Whistling Through the Graveyard
Chapter 8 - The Unmasking of Factory Reject
Chapter 9 - Death Outside A Cemetery
Crap, another year has gone by! Somebody hit the brakes here, time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping, into the future ...
These days when I hear about someone being killed in a cemetery more often than not it appears to be gang related, with members of one gang taking their revenge against another gang using a funeral as a target of opportunity. I have no idea how often it happens now since I stopped watching the news years ago, but it does seem to happen from time to time.
I believe I first heard about this particular incident many years ago when I was working at the Pierce Brothers Valhalla Memorial Park in North Hollywood, California. I never got any of the names or even when this had happened, but there was a story that a small plane taking off from Burbank Airport (now Bob Hope Airport) had a malfunction and crashed into the grounds of Valhalla.
The story obviously stuck in my head because yesterday when I was researching something completely unrelated I stumbled on the story which I believe is what I first heard about so many years ago at Valhalla. And because it's me, we have the topic for another Whistling Through the Graveyard article.
Sunday, 31 July 1955. At the airport in Santa Monica, California, the up and coming young actor Robert Charles Francis had rendezvoused with an older pilot, Irving George "George" Meyer, and a young actress, Audrey Ann Schneider Dosch, whose stage name was Ann Russell. Robert Francis had already been cast in four Hollywood movies, The Caine Mutiny, They Rode West, The Bamboo Prison, and The Long Gray Line. He may have been getting a bit typecast as he played a soldier in all four movies. The month before he had been in Montrose, Colorado, working on a movie called Tribute To A Bad Man.
Francis had arranged to borrow a Beechcraft 35 Bonanza from Reginald "Joe Jr" Kirkwood. Meyer was a business partner with Kirkwood and had been a military pilot during WWII. It's unknown whether Dosch was on the trip because of Meyer or Francis, or what her relationship might have been with either man. Dosch was separated from her husband, who was a lieutenant in the Air Force who was stationed at an airbase in Colorado at the time.
The trio apparently spent much of the day flying around and may have flown up to Santa Barbara for lunch and then returned to the Los Angeles area, landing at Lockheed Airport in Burbank. Once there the plane was refueled. Meyer went into the terminal and made a phone call, leaving Francis in the pilot's seat, apparently with the plane idling.
Francis was fascinated with flying and had supposedly met Howard Hughes and flown several of the planes Hughes owned. This is interesting because Francis didn't even have a pilot's license. When Meyer, who was a licensed pilot, returned to the plane he got into the back seat with Audrey Ann Dosch, leaving Francis in the pilot seat and the co-pilot seat vacant, which was not prudent considering that Francis was at best a novice pilot and Meyer was the experienced one.
The fact that the plane was idling for some time might have had something to do with what happened next, one theory is that extended idling might have "choked" the plane engine with excess fuel as Francis tried to gain altitude on takeoff. The takeoff was described by eyewitnesses as "wobbly".
Northeast corner of Valhalla Memorial Park looking south
The flight path on takeoff took the plane over Valhalla Memorial Park which is just southwest of the (now) Burbank Airport. The plane lost power soon after takeoff, Francis could have tried to crash land it in the cemetery but there were people on the ground visible in the cemetery (apparently at least one funeral was in progress) and he banked back toward the airport. Losing altitude, the plane just managed to clear the boundary of the cemetery and crashed into an empty Lockheed parking lot at the southwest corner of Vanowen and Hollywood Way.
The plane either exploded on impact (likely considering it had been fueled up before takeoff) or caught fire and burned quickly. It would not be possible to say that all three occupants died instantly because there is a rather gruesome photo that was published in the newspapers the next day showing the charred body of what looks like one of the two men in a posture suggesting he was trying to get free of the plane.
ARRI - 3700 Vanowen Street
Former Fry's parking lot just east of ARRI building
From the description of the crash location (which was redeveloped years or possibly decades after the crash) it was either adjacent to what is now ARRI Cine Technik at 3700 Vanowen Street in Burbank, or it was in the parking lot of what had been Fry's Electronics at 2311 North Hollywood Way in Burbank (the Fry's was there from 1996 until earlier this year, 2021, when it closed along with the rest of the Fry's Electronics locations).
As an aside, I had wondered what was going to happen to the former Fry's store location. I wasted many hours there when I lived in Valley Village, in fact there was a time when I was in that store at least once a month and knew the layout as well as my own apartment. So I can safely say I probably visited that store over a hundred times.
When I visited the location on 8 August 2021 there was some paperwork up on the fence surrounding the former Fry's parking lot indicating plans are afoot to build an 862 unit residential complex in a seven story tower. That should do wonders for traffic in the neighborhood, and will probably work fine as long as no planes departing the airport in that direction are flying too low ...
Midnight Oil - 3800 Vanowen Street
On my visit I also noticed another business at 3800 Vanowen called Midnight Oil which may also be a candidate for the current day location of the crash site. Midnight Oil is right next to the border of the cemetery and just west of ARRI.
Facade of the Former Fry's store
BTW, I always loved the front entrance of that Fry's, which has a mock UFO which appears to have crashed into the front of the building. It's not quite as funny to me now after seeing that picture of the Bonanza wreckage.
Portal of the Folded Wings from the east (Valhalla Drive) - the 1969 small plane crash happened here
The tribute page on Robert Francis listed under the sources below has photos of both the 1955 crash and another crash which happened next to Valhalla Memorial Park in 1969, probably about a hundred yards or so from where the crash happened in 1955. I don't know if anyone was killed in the crash in 1969, but it certainly looks like a bad crash although the plane didn't burn the way the Bonanza did.
Because of the initial difficulty identifying the bodies of those aboard the plane (for obvious reasons I mention several paragraphs above), there were two rumors that popped up before the facts came out. One was that the previous owner of the plane, Lance Reventlow (who had owned the Beechcraft before he sold it to Joe Kirkwood) had been killed in the crash. Apparently some of Lance's friends were so concerned by the rumors that they were flabbergasted when he turned up alive shortly thereafter. There are two further ironies here. Reventlow was friends with James Dean (see below) and was one of the last people to see Dean alive before his fatal car crash. The last irony is that Reventlow was killed in a light plane crash in 1972, although he was a passenger and not the pilot. The inexperienced pilot in that crash flew the plane into a blind canyon near Aspen, Colorado, from which it could not be flown out of. The plane stalled and crashed, killing everyone aboard.
Portal of the Folded Wings from the north/Vanowen Street just west of the northeast corner of the cemetery
Another rumor was that Joe Kirkwood was aboard the Beechcraft and had been killed. Fortunately for Kirkwood this was not the case. He lived another 51 years, finally dying in 2006 at the ripe old age of 86.
By the way, for those not in the know, The Portal of Folded Wings is (as the name suggests) an aviation shrine and memorial to fallen aviation pioneers (be they pilots, mechanics, aerial acrobats, aircraft designers and one minister whose flock included pioneer aviators). The Wikipedia article on it bills it as the burial or inurnment site for 15 pioneers of aviation, but at least one of the listed people (Jimmie Angel, discoverer of Angel Falls) is no longer there, his ashes having been removed and scattered over the falls named for him. So by my count that makes 14 aviation pioneers, unless someone else snuck in there whose name is not listed in the Wikipedia article. I did find another error in the article, in that it states the Portal is in Los Angeles. Valhalla's street address is in North Hollywood, which is part of Los Angeles, but the eastern third or so of the cemetery (including the Portal) is in the city of Burbank, rather than North Hollywood.
I'm now wondering if there were any other plane crashes in the same vicinity that I haven't heard about. The Wikipedia article on the Burbank airport shows 10 other incidents but does not, however, list the crash that is the subject of this article. I'll have to look into some of those other crashes at some point in time. A cursory glance at the article also does not show the plane crash from 1969 I mentioned earlier. One incident I do remember from the news was a Southwest Airlines plane that overran the runway and came to rest on Hollywood Way next to a gas station in 2000. Fortunately no one was killed in that incident although two pilots lost their jobs (as did the Chevron gas station; it was deemed to be in too hazardous a location, shut down later, and the property was redeveloped into another kind of business).
I was unaware of how popular the Beechcraft Bonanza was. According to the Wikipedia article on it, that model and its derivative models are still in production today, with more than 17,000 planes having been produced as of 2021. Another bit of trivia: This was the exact same model (the 35) that Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. Richardson were killed in when the plane they were aboard crashed near Clear Lake, Iowa on 3 February 1959.
Meyer's body was taken back to his home state of North Dakota and buried there. Robert Francis's funeral was held at the Little Church of the Flowers at Forest Lawn Glendale, but he was actually interred in the Hillside section of Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills, as was Audrey Ann Dosch. Francis is now buried between his parents, who passed away decades after his death, in Lot 4535. Audrey is in Lot 4464, let me pull up a map of that section and see if I can figure out how close they are to each other. According to the Forest Lawn section maps, Audrey is one lot to the left and ten rows above where Francis is buried, I would guess they are buried within a hundred feet or so of one another. If I ever get over to that section I will find out if that is correct or not.
It is interesting to compare Robert Francis to James Dean just because there are several parallels in their lives and acting careers and they both died very young in violent accidents. Dean's untimely death, if anything, made him an icon, while Francis's death seems to have had the opposite effect on his memory. James Dean was apparently just more of a memorable actor, but if Francis had lived it's possible he would have been a much bigger star. He was good looking and the studio loved him, and people have made bigger careers on less than that. The Caine Mutiny has been on my list of movies to watch for a while, this may give me an excuse to actually do so.
I was curious about what happened to Francis's footage from the last movie he worked on, Tribute To A Bad Man. Apparently there wasn't enough footage of him to make it work so the role was recast and given to an actor named Don Dubbins, who doesn't even have a Wikipedia article, though he does have a page on IMDB.
Here's the weird part. I opened this article with a line from a Steve Miller Band song, "Fly Like An Eagle", just because the lyrics about time slipping into the future seemed apropos. I wrote that line this morning when I had just started researching this story. I was just now looking at the Wikipedia and IMDB articles on the last movie that Robert Francis worked on, the aforementioned "Tribute To A Bad Man.".
His character's name in the movie was Steve Miller. IMDB says Steve Miller, Wikipedia says Steve Millar.
I didn't know that this morning. I'd never even heard of the movie, let alone that Robert Francis had worked on it. I actually noted it in this article mainly because the work he did in Montrose, Colorado, caught my eye since I grew up in that area of western Colorado.
Steve Miller Band, Steve Miller character. Just a coincidence, right? Cue the Twilight Zone music now ...
2021-08-09. I ended up running an errand in the East Valley yesterday and went past the crash site and took some photos. I've added all of them to a gallery and some of the photos above are duplicated in the gallery which is linked below.
Photo Gallery of the crash site neighborhood in 2021
Rereading the page, it does strike me that it's just as likely the story I heard so many years ago at Valhalla may have been about the 1969 crash (which I still know next to nothing about) rather than the crash which killed Francis, Dosch and Meyer. Or it could have been yet another random small plane falling from the sky. It is clear from the photos that the 1969 crash was much closer to the cemetery, from the photos it looks like it almost hit the Portal of Folded Wings. The Bonanza might have crashed 30 or 40 yards outside the cemetery.
Anyway, the crash in July 1955 made for a good (if gruesome story) so that's the one I'm sticking with for the time being.
Page created 7 August 2021 - Photos added and page finished 9 August (the modified date below will change again when I finally come up with a title for the next installment and edit this page to add it)
Sources and web pages:
Aviation Safety Net article, erroneously lists the crash as military rather than civil
Joe Kirkwood's IMDB article, trivia section discusses the accident
Tribute page on Robert Charles Francis, contains a wealth of apparently well researched information
Wikipedia page on Robert Francis
IMDB entry on Robert Francis
GLS page for Robert Charles Francis
Family Search page for Robert Charles Francis
Find A Grave page for Robert Francis
Family Search page for Audrey Ann Schneider Dosch
GLS page for Audrey Ann Schneider Dosch
Find A Grave page for Audrey Ann Schneider Dosch
(I haven't located an IMDB or Wikipedia article for Dosch/Russell, apparently she wasn't that well known. The tribute page for Robert Francis does have a fair amount of information on her)
Family Search page for Irving George "George" Meyer
GLS page for Irving George "George" Meyer
Find A Grave page for Irving George "George" Meyer
GLS system keyword search "Death Outside A Cemetery"
Chapter 10
Chapter 10 - Prince Galitzine and the German Daedalus
Other navigation links on my site
Return to Whistling Through The Graveyard Page
Return to Genealogy Links
Return to Main Page
Contact us
© 2021 by Christopher Mills