Names and faces
Harrison Ford was recovering Friday after his vintage plane crashed on a golf course not far from Santa Monica Municipal Airport. Ford’s World War II - era plane’s sole engine lost power Thursday afternoon, transit officials said. In a recording, the veteran actor is heard alerting the airport’s control tower, “Engine failure; immediate return.” Just blocks from the runway, the plane clipped a tree at the Penmar Golf Course in Venice, then landed on a fairway. “He had no other choice but to make an emergency landing, which he did safely,” Ford’s publicist, Ina Treciokas, said in a statement. Ford was hospitalized with fair to moderate injuries, said Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Erik Scott. “He was banged up,” Ford’s publicist said in the statement. “The injuries sustained are not life threatening.” After the landing, a group of golfers helped pull Ford from the plane and began administering first aid, said Carlos Gomez, who lives just yards away from the site of the crash on Dewey Street. Gomez was cooking when he heard the plane hit the ground outside. At first, Ford, 72, lay motionless, then he started to move. “So I was like, good, he’s alive,” Gomez said. The actor’s son, Ben Ford, posted on Twitter: “Dad is ok. Battered, but ok! He is every bit the man you would think he is. He is an incredibly strong man.” The National Transportation Safety Board arrived at the crash site Thursday night and is investigating. The veteran actor had departed from the airport in his vintage Ryan plane around 2:20 p.m. He then notified the airport’s control tower about the loss of power, said Patrick Jones of the board.
The exodus continues at The Daily Show, with TBS announcing Thursday that it is giving longtime correspondent Samantha Bee her own topical comedy show. TBS had only recently announced it was picking up a scripted comedy series created by Bee and her husband, Jason Jones, also from The Daily Show. TBS said the unnamed topical show would allow Bee to “apply her smart and satirical point of view to current and relevant issues.” She will be host and executive producer. No start date was given. Bee’s departure crosses one more name off the list of potential successors to Jon Stewart, who is leaving as host of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show later this year. Other alumni members of the show, John Oliver and Larry Wilmore, have launched their own shows.