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Journalist Ross Hawkins, left, with Mr. Moselle.
Ray Moselle, the last surviving crew member from the 1939 classic film, “Gone with the Wind,” died last Wednesday. He was 98 years old.
Funeral services will be held on Friday, at 11 a.m., at the chapel at Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City. A viewing will immediately precede the service.
On “Gone with the Wind,” Mr. Moselle was a fireman whose job was to protect “Tara” from the fire that David Selznick started on the Culver Studio backlot to destroy the King Kong sets and film the munitions dump fire that Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh drive through in their escape from Atlanta.
Born in Milwaukee, July 6, 1916, Mr. Moselle rode a freight train to Los Angeles in 1932.
In those days the major motion picture studios all had sports teams that competed with one another.
Mr. Moselle was an excellent baseball player and ended up playing for MGM. He told me how he stood in the bottom of the replica of the HMS Bounty, knee deep in water, for $3.50 a shift “rocking the boat. One shift lasted until midnight when a disgruntled Mr. Gable walked off the set.
The “Bounty Replica” was located on the corner of Washington and Overland on the MGM lot when the film was made. It was moved to Lot 3 at MGM in 1936 where it remained until Lot 3 closed.
Mr. Moselle’s future wife Ramona talked him into returning to high school. He graduated from Hamilton High in 1936 and married Ramona that same year.
She died in 2005 after 69 years of marriage.
Mr. Moselle joined the Culver City Fire Dept. in 1937 and retired as a battalion chief in 1972.
Mr. Moselle is survived by his two sons, Raymond and Richard Moselle, four grandchildren and five great-
grandchildren.
Mr. Hawkins may be contacted at rjhculvercity@aol.com
