On June 18, 1933, Sweet was location scouting by private plane in the vicinity of Big Bear Valley. That night, at 7:15 pm, a plane crashed and sank to the bottom of Big Bear Lake, with the authorities initially uncertain as to the identity of the pilot as well as the number and identity of the plane's passengers; on June 19, Bert Gilroy, a film associate of Sweet's, left Los Angeles for Big Bear after efforts to contact the director in that city failed. Hours after the accident, when the plane was pulled from 28 feet of water, the bodies of Sweet, actress Claudette Ford, and scenario writer Howard (Hal) Davitt, were found in the cockpit; the coroner's investigation determined Sweet had drowned and that his companions had both died from fractured skulls suffered in the crash.
