane they would be traveling on was a four-engined Douglas DC-6.
Though these planes were normally considered very safe, a rash of peculiar
engine fires caused the entire series to be officially grounded (after a
United Airlines flight over Utah crashed, killing all 52 people on board).
From November 12, 1947 through March 15, 1948, special modifications were
made to remove the fire hazard by adding special extinguishing units for all
engines. While several DC-6s did experience engine fires following their
return to the skies, the modifications worked. The fires were all successfully
extinguished and the flights landed safely. What the airlines were apparently not yet aware of,
was that a dangerous flaw existed within the modified system, in which carbon dioxide
fumes could leak into the pilot's
cabin after CO2 extinguishers deployed.
It was near Phillipsburg, Pennsylvania that Flight 624 recieved it's go-ahead to
begin a slow decent, in preparation for it's upcoming
arrival in New York. No mention of trouble was reported at this time. Four minutes
later however, at exactly 12:31 p.m., a radio operator at LaGuardia heard a frantic call
from the pilot, "Flight 624 to
New York. I'm in emergency decent. Going down now."
Witnesses on the ground would recall
seeing the plane coming in approximately 200 feet above the ground, banking to the right,
with smoke pouring
from one of it's left engines (C.A.B. findings found "no evidence" of an in-flight fire prior
to the crash, even though Flight 624 clearly indicated in their final
transmission that
a fire extinguisher had indeed been released in the front cargo hold of the aircraft).
With landing gear still retracted, a few witnesses thought the plane was searching for a
flat area in which to "belly down", but Flight 624 was too low for it's surrounding terrain.
It continued to bank right, climbing sharply in the turn, then
struck a 66,000 volt transformer, clipping a high-tension wire.
The hot wire ignited
the plane, turning it into an exploding fireball and sending it head-on into
the side of a 1650' hillside. At 12:41 p.m. EST, the clock at Kulpmont Pennsylvania Steam
Electric Station stopped working.
Described as a "strewnfield of human body parts", only about 16 out of the 43 on board were ever identified. Beryl Wallace's body was reported to have been thrown clear on impact. A half-burned script, (entitled The Sky's the Limit) from a show she had worked on the day before, was recovered nearby. A searcher located Earl Carroll's wallet (containing $1024 in cash) along with his briefcase (which contained plans for his new Hollywood theatre project). The mystery of what happened to the plane was never solved. It was later suggested, after reviewing the final radio transmissions, that carbon dioxide fumes from a deployed extinguisher may have leaked into the cockpit and knocked the crew out, allowing the unguided plane to decend by itself until it's end was met.
Eerily, just months before his death, Earl Carroll made several amendments
to his Will that contained special instructions to be followed in case he and Beryl
were to meet simultaneous deaths. It read in part, "It is my wish
that after I and my beloved friend, Beryl Wallace, have departed this life, our remains shall
be placed together in the final resting place of which I have selected."
And so they were.
