Music’s Aviation Tragedies: Ralph Rainger

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Today is hard Monday, ya beatniks! And if you’re wondering why I’m stealing @xander6464 ‘s line, it’s because we’re two days from Jack Benny’s 39th birthday (again), and Jack Benny is tied to today’s person on the list of musicians lost in plane crashes over the years. Let’s go back 90 years to the roaring 30s. Ralph Rainger In 1939 Ralph Rainger won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for “Thanks for the Memory,” which Bob Hope and Shirley Ross sang together in The Big Broadcast of 1938. The song became synonymous with Hope, the closing song of all of his specials, and the oft-repeated headline when he passed away at the age of 100 in 2003. That was hardly Rainger’s only success, however. Rainger was the music composer and Leo Robin wrote the lyrics. And it is no exaggeration to say they were the Burt Bacharach and Hal David (or Elton John and Bernie Taupin) of their day. Their other hits included “Blue Hawaii,” which some guy from Tupelo later made the title song of one of his movies), “Faithful/Forever” (nominated for an Oscar but lost to “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”), and “Love in Bloom,” which became Jack Benny’s theme song. On October 23, 1942, Rainger and eight others boarded an American Airlines flight in Burbank at the Lockheed Air Terminal (now the Burbank Airport) with a crew of three. As they flew toward their first stop in Phoenix the plane was hit by an Army Air Corps B34 bomber. The Air Force plane continued on its merry way, but the commercial plane crashed, killing all 12 aboard. Apparently what caused the collision was a planed “meeting.” The investigation from the Civil Aeronautics Board heard testimony from the B34 co-pilot that the pilots of the two planes involved in the collision were friends who’d trained together. The B34 had circled twice before proceeding toward its intended destination, just to delay their flight to “see” the American Airlines plane. The pilot of the AAC plane was tried for manslaughter before a military court martial and acquitted. If you remember the Buddy Clark story, the pilot involved in that crash was later involved in another crash. Here we have the B34 plane, largely undamaged in the collision, being in a subsequent crash less than a year later, on August 5, 1943. That time, the plane was destroyed and the crew of three was killed. We have countless greats from the past who have been forgotten by subsequent generations. Ralph Rainger and his wonderful music, which added to movies ranging from the Mae West classic She Done Him Wrong to Gulliver’s Travels, is one of them. Ralph Rainger Born Ralph Reichenthal October 7, 1901 - October 23, 1942 (age 41) Place of crash: Chino Canyon, Riverside County, California Commercial airline: American Airlines flight 28, intended route Burbank - Phoenix - New York Here’s Bob and Shirley singing “Thanks for the Memory”: