Monetta
Eloyse Darnell, better known as Linda Darnell, was a US
film actress.
Born
in Dallas, Texas and one of five children, Darnell was
a model by the age of 11 and was acting in theater by
the age of 13. She was chosen by a talent scout to go
to Hollywood but was sent home to Dallas when they discovered
she had lied about her age.
By
1939 she had returned to Hollywood and immediately began
to secure good roles, appearing in such films as Blood
and Sand, Hangover Square and My Darling Clementine. In
1947 she won the starring role in the highly anticipated
Forever Amber. Publicity at the time suggested this would
be the next Gone With The Wind, and the search for Amber
was deliberately modelled on the extensive process that
led to the casting of Scarlett O'Hara, but the film did
not live up to its hype.
Darnell
played two roles that earned her respect as an actress:
as Daphne De Carter in the Preston Sturges comedy Unfaithfully
Yours, opposite Rex Harrison, and as one of the three
wives in A Letter to Three Wives. Darnell's hard-edged
performance in the latter won her the best reviews of
her career. She was widely tipped to win an Academy Award
nomination for this part, but, when this did not happen,
her career began to diminish and her film appearances
were sporadic thereafter.
She
died from burns received in a house fire in Chicago, Illinois.
One of her old films was playing on television the night
of the fire and Darnell fell asleep with a lit cigarette
while watching it. She is buried in the Union Hill Cemetery,
Chester County, Pennsylvania.
She
has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1631 Vine
St.
The
Flying Saucer Connection
Frank
Scully's "Behind the Flying Saucers" was originally
published in 1950 and became an instant bestseller. It
was the first nonfiction hardback book published on the
then quite new subject of crashed UFOs and holds up very
well today after the passage of nearly 60 years.
"Behind
The Flying Saucers," which has recently been reprinted
by Timothy Green Beckley at Global Communications, tells
the complicated story of the crash of a flying saucer
in Aztec, New Mexico, in March of 1948. The ship itself
was largely undamaged, but the dead bodies of 14 to 16
small aliens were reported to have been found alongside
the spacecraft. The aliens were described as being like
"little men," similar to the grays of our own
time, which was unusual in an age when contactees would
soon after be regaling the media with visits by blonde,
human-looking Venusians.
Scully,
a reporter at the time for Hollywood's "Variety"
newspaper, came by his information in what would prove
to be a controversial way. Screen legend Linda Darnell
and her husband, cinematographer Peverly Marley, urged
him to contact a wealthy oil man named Silas Newton, who
had a story for Scully that he shouldn't pass up. Newton
was well-known among the denizens of Hollywood, as was
Scully, who had inspired trust in all the celebrities
he wrote about for "Variety." Scully met with
Newton, as Darnell had recommended, and was impressed
enough by Newton's story and the testimony of a scientist
named "Dr. Gee" to give the Aztec crash story
a book-length treatment.
Sources:
http://www.filmbug.com/db/108819
http://www.ufodigest.com/news/0908/aztec-ufo.html
