The trailer tagline for the Carole Lombard and Clark Gable biopic, Gable and Lombard (Sidney Furie, 1976) reads: “they don’t make love like this anymore.”

Frankly, they never did.

I’m prefacing this review by saying that I don’t watch classical Hollywood biopics for their historical accuracy. I understand that the function of biopics are, as George Custen notes, to sell “accessible versions of history” (1992, pg. 34). Entertainment trumps fact, and besides, it’s almost impossible to distill a person’s life down to two hours. As one might expect, Gable and Lombard takes liberties with historical facts and chronology, and I would be lying if I said I didn’t nitpick the film for errors. But that’s not what this review is about. Putting aside any inaccuracies, Gable and Lombard is simply mediocre. The plot, which centers around the personal and professional ramifications of the couple’s adulterous romance, is plodding and cringe-worthy. If I could summarize the film, I’d describe it as akin to poorly written fan-fiction, but without any likable characters or a satisfying payoff.

While the plot is paper-thin, the film has some bright spots. Gable and Lombard thoroughly explores the intersection of studio-era morality and Hollywood stardom, specifically through the lens of Gable’s contentious divorce from his second wife, Rhea. Gable and Carole Lombard’s romance began in January 1936 at the Mayfair Ball. At the time, Gable was still married to Rhea, although they had separated the year earlier after he had impregnated his Call of the Wild star, Loretta Young. Since 1935 Clark and Rhea had been living separate lives, although neither had filed for divorce: Rhea enjoyed the cachet of being “Mrs. Clark Gable,” while Clark – who was notoriously frugal – was reluctant to provide his estranged wife with the sizable alimony that she demanded.

For that reason, Gable and Lombard is accurate in one sense: Rhea was reluctant to divorce Clark. However, the film does not offer a very generous interpretation of her character. Gable and Lombard‘s version of Rhea (Joanne Linville) is calculating and predatory, while Clark is made out to be the generous but ultimately helpless victim. In a scene that takes place on the patio of Clark and Rhea’s Beverly Hills mansion, the camera pans along with the couple’s servant, as he walks from their white colonial style mansion to their enclosed patio. It cuts to a medium shot of the couple sitting under a canopy with their respective lawyers discussing the terms of their divorce. The cool, blueish colors of the patio interior mirror the tense atmosphere inside. We pick up the conversation with a frustrated Clark, who says “give her whatever she wants, everything. To the penny, the whole thing.” With an air of smugness, Rhea lifts up her napkin, waves it in her hand and says smugly, “No. I prefer to remain Mrs. Clark Gable.” If Clark Gable was the “King of Hollywood,” Gable and Lombard makes it clear that Rhea considered herself the de-facto “Queen.” Sitting in her palace overlooking her kingdom, she will not give up her crown easily.

Because of Gable’s marital status, writing about the Gable and Lombard affair in the 1930s became a tricky balancing act for the gossip columnists and studio publicity agents. Without completely undermining the conservative ideology of the Hollywood studios, the initial approach that the popular press took was to label Gable and Lombard’s romance a “friendship” (Fletcher 1936, pg. 5). Additionally, as I’ve noted in a previous blog post, fan magazines often focused on Gable and Lombard’s compatibility. For example, Photoplay columnist Edward Doherty observed that the two stars “had a lot in common…both enjoy informality. They like to be themselves. They welcome anything simple and natural which will give them fun” (Doherty 1938, pg. 18). The couple had a “practical, salt-of-the earth quality that lacked pretense” (Lane 2016, pg. 401) and unlike Rhea and Gable’s first wife, Josephine Dillon – who were older and described as “thoroughly serious women” – Lombard was “imaginative, modernistic, unconventional, and oh, so young!” (Lewis 1936, pg. 46). Despite being the “other woman” technically, Lombard was celebrated as Gable’s equal in interests, ideology, and age.

This tactic ultimately benefitted Lombard and hurt Rhea who, in fact, was seen by the public as the “other woman.” The final push towards divorce was the infamous Photoplay article “Hollywood’s Unmarried Husbands and Wives,” which cited Gable and Lombard, along with several other “unmarried” Hollywood couples who “behaved like they were married” (Baskette 1939, pg. 22). To avoid any possible scandal, MGM (Gable’s home studio) effectively gave Clark two options: go through with the divorce and marry Carole, or end their relationship completely. Of course, he chose divorce. In their settlement, Rhea secured a roughly $300,000 advance from Clark’s Gone With the Wind contract, and their divorce was granted on March 8, 1939. Gable and Lombard were married a few weeks later on March 29, 1929 in Kingman, Arizona.

In addition to the portrayal of Clark and Rhea’s divorce, there are other enjoyable aspects to Gable and Lombard. Michel Legrand’s rich score complements the screen drama and captures the energetic aura of 1930s Hollywood. Similarly, Edith Head’s costumes are lush, and indulge in the glitz and glamour that audiences have come to associate with the studio era. In the 1930s, Head personally designed some of Lombard’s costumes including those worn in Supernatural (1933). She also worked under Paramount’s lead designer and Lombard’s close friend, Travis Banton, to create what she later described as the sleek and polished “Lombard look” (1959, pg. 62). Head’s first-hand knowledge of Lombard’s fashion taste adds a verisimilitude to Clayburgh’s appearance, and helps recreate the late-star’s signature modern, tailored style (see examples below).

However, that’s about as far as I’ll go with my compliments. One of the most glaring issues is how the film offers shallow caricatures of both stars. James Brolin’s Gable is a bumbling stick-in-the-mud, while Jill Clayburgh’s Lombard is disingenuous and unhinged. The film paints a superficial picture of both stars that is based closely on their screen images rather than their public personas. In fact, at times I felt like I was watching parodies of Irene Bullock or Rhett Butler, rather than earnest portrayals of Clark Gable and Carole Lombard.

Lombard’s introduction gives us insight into just how absurd the film’s characterization is: she arrives at a posh Hollywood party in an ambulance and is carried in on a stretcher. As the ambulance drivers lower her stretcher on the ground, Lombard pops out from under a white sheet and shouts, “Surprise you bastards!” Lombard did, allegedly, arrive to a party in this fashion (Gehring 2003, pg. 131). But without proper historical context – the “Nervous Breakdown Party” was given by Jock Whitney on February 7th, 1936 in honor of screenwriter Donald Ogden Stewart’s wife having just been released from a psychiatric hospital (Townsend 1936, pg. 13) – Lombard’s bizarre entrance makes absolutely no sense, other than to confirm her “authentic” screwball proclivities (Kiriakou 2020, pg. 4).

The most egregious Lombard scene comes much later in the film. At this point in the story, the morality of Gable and Lombard’s affair has been challenged by their respective studios and conservative social groups. At the behest of MGM (Gable’s home studio), he has been invited to speak at a women’s event in an effort to salvage his and Lombard’s reputations. The scene begins with a long shot of a dark sound stage with a big American flag in the background. On the stage at the back of the room, an MGM press agents introduces Clark as “a man of unquestionable dignity, unwavering morality, a God fearing man whose character has been an inspiration” to millions of fans. The camera cuts to a medium shot of Lombard, who is standing at the back of the room to listen to Clark give his speech. Clark is out of focus, and in the foreground Carole stands under a lightbulb reading along with his prepared remarks. As Clark speaks, the camera cuts to a close up of Carole’s face: she’s aghast. Tears well in her eyes as she realizes everything Clark is saying is a lie meant to placate the judgmental audience. Overcome by anger, Carole rushes out of the room.

A few seconds later, in a low-angle shot of Clark, we hear the faint noise of a woman’s voice. The voice grows louder, and the camera cuts to a long shot of the room. From the edge of a frame, a woman walks briskly down the aisle, flanked by the crowd of conservative women. She is dressed in a tight-fitting red dress, with a red feather boa and matching hat. She shouts, “there’s my horny hunk of horse meat. Where ya been angel ass, you know you’re late for your 10 o’clock screw. Mama can’t wait all day she’s got customers!” Suddenly, the woman turns around and to no one’s surprise, it’s Carole! The audience gasps, and faint whispers of incredulity echo through the sound stage. Carole tells everyone off, and quickly leaves the event.

The intended effect of this scene is comedic: not only are we meant to laugh at the audience’s moral condemnation of Gable and Lombard’s relationship, but also at Lombard’s exaggerated impression of female sexuality. I certainly laughed, but not for the reasons that the filmmakers intended. This was my third viewing of Gable and Lombard, but it was the first time that I realized that Carole’s brash antics are a play on the Gone With the Wind scene where Scarlett shows up to Ashley’s birthday party wearing her famous red dress. I discovered that this is a common tactic in Gable and Lombard: not only are the characters variations of the stars’ film roles, but even certain scenarios were taken directly from their films! While lacking in originality, this strategy helps solidify Clark Gable and Carole Lombard iconicity. Audiences in 1976 may not have been familiar with Clark Gable and Carole Lombard as stars, but by conflating their star personas with their films and 1930s Hollywood more broadly, they transcend their historical time period and become pop culture figures.

During the studio era, publicity departments worked hand-in-hand with fan magazines to “produce and sustain marketable star personas” (Kiriakou 2020, pg. 9) in order to “sell” Hollywood stars. One way of achieving this was to draw symbiotic connections between a star’s reel and reel identities. As was the case with Lombard, that meant that during the height of her screwball popularity, countless stories were written to validate her “screwy” off-screen personality. For example, a January 1937 Hollywood article explains how in My Man Godfrey (1936), Lombard’s performance appeared authentic because she “did, literally, betray her real character to the public” (pg. 34). Later on in the same article, two anonymous “friends” are described as “chuckling at the similarity between the mad harum-scarum Irene and the equally mad harum-scarum Lombard.” This article erases Lombard’s performative skills in favor of naturalness, and makes the case that Irene Bullock is simply Lombard “being herself.” In that way, Lombard’s screwball persona becomes a definable and easily marketable commodity for both the studio and publicity outlet apparatus. We still see effects of this today: despite having a varied filmography and success in other genres, Lombard’s zany off-screen disposition and so-called “natural” screwiness are the most identifiable markers of her star persona, and have contributed to her enduring iconicity as a comedienne.

In my opinion, Gable and Lombard simply repeats this symbiotic strategy. But biopics work differently than fan magazine articles: characters require more dimension and fleshed-out personalities, and this film simply wallows in the superficial. The New York Times film critic Vincent Canby said it best when he wrote that Brolin and Clayburgh are “stand-ins” for the real people (1976, pg. 6). The versions of Gable and Lombard that are presented in the film are hollow, and neither character possesses the depth or humanity necessary to make them sympathetic figures.

The casting is another enjoyable aspect of the film. Universal’s first choice to play Clark Gable was Burt Reynolds, but he turned down the script, believing that he couldn’t adequately capture the late star’s screen presence. The role was also offered to both Steve McQueen and Warren Beatty, before being given to James Brolin. Happily, the hair and makeup department did a fantastic job with Brolin’s appearance, accurately re-creating Gable’s protruding ears and jet black, cowlicked hair. Director Sidney Furie was allegedly more concerned with getting Gable’s casting right because “Lombard is…not so identifiable to younger moviegoers these days” (Farber 1975, pg. 15).

Ali McGraw was Universal’s first choice to play Lombard, but she too turned down the role. After considering both Valerie Perrine and Sally Kellerman, he landed on the then-relatively unknown actress, Jill Clayburgh. Out of the four named options, Clayburgh was by far the best choice. While Perrine and Kellerman vaguely resemble Lombard, I can’t envision either in the role. Similarly, McGraw’s understated acting style and cool persona are incongruous with Lombard’s personality and screen presence. That said, through no fault of her own, Clayburgh does not portray a convincing Lombard. The script is so trite, and Lombard’s character is so exaggerated, that Clayburgh can’t help but portray her with a glib brashness that makes her almost unwatchable. It’s a shame that the script was so weak, because both actors have the talent and charisma to measure up to Gable and Lombard’s iconicity. I’d like to think that with different material, they would have done the stars justice.

My biggest issue with Gable and Lombard is the effect that it’s had on the stars’ legacies. In short, Lombard’s relationship with Gable is one of the most defining factors of her posthumous star image, but it has come at the expense of a thorough understanding of her stardom and career. While the film certainly hasn’t done irreparable harm to their images in the way that Mommie Dearest has to Joan Crawford’s, it nonetheless perpetuates a mythology that bears little resemblance to reality. Because Gable and Lombard draws so heavily from fan magazine and publicity department fluff pieces, the versions of Lombard and Gable are just as fictitious as any of their screen roles. Both stars were more than their marriage, and while their relationship was a constitutive part of late-1930s Hollywood discourse, too much cultural value is put into maintaining this romantic narrative (Kiriakou 2020, pg. 154).

Unless you’re a Clark Gable and Carole Lombard completionist, save yourself the 2 hours and 11 minutes and go watch something else. If you’re not yet familiar with Carole Lombard’s films, Gable and Lombard is not the place to start: it is neither entertaining, nor does it offer an accurate portrayal of her stardom. But if you do decide to give Gable and Lombard a go, set your expectations low – and don’t say I didn’t warn you!

WORKS CITED:

Baskette, Kirtley. “Hollywood’s Unmarried Husbands and Wives.” Photoplay, January 1939, pg. 22-23.

Canby, Vincent. “‘Gable and Lombard’ Revives Cliches,” The New York Times, February 12 1976, 6.

Custen, George. Bio/pics: How Hollywood Constructed Public History. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1992.

Doherty, Edward. “Can the Gable-Lombard Love Story Have a Happy Ending?” Photoplay, May 1938: 18-19.

Farber, Stephen. “Film Notes: How Do You Find a New Clark Gable?” The New York Times, February 15, 1975, pg. 15.

Fletcher, Adele Whiteley. “A Heart to Heart Letter to Carole Lombard and Clark Gable.” Screen Guide, November 1936, pg. 5.

Gehring, Wes D. Carole Lombard: The Hoosier Tornado. Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 2003.

Head, Edith and Jane Kesner Ardmore. The Dress Doctor. Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1959.

Kiriakou, Olympia. Becoming Carole Lombard: Stardom, Comedy, and Legacy. New York: Bloomsbury, 2020.

Lane, Christina. “A Modern Marriage for the Masses: Carole Lombard, Clark Gable, and the Cultural Front.” Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Vol. 33, No. 1 (2016): 401 – 436.

Lewis, Frederick. “Is Carole Lombard in Love at Last?” Liberty, November 14, 1936: 46-47.

Townsend, Leo. “Good News,” Modern Screen, March 1936, pg. 13.

Carole Lombard is best known as a screwball comedienne, but fans of hers know that she also had a substantial career in the silent era. Her comedy journey began in mid-1927 when, after being abruptly dropped by the Fox Film Corporation, she signed a two-year, $300 per week contract with slapstick pioneer, Mack Sennett. Under his tutelage, Lombard made 18 short films in both supporting and lead roles, and co-starred alongside some of the Keystone Film Company’s most prolific actors like Daphne Pollard, Andy Clyde, and Irving Bacon. While the majority of Lombard’s early silent films are lost, happily, her Sennett shorts survive: most are housed in archives, but at the time of this posting, some are also available online (including Run, Girl, Run, The Campus Vamp, The Campus Carmen, and Matchmaking Mamma). If you haven’t yet had the pleasure of watching these shorts, I highly recommend that you do: they’re essential viewing for anyone who wants to understand Lombard’s career and, crucially, her growth as a comedian. That said, having seen all of Lombard’s Sennett shorts, I would argue that she is far less physical than one would expect. With the exception of a handful of Sennett shorts such as The Campus Vamp and The Swim Princess, Lombard’s performances are far more static and decorative than physical. This is due to the fact that for much of this period Lombard was a “Sennett Girl,” an updated, late-1920s version of his famous Bathing Beauties troupe. In these films Lombard’s primary role was to serve as a spectacular counterpoint (or, to put it crudely, eye candy) to the rough-and-tumble physical comedy.

While the precise date of Lombard’s Sennett contract signing is unclear, contemporaneous trade papers suggest that she was working with him as early as the summer of 1927 (see below). After filming only 3 shorts and a few months into her contract with Sennett’s company, tragedy struck: on September 19th, 1927 Lombard and her date, Harry Cooper, were driving down Santa Monica Boulevard when all of a sudden, Cooper crashed into another car (Garrett Clipper 1927, pg. 3). The crash was so severe that Cooper’s car windshield shattered, and shards of glass cut Lombard’s face. She underwent extensive reconstructive surgery which left her with permanent facial scars (which could be seen in her films for the rest of her life). At the time, Lombard feared that history would repeat itself and that like Fox, Sennett would terminate her contract. To her credit, she had reason to be concerned: her career was still in its infancy, and in an industry that obsesses over unattainable beauty standards, being an ingenue with noticeable facial scarring might have been an impediment to her future success (Los Angeles Times 1927, A9).

The reason I bring up Lombard’s accident is because there has previously been some confusion about when exactly it occurred, and how the recovery time away from the screen affected her Sennett career. A prominent 1970s biography proposed that the accident occurred in 1926 and was the reason behind Lombard’s Fox contract termination (Swindell 1975, pg. 52). This, of course, is not true: court documents from a lawsuit against Cooper identifies Lombard as a “Sennett girl” who has “shattered screen ambitions” (Garrett Clipper 1927, pg. 3). As I previously stated, the accident occurred not long after Lombard began working for Sennett (and, incidentally, the same day that her first short, Smith’s Pony, made its theatrical debut). While Lombard feared that her career was over, it was likely a blessing that she was under contract with a filmmaker like Sennett, whose long-shot heavy, fast-paced comedy style shifted the camera’s focus away from Lombard’s face and onto her figure (Kiriakou 2020, pg. 19).

Sennett was allegedly sympathetic to Lombard’s situation, and helped to boost her star profile by giving her ample publicity. One such strategy was a new nickname – Carol of the Curves – which “simultaneously drew audiences’ attention away from her facial scars and worked harmoniously with the physicality and female sensuality” that were the focal point of her films (Kiriakou 2020 pg. 53). Lombard carried this nickname with her through 1929 when she worked at Pathé, and it was also occasionally referenced in early-30s fan magazine articles about her star transformation (see below).

One of Lombard’s earliest Sennett shorts was The Girl From Everywhere (Edward F. Cline, 1927). Filmed from June to August 1927 and released on December 11, it is the first installment in the “Sennett Girl Comedies” series. In both form and content, the shorts in the “Sennett Girl Comedies” series were modernized versions of the producer’s hit “Bathing Beauties” films. Sennett deliberately structured them to “show off his newest batch of bathing girls” like Carmelita Geraghty, Anita Barnes, and Lombard (Walker 2010, pg. 174). The Bathing Beauties were first introduced in 1915, and were a jumping off point in the careers of several Hollywood stars like Gloria Swanson, Marie Prevost, and June Haver. Their immediate popularity and mass cultural appeal reflected what historian Rob King call their “modern femininity,” and they became emblematic of both female sexual liberation and middle-class leisure (2009, pg. 211). Unlike the violent physical comedy found in the Keystone Kops shorts or the straight slapstick comedies, the Bathing Beauties functioned as pure visual spectacle. Through framing and editing techniques like slow motion, long shots, and full-body pans, the Beauties films emphasis on the young women’s attractiveness and sex appeal over any type of physical prowess.

Unlike the earlier incarnation, the “Sennett Girl Comedies” had substantial budgets due, in part, to the producer’s newly formed Motion Picture Capital Corporation, which helped him secure outside investors (Walker 2010, pg. 174). With an estimated cost of anywhere between $25,000 and $32,000 per film and Technicolor sequences, the “Sennett Girl Comedies” were the latest spectacular offering from the ever-popular comedy studio. In a similar fashion to the Bathing Beauties shorts, the “Sennett Girls” had a primarily ornamental purpose. This is clear in several of Lombard’s shorts: from a POV shot of her through binoculars in Smith’s Pony (1927), to the opening shot of Carole and several other Sennett Girls waving directly to the camera in Matchmaking Mamma (1929) (see below), Lombard’s performance and figure are enticement for the male gaze.

This is also the case in The Girl from Everywhere. The story takes place on a film set, where director Wilfred ‘Bill’ Ashcraft (Mack Swain) presides over an unruly cast and crew. The film’s star, Daphne Pollard, plays Minnie Stitch, a megalomaniac actress who holds up Ashcraft’s shoot. Her antics are so distracting that at one point, Ashcraft remarks “No wonder there’s a food shortage in Europe. If she acts like she eats, I’m made!” The rest of the short film centers on the chaos that ensues after a lion from a neighboring set wanders into Ashcraft’s studio. Although Lombard is not listed in the film’s credits, she plays an extra named Vera Veranda (aka ‘Miss Anybody’), a title that perfectly describes her small and rather one-dimensional role. She is dressed in a black, form-fitting vest, black shorts and a black feathery hat — an outfit that can be seen on the film’s promotional posters. Cline photographs Lombard in long shot, giving audiences ample view of her bare legs and curvaceous body. For much of the short she is seated alongside other extras and the film crew, and has no narrative purpose other than to look beautiful. Shots of Lombard and the other Sennett Girls serve as a visual counterpoint to the chaotic slapstick action.

Lombard may have had a relatively inconsequential role in the film, but she was given star billing in the film’s publicity campaign. In one advertisement she’s identified by name – Carolle Lombard (the preferred spelling at the time) – and is separate from the other Sennett Girls (below left). In another, Lombard is given second billing to Pollard (below right). The caricature featured at the center of the advertisement is clearly modeled after Lombard, since she wears a similar costume and is posed almost identically to her in the film. These ads disprove Larry Swindell’s claims that during her Sennett tenure, the public did not know Lombard by name and only identified her as “the pretty one” (1975, pg. 60). Moreover, they confirm that Sennett helped put Lombard’s career back on track following her accident. After all, in any other scenario it is unlikely that a bit part would warrant such a billing, nor a high-profile star treatment.

The first time I watched this film was in 2015 on a trip to UCLA’s archives. As a modern viewer accustomed to Lombard’s energetic screwball persona, this performance was quite different from what I was expecting. My initial assumptions about Lombard’s silent comedies was also colored by 1930s fan magazine observations, many of whom describe this period of her career using active, visceral language. For example, in late-1938 Life magazine journalist Noel Busch wrote that Lombard “spent two years [with Sennett] being hit in the face by pies, tripped, dunked, chased, and generally maltreated…” (pg. 63). Busch, like other journalists of the period, also draw connections between her silent and screwball comedies, as if the former was training for the latter. Another Life profile from the late-30s made the case that Lombard “can lay some claim to have started the current craze for slapstick farce…Miss Lombard has been doing the same sort of comedy, on and off screen, for the better part of her 29 years” (1937 pg. 70). Yet after working through her body of Sennett films, I came to the conclusion that this type of description was not altogether accurate.

Contrary to popular belief, Lombard is not consistently physical in all of her silent comedies, and her performances bear little resemblance to those in her screwball films. As I’ve previously noted, in some films like Matchmaking Mamma, there is no significant physical component to her performance, while in others like Run, Girl, Run, she displays athleticism rather than frenzied slapstick behavior (Kiriakou 2020, pg. 48). One constant throughout these films is the spectacular nature of Lombard’s screen image. Whether to draw attention to her sensuality or athleticism, Lombard’s body is routinely made the focal point of her performances. While this is the case with her screwball films, I would argue that Lombard’s slapstick performances are more demure and inhibited precisely because of the constraints put upon her by the “Sennett Girls” designation. Lombard the Sennett Girl was not necessarily a slapstick comedian, but an actor who happened to appear in slapstick comedies. In that way, we need not think of Lombard’s Sennett films as a precursor to her later screwball performances, but rather a distinct period unto itself. Only when we treat these parts of her filmography separately can we begin to understand the evolution of her comedic performance style, and the wider historical context of her career.

WORKS CITED:

“Actress demands damages for cut.” Los Angeles Times, October 13 1927, A9.

Busch, Noel F. “A Loud Cheer for the Screwball Girl.” Life, October 17, 1938.

“Former Fort Wayne star asks $35,000 damages.” Garrett Clipper, October 31 1927, pg. 3.

King, Rob. The Fun Factory: The Keystone Film Company and the Emergence of Mass Culture. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2009.

Kiriakou, Olympia. Becoming Carole Lombard: Stardom, Comedy, and Legacy. New York: Bloomsbury, 2020.

“Movie of the Week: True Confession.” Life, December 13, 1937, 70.

Swindell, Larry. Screwball: The Life of Carole Lombard. New York: William Morrow Inc., 1975.

Walker, Brent E. Mack Sennett’s Fun Factory: A History and Filmography of His Studio and His Keystone and Mack Sennett Comedies, with Biographies of Players and Personnel. Jefferson: McFarland & Co., Inc., 2010.

Hello again, it’s been a while! My apologies for the long hiatus from my website, but work and writing deadlines simply got in the way. Now that I’m getting back into the swing of things, I thought I’d explore one of Carole Lombard’s pre-Code films, No Man of Her Own (Wesley Ruggles, 1932). Famously, this film is the only screen pairing of Lombard and her second husband, Clark Gable. Given its unique status, in the years since its release it has taken on a life of its own for Lombard and Gable fans. So, rather than a review, I thought I’d focus on No Man of Her Own‘s legacy, and how the film’s imagery has helped to sustain interest in the them as a star couple from the 1930s to today.

For those who haven’t seen the film, a brief summary: Lombard plays Connie, a librarian who dreams of excitement away from her small town. When a handsome stranger named Babe Stewart (Gable) visits the library, Connie sees him as the escape she’s been longing for. Unbeknownst to her, Babe is a gambler hiding out from the police. On a flip of a coin, Babe and Connie decide to get married and he brings her back to New York. Babe tries to hide his gambling habits from Connie by pretending to be a businessman, and even spends his days at an office so that she won’t get suspicious. Eventually, Babe’s shady past catches up with him and he is sentenced to prison. Babe wants to shield Connie from the truth, so he tells her that he’s going on a long business trip to South America. Shortly after he leaves, Connie finds out the truth about Babe and that she’s pregnant. Realizing that she loves Babe in spite of his lies, Connie continues to feign ignorance. The film concludes with Babe’s return home, with a handful of “souvenirs” from his alleged trip abroad.

On its own merits, No Man of Her Own is a charming pre-Code romantic drama, ripe with alluring sensual scenes and equally cringe-worthy dialogue. Setting aside Lombard and Gable’s off-screen relationship, their screen chemistry is clear and, in my opinion, one of the most memorable aspects of this film. My favorite scene that illustrates their characters’ dynamics takes place the first morning that Babe is meant to go to work. After a long night playing poker with his cronies, Babe is in no mood to wake up early. In a medium-close up of Babe’s bed, we see him wrapped up in his blankets trying to sleep (see below). Connie sits down on the edge of his bed, nudges him lovingly, and coos “Babe…Babe…it’s time to get up.” Realizing she’s being ignored, Connie stands up and disappears from the frame, but comes back a moment later with a wet towel that she places on Babe’s head. It does the trick: Babe grumbles and begrudgingly gets out of bed.

This is not a scene that carries much weight in the film overall, but one that amply conveys Connie and Babe’s playful affections. Much of the film’s narrative hinges on the contrast between Babe’s deceit and Connie’s naïveté, but at no point does it imply that their love is insincere. With several highly charged passionate exchanges – complemented by Travis Banton’s costumes, romantic low key lighting, and the actors’ effortless screen chemistry – No Man of Her Own is one of the more delightful films in Lombard’s pre-Code filmography.

While I generally enjoy No Man of Her Own, I also firmly believe that its lasting reputation in the pre-Code pantheon has been kept alive by Lombard and Gable’s off-screen relationship. In the years since its release, its status in the Lombard and Gable fandoms has become akin to that of fan fiction, and it’s a film that fans can use to project their fantasies about the couple’s real romance. Despite wishful thinking from some fans and gossip columnists, at the time of filming Lombard and Gable were not a couple and, in fact, were married to other people: Clark to his second wife, Rhea Langham Gable, and Carole to William Powell. Lombard and Gable did not begin dating until January 1936 after reconnecting at the annual Mayfair Ball (the “white party” referenced in the snippet below).

This Silver Screen article is ripe with inaccuracies, yet in 1936 this false narrative took hold and has remained a constitutive part of the discourse about their relationship ever since. While researching for my book, I discovered that Paramount was eager to capitalize on public interest in Hollywood’s newest star couple, and sent a letter to the Production Code Administration (PCA) to have No Man of Her Own certified for a 1936 re-release. In correspondence with the PCA, Paramount executive John Hammell wrote that the motivation for his request was “the importance of the cast (Gable and Lombard)” (Production Code Administration records, 1936). At the time of the re-release, Lombard was still under contract to Paramount. The studio’s decision to rush the film out in this early stage of her romance with Gable reveals that they identified the potential bankability in their star couple image.

Even with this scheduled re-release and the couple’s overwhelmingly positive public acceptance, the studios and gossip press still had to address the “Rhea problem.” Some columnists took a cynical perspective, including Motion Picture magazine columnist Ford Black, who wrote that Gable would never divorce Rhea because “Hollywood fears, above all else, the wrath of millions of moviegoers whose moral sensibilities are assumed to be as fragile as a gold leaf…” (1939, pg. 30). Historian Michael Hammond explains the reason for Black’s opinion: box office success equated public approval, and in spite of the precarious morality of their public affair, Lombard and Gable were extremely popular stars individually and as a couple (2015, pg. 55). In short, why risk spoiling established success with a divorce?

Other columnists took a different approach: to distract from Gable’s marital status, during the couple’s courtship period contemporaneous media frequently emphasized his and Lombard’s compatibility. For example, Photoplay columnist Edward Doherty observed that the two stars “had a lot in common…both enjoy informality. They like to be themselves. They welcome anything simple and natural which will give them fun” (Doherty 1938, pg. 18). The couple had a “practical, salt-of-the earth quality that lacked pretense” (Lane 2016, pg. 401) and unlike Rhea and Gable’s first wife, Josephine Dillon – who were older and described as “thoroughly serious women” – Lombard was “imaginative, modernistic, unconventional, and oh, so young!” (Lewis 1936, pg. 46). Despite being the “other woman” technically, Lombard was celebrated as Gable’s equal in interests, ideology, and age.

As the above snippet reveals, is impossible to extricate the insidious ageism from the fan magazine discourse about Rhea Gable, particularly in comparisons with Lombard. In articles that highlight Carole’s vivacious personality and youthful energy, it’s not hard to interpret such descriptions as implicit condemnations of Rhea. By the late-1930s Rhea was the target of of considerable public backlash for refusing to grant Gable a divorce (see photos below). Ironically it was Rhea, not Carole who was considered the “other woman,” and someone who “interfered with her husband’s life and depressed him mentally” (Dixon Mann 1938, pg. 24). Unlike Rhea, Lombard was one of Hollywood’s biggest stars with her own devoted fan base, and both she and Gable “received acceptance in the film community and mainstream media” (Abrams 2008, pg. 74). Hollywood’s willingness to ignore their own self-imposed moral standards may have been hypocritical, but was a clear sign of Lombard and Gable’s combined star power and overwhelming public approval (Kiriakou 2020, pg. 143). With the film industry and the public on Carole’s side, Rhea eventually filed for divorce and Lombard and Gable married on March 29, 1939.

With that context in mind, one can understand why No Man of Her Own was – and still is – so important in the Lombard-Gable romance mythology. For the rest of Lombard’s life, and even posthumously, it’s difficult to find a discussion of her relationship with Gable without mention of No Man of Her Own. The film’s narrative bears no resemblance to reality, yet over the years it has taken on a quasi-documentary status, functioning almost like “evidence” of the couple’s off-screen dynamics. The clearest example of this is the 1976 biopic, Gable and Lombard, which makes heavy use of No Man of Her Own, and even recreates one of the film’s iconic promotional photos for its title sequence. Gable and Lombard opens with the original photo on the left, and as the title credits roll Lombard’s and Gable’s faces morph into those of James Brolin and Jill Clayburgh. This imagery is also used in the film’s trailer, and is paired with the tagline “They don’t love like that any more.”

I’ve made my distain for this biopic quite clear: it severely bends historical facts and chronology, and although I adore Jill Clayburgh’s work, this film’s characterization of Lombard is maddening. Of course, I don’t watch biopics for historical accuracy, and as a Lombard scholar, I’m not the film’s target audience. All of that aside, equally troubling is the fact that Gable and Lombard leans heavily into the idea that the couple’s screen chemistry in No Man of Her Own is interchangeable with their private lives. Such conflation continues to appear to this day: fan-made tributes to the Gables available on YouTube and social media often feature clips or stills from No Man of Her Own. Similarly, fan discourse about the film often touch upon Lombard and Gable’s off-screen romantic status. Like Gable and Lombard, fan media helps to cement No Man of Her Own‘s legacy as an extension of their real-life relationship. With the foundation set in the mid-1930s, it’s no wonder why some contemporary fans would continue to perpetuate this appealing but inaccurate mythology.

In reality, Lombard and Gable were fairly private people who set boundaries with the press (for example, not allowing photographers inside their Encino home). As much as I’m immersed in everything Carole Lombard, neither I nor any other researcher can claim to know the details of her private life. It would be distracting to her star legacy to speculate on the similarities or differences between No Man of Her Own and her marriage to Gable. And besides, does it matter? Far too much time and energy is spent dissecting the private lives of classical Hollywood stars, which does little to help contemporary fans understand their bodies of work, or the studio system’s role in manufacturing star identities. In the case of Lombard, the overly romanticized discourse about No Man of Her Own has had a consequential effect on her star persona, as well as her and Gable’s iconicity as a star couple. As I’ve previously argued, a lot of unnecessary cultural value is put into Lombard’s relationship with Gable (Kiriakou 2020 pg. 154), viewed through the distorted lens of No Man of Her Own and carefully curated publicity discourse. I believe this has come at the expense of her own independent star identity. It is my goal through this website, my book, and elsewhere to correct that narrative, so that we can think about Lombard’s stardom on her own terms, but also the gendered, ideological, and moral implications Lombard and Gable’s star couple image.

Works Cited

Abrams, Brett L. Hollywood Bohemians: Transgressive Sexuality and the Selling of the Movie Dreamland. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. Inc., 2008.

Black, Ford. “Will Clark Gable Ever Marry Carole Lombard?” Motion Picture, February 1939: 30-31.

Dixon Mann, Margaret. “Happiness Ahead for Clark and Carole.” Picture Play, August 1938: 23-24.

Doherty, Edward. “Can the Gable-Lombard Love Story Have a Happy Ending?” Photoplay, May 1938: 18-19.

Hammond, Michael. “‘Good Fellowship’: Carole Lombard and Clark Gable.” In First Comes Love: Power Couples, Celebrity Kinship, and Cultural Politics, eds. Shelley Cobb and Neil McEwen. New York: Bloomsbury, 2015, 53 – 72.

Lane, Christina. “A Modern Marriage for the Masses: Carole Lombard, Clark Gable, and the Cultural Front.” Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Vol. 33, No. 1 (2016): 401 – 436.

Letter from John Hammell to Joseph L. Breen, September 21, 1936. Production Code Administration records. Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Lewis, Frederick. “Is Carole Lombard in Love at Last?” Liberty, November 14, 1936: 46-47.

Kiriakou, Olympia. Becoming Carole Lombard: Stardom, Comedy, and Legacy. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020.

Among critics and fans alike, Fools for Scandal (1938) is considered one of Carole Lombard’s worst films – and for good reason! Upon my first viewing of Lombard’s filmography, I ranked Fools for Scandal slightly above The Gay Bride (1934) – the film which Carole herself described in the mid-1930s as her least favorite (Harvey 1998, pg. 212). However, through subsequent viewings and some reflection, I think The Gay Bride holds up quite well as a light gangster comedy. Conversely, Fools for Scandal is clunky, unfunny, and downright tedious in spots. It’s no wonder that when Lombard debunked retirement rumors in 1940, she joked that if there had ever been that time she considered leaving the film industry, it would’ve been following the release of Fools for Scandal:

The story is fairly standard screwball fare. Lombard plays a movie star named Kay Winters, who is on a holiday in Paris in a disguise to preserve her anonymity. One day in Montmartre, she meets a poor marquis named Rene (Fernand Gravet), who offers to give her a tour of the “real” Paris – not one that you find in guidebooks, but the locals’ city. Not long after Kay reveals her true identity to Rene does she return to her home in London; undeterred, he follows her to her house on the night she’s throwing a costume party. Although Kay is allegedly in love with Rene, she considers him a nuisance. To complicate matters, Kay jokingly hires Rene to be her chef, which makes her boyfriend, Phillip (Ralph Bellamy), insanely jealous. Rene’s sudden presence in Kay’s life becomes the subject of gossip around London after her friend, Lady Malverton (Isabel Jeans), spreads a rumor that he was hired to be her “love chef.” Eventually, Kay admits that she’s in love with Rene, and the film concludes with the couple kissing on stage at the Paris Opera house in front of an audience.

Are you still with me?

Fools for Scandal was based on the play “Return Engagement” by Nancy Hamilton, James Shute, and Rosemary Casey, which itself was an adaptation of Richard Sheridan’s “The School for Scandal.” It was Lombard’s first and only film for Warner Brothers, and she agreed to the role as part of a one-picture freelance deal she signed with the studio in 1937, which gave her a salary of $150,000, the right to choose her own cameraman and costume designer (Ted Tetzlaff and Travis Banton, respectively), and star billing (Carman 2015, pg. 158). The one bright spot in this otherwise dismal film are Travis Banton’s lovely costumes, especially the elegant black floor-length dress Lombard wears in some of the promotional photos (see below). Happily, Banton’s designs are much more sophisticated than much of the film’s comedy.

The film was primarily designed to be a star vehicle for Lombard, but it also gave Warner Brothers an opportunity to introduce French actor, Fernand Gravet, to American audiences. This was the second film in Gravet’s two-picture deal with Warners (Life, March 1937, pg. 24) before he signed with Metro-Goldwyn Mayer in 1938. Unfortunately, neither Fools for Scandal nor Gravet’s U.S. film career were hits. Although he occasionally worked with other American filmmakers – most notably William Wyler in How to Steal a Million (1966) – Gravet never rose to leading man status in the United States.

One of the film’s major shortcomings is the missing chemistry between Lombard and Gravet. While I don’t think their respective performance styles were discordant, Gravet is not one of Lombard’s most convincing leading men. This is evident in the script itself. Fools for Scandal leans heavily into the “battle of the sexes” trope, but does so without giving us a plausible reconciliation scene, which helps viewers understand why these two characters are in love with each other in the first place. Screwball comedy scholar Tina Olsin Lent argues that the “battle of the sexes” trope helped filmmakers address shifting societal conceptions of marriage in the 1930s. As morality evolved so too did the purpose of marriage, and as Olsin Lent writes, “marriage became less a social and economic institution based upon spiritual love and more a sexual and emotional union based on sexual attraction” (1995, pg. 320).

The second, more practical reason for the “battle of the sexes” trope was that it gave filmmakers an opportunity to circumvent the Production Code. Film critic Andrew Sarris famously described the screwball genre as “sex comedies without the sex,” (1975, pg. 11), referring to the fact that explicit portrayals of “passion” were discouraged under the Code (see below). The tension between the romantic leads in screwball comedies (whether it be sexual or otherwise) is therefore considered by most scholars as a substitute for overt sexual expression.

To convey romantic and sexual compatibility without sex, screwball comedies often rely on “play.” Play can be literal – like characters playing a game, as is the case in My Man Godfrey (La Cava, 1936) and Bringing Up Baby (Hawks, 1938) – or metaphorical, represented through physical comedy and fast-paced banter. The most obvious example of the latter is the hotel scene in Nothing Sacred (William Wellman, 1937). For those who haven’t seen Nothing Sacred, it tells the story of a small town woman named Hazel Flagg (Lombard) who pretends to have terminal radium poisoning in order to get a free trip to New York courtesy of the newspaper, The Morning Star. In an effort to conceal Hazel’s fake illness and avoid humiliation in front of prestigious doctors, reporter Wally Cook (Fredric March) tells her that she must pretend to look sick. Minutes before the doctors’ arrival, Wally says, “We gotta raise your pulse to 160, quick! We gotta have you gasping, panting and covered with a cold sweat inside of five minutes.” To rile Hazel up, Wally encourages her to punch him – which Hazel eventually does, but not before Wally knocks her out. The sexual subtext in this scene is all too clear, and while Wellman abides by the Code’s letter, he flaunts its spirit – with gusto!

Fools for Scandal relies heavily on combative banter to express Kay and Rene’s sexual tension, but aside from one scene when they dine together in a Parisian cafe, the film does not satisfyingly convince us that she actually loves (or even likes) him! Instead, Kay repeatedly pleads with Rene to “get out” of her house or “leave me alone;” whether it be the morning after her costume party or when Rene serves her breakfast in bed, the entire romance seems unexplainably one-sided. Some might argue that Kay’s dismissiveness is her way of hiding her true feelings for him. Unfortunately, this is not brought to bear in Lombard’s performance: it’s disappointingly one-dimensional, and lacking the warmth and depth she imbues in her other screwball roles. Her performance suggests that Kay is perpetually aggravated, not lovesick.

Then towards the end of the film, as if by some miracle, Lombard drops Kay’s brusque attitude. In a romantic embrace with Rene, Kay professes in a soft, breathy voice: “my life was so nice and peaceful until you came along.” I remember seeing this scene for the first time and thinking “did I miss something?” Unlike Lombard’s more dynamic screwball comedies, Fools for Scandal lacks a definitive turning point in Kay and Rene’s relationship. As a result, by the film’s conclusion in the Paris Opera house, viewers are left wondering why we should care about Rene’s tornadic presence in Kay’s life, or what she finds attractive about him in the first place.

Overall, Fools for Scandal is a screwball comedy that doesn’t know how to be a screwball comedy. It contains all of the genre’s classic conventions – an adversarial couple, absurd situations, fast-paced banter, masquerading, and courtship – but fails to do anything interesting with them. The result is a hodge-podge of farcical situations that are severely lacking humor or sincerity. Consider, for a moment, the masquerade ball sequence: when Rene first arrives at Kay’s home in London, he’s greeted by a bunch of strangers wearing papier-mâché animal masks. We learn that Kay is hosting a costume party, and each character is wearing a mask that mirrors their personality – Kay is dressed as a furry bunny, Phillip is wearing a hound dog mask, and Lady Malverton is a squawking bird. Unlike the masquerade trope in screwball comedies like My Man Godfrey (1936), The Lady Eve (1941), or Some Like it Hot (1959) – where hidden identity is integral to a character’s arc – this masquerade sequence is simply superficially weird. Of course, screwball zaniness need not be explained by any sort of logic, but the scene is entirely out of step with the film’s tone and style.

Production on Fools for Scandal began in late-1937 and wrapped in January 1938. During this time, Warner Brothers tried to capitalize on Lombard’s star power to bolster public interest in the film, and published a series of pre-production and on-set photos in popular fan magazines of the day (see below). In 1937 Lombard was at the peak of her career, and after making just over $465,000, she was named the highest paid star in Hollywood (Kiriakou 2020, pg. 188). Warners wasn’t noted for their memorable screwball comedies like Paramount or RKO Pictures, but the studio hoped that at the very least, Lombard’s reputation and box office popularity would help make the film a success.

However, production documents reveal that Warners quickly realized that something was missing. Not long after filming began, the studio hired noted comedy writer, Irv Brecher, to work on additional dialogue. Brecher had made a name for himself in radio, working for performers like Al Jolson; 1937 marked his foray into screenwriting, and he later wrote the screenplays for Marx brothers comedies At the Circus (1939) and Go West (1940). Despite Brecher’s added talent and a substantial marketing campaign, Fools for Scandal was a commercial and critical failure upon its April 1938 release. The film did well in some markets – particularly the Great Lakes region (Motion Picture Daily, May 1938, pg. 11) – but with a $1.3 million budget, Warners reported an overall loss.

As this Modern Screen film review makes clear, critics felt that the comedy was “confusing” and that Lombard’s performance failed to measure up to her previous screwball triumphs. By all accounts, Lombard was taken aback by the film’s dismal performance. Given the power and status she held in the industry at the time, Fools for Scandal was not the career-ending film that some speculate it could’ve been. That said, it did help shape the trajectory of Lombard’s late-career. Prior to the film’s release, she had been seriously contemplating a break from screwball comedy because she didn’t want to be typecast. She yearned to challenge herself professionally, and believed that tackling other genres would help demonstrate her versatility. Fools for Scandal‘s failure was the final push Lombard needed to take her career down a different path, and for the next few years, she earnestly tried to distance herself from the film and her screwball persona.

WORKS CITED

Carman, Emily. Independent Stardom: Freelance Women in the Hollywood Studio System. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015.

Harvey, James. Romantic Comedy in Hollywood: From Lubitsch to Sturges. New York: Da Capo Press, 1998.

Kiriakou, Olympia. Becoming Carole Lombard: Stardom, Comedy, and Legacy. New York: Bloomsbury, 2020.

“Movie of the Week: The King and the Chorus Girl.” Life, March 29, 1937, pg. 24.

Olsin Lent, Tina. “Romantic Love and Friendship: The Redefinition of Gender Relations in Screwball Comedy.” In Classical Hollywood Comedy, eds. Kristine Brunovska Karnick and Henry Jenkins. New York: Routledge, 1998, 314 – 331.

Sarris, Andrew. “The Sex Comedy Without Sex.” American Film, Vol. 3 No. 5 (1975):

“‘Scandal,’ Dorsey $18,600 Buffalo.” Motion Picture Daily, May 13, 1938, pg. 11.

Although Carole Lombard’s main medium was film, she was no stranger to radio. By the mid-1930s, she was performing regularly on the era’s most popular radio programs such as the Lux Radio Theatre and the Screen Guild Theatre. In 1939, Lombard was one of several stars that appeared on the short-lived NBC series The Circle, which was touted as the “Hollywood version” of the famed Algonquin Round Table. In her private life, Lombard was an avid radio listener, and enjoyed the programs of her colleagues and friends like Jack Benny and Orson Welles. Happily, much of Lombard’s radio work still survives (you can listen to the available recordings here).

Having spent over a decade researching Carole Lombard, I previously thought that I had a complete listing of all of her radio work. However, through the recent acquisition of some memorabilia, I became aware of an entirely new-to-me radio appearance! Among my latest batch of possessions is a script for a Louella Parsons radio interview with Lombard and costume designer, Travis Banton. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find any recordings of this show (if anybody finds one, please send it my way).

The script does not include any production information, but through context clues and some research, I’ve managed to come up with a bit of information. First, the date: this broadcast likely aired in the spring of 1934. The script references two Lombard films, Bolero and “You Belong to Me” (the working title of Now and Forever), which gave me an initial date range of February to August (their respective release dates). As you can see by the photo below, the orchestra plays “Bolero” as Lombard’s theme, which suggests that the film was already in theaters and this may have been one of Lombard’s required promotional appearances. My other reason for the spring time frame is simple: at the end of the interview Raymond Paige and his California Melodeers perform Easter-themed music.

Louella Parsons had long made a name for herself in print media, and by 1928 she began her foray into radio with the Sun-Kist radio show, a fifteen-minute program on CBS featuring interviews with Hollywood stars. In 1931, the show changed sponsors – from Sun-Kist to Charis Foundation Garment – but followed a similar format. By the spring of 1934, Parsons signed another contract with CBS called Hollywood Hotel, a variety style program sponsored by the Campbell Soup Company. Hollywood Hotel featured top stars performing in “twenty-minute vignettes” of popular films, which “served not only to popularize the radio show but also as excellent publicity for the films (Himes 1990, pg. 67). Parsons used her power and influence to pressure stars to appear on her show for free, leading the Screen Actors Guild to adopt a rule in 1941 that prohibited its members from performing on the radio without compensation (Barbas 2005, pg. 229). There’s no show title on my script, but since it follows a simple interview format with no dramatizations, I am confident that it is the Charis sponsored program.

The interview is set in Banton’s Paramount studio office where Parsons is eager to discuss Lombard’s personal and screen style. Unfortunately, the script is too delicate to scan (the pages are about as thin as tissue paper), but here are some notable excerpts:

On a practical level, this interview coincides with the film industry’s push to create marketing tie-ins with fashion manufacturers. Charles Eckert explains that by 1930, industrialist Bernard Waldman created the Modern Manufacturing Bureau (MMB) in New York as a “fashion middle-man,” bringing together low-cost manufacturers and the Hollywood studios. The MMB oversaw the industrial production of what we’d consider today as “fast fashion” – inexpensive, mass-produced versions of high-end designs (Eckert 1999, pg. 103). They also worked to identify and drive consumer demand for both the fashion and film industries. The studio heads banked on the idea that fans wanted tangible connections to their favorite stars: if fans could dress just like their favorite actors, they would become invested in Hollywood and its products. The stars were akin to fashion models, and played a critical role in ensuring audiences were loyal to the Hollywood brand – both psychologically and financially. Lombard was, of course, one of those stars.

When Lombard signed her contract with Paramount in 1930, she was not yet an established star. She had achieved some success with Mack Sennett’s acting troupe, but she was essentially a blank canvas with little name recognition and a nondescript public image. As the studios often did with their new talent, Paramount set about to make Lombard into a household name, and decided that she would be their latest Hollywood glamour girl. In the early-1930s, Lombard was known as a “clotheshorse” (Swindell 1975, pg. 113), someone whose on and off-screen images personified refined sophistication. As this radio script and other popular media of the time makes clear, Lombard was included on Hollywood’s “best dressed” lists, and was frequently featured in fan magazine spreads touting her fashion sense.

Unfortunately, Lombard’s glamorous persona came at the expense of her acting capabilities, and many of her early-30s Paramount films are rather forgettable (Kiriakou 2020, pg. 62). This is clearly evident in a film like The Eagle and the Hawk (1933): Lombard plays the ambiguous “Beautiful Lady,” and her only real purpose is, as her character’s name suggests, to look attractive.

Contemporaneous critics and fans took note of the shallowness of Lombard’s early-1930s glamorous persona. For example, in a 1932 Photoplay article entitled “30 Girls in a Race for Stardom,” columnist “Cal York” writes: “It is strange about Carole Lombard. She’s the Constance Bennett screen type in appearance and ability, and yet – here’s a little secret – exhibitors, who are the boys who buy pictures for the theaters, are not wasting any time crying for Lombard pictures – yet. Somehow she hasn’t piqued the public curiosity to date…” (York 1932, pg. 75). It’s clear from Lombard’s early Paramount films that the studio unwisely invested in an image that was largely superficial. Luckily for Lombard, she found her greatest success from loan-outs deals away from Paramount (Carman 2015, pg. 27), which gave her the opportunity to push herself creatively and develop a strong screen image that resonated with audiences. Paramount’s mismanagement was ultimately Lombard’s gain, and by the mid-1930s she had successfully shed her glamour girl reputation in favor of her more accessible screwball persona.

One bright spot from Lombard’s Paramount tenure was he working relationship with Travis Banton. While Lombard may not have been the fashion-conscious star that the studio made her out to be, in reality, she took a hands-on approach to her stardom and collaborated closely with Banton to craft designs that would enhance her appearance. Lombard and Banton got along so well that in her late-career, she included provision in her freelance contracts with Warner Brothers and Selznick International Pictures requiring that he be employed as her personal costume designer (Carman 2015, pg. 158). As I discussed in a previous essay, Lombard actively monitored her own publicity, and was keenly attentive to the way her off-screen image was perceived by the media and the public. It therefore makes sense that she would also take an interest in her costumes; in Banton, she found a dedicated and talented partner.

Paramount largely gave up their glamour girl efforts by 1936, once they realized Lombard’s screwball comedy persona was much more commercially and critically viable. In an effort to uphold her new star-character screwball symbiosis, fan magazines in the mid-to-late-1930s made a point to distance Lombard from her earlier glamour girl image. Lombard also worked to shed her glamour girl reputation: in a 1937 Picture Play interview, she revealed: “Personally I resent being tagged a ‘glamour girl.’ It’s such an absurd, extravagant label. It implies so much that I’m not” (Maddox 1937, pg. 16). Her candor in this interview underscores the aloofness of her early-30s glamorous persona, and how little it did to showcase her talents as an actor. In that light, the Parsons interview doesn’t necessarily change my perceptions of Lombard’s stardom – if anything, it reaffirms the artifice of her early-30s stardom. Nevertheless, it is still valuable from a research standpoint, if only because it is further proof of the evolution of Lombard’s image on the road to Hollywood superstardom.

WORKS CITED

Barbas, Samantha. The First Lady of Hollywood: A Biography of Louella Parsons. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005.

Carman, Emily. Independent Stardom: Freelance Women in the Hollywood Studio System. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015.

Eckert, Charles. “The Carole Lombard in Macy’s Window.” In Movies and Mass Culture, ed. John Belton, 95 – 118. London: The Altone Press, 1999.

Himes, Michele. Hollywood and Broadcasting: From Radio to Cable. Urbana: The University of Chicago Press, 1990.

Kiriakou, Olympia. Becoming Carole Lombard: Stardom, Comedy, and Legacy. New York: Bloomsbury, 2020.

Maddox, Ben. “The Real Low-Down on Lombard.” Picture Play, January 1937, 16.

Swindell, Larry. Screwball: The Life of Carole Lombard. New York: William Morrow & Company Inc., 1975.

York, Cal. “30 Girls in a Race for Stardom.” Photoplay, April 1932, 75.

To make it in Hollywood one needs luck, talent and, of course, good publicity. Carole Lombard aimed for the latter when, in September 1938, she went to work in the Selznick International Pictures publicity department.

From her earliest days in the industry, Carole Lombard understood the value of positive press coverage. In September 1927, she was in a car accident that left her with permanent facial scars. Given Hollywood’s obsession with glamour and physical perfection, at the time Lombard believed that her scars “permanently defaced her beauty and completely shattered her screen ambitions” (Kiriakou 2020, pg. 19). She was then under contract with slapstick producer, Mack Sennett, and had only a few acting credits to her name; having been abruptly released from a Fox contract a few years prior, she feared that she would again suffer the same fate. However, Sennett proved to be sympathetic to Lombard’s plight. During her lengthy recovery period, he tried to keep her career on-track by including her in a plethora of Sennett-related promotional posters, news items, and interviews (see example below). He even came up with a new nickname for Lombard – “Carole of the Curves” – which was used in both his and Pathé’s (his distributor) publicity materials (Kiriakou 2020, pg. 19).

From that early experience, Lombard became savvy about her publicity, and gained a reputation amongst gossip columnists and press agents as one of the most amiable Hollywood stars. Throughout her career and, in particular, after she went freelance in 1937 she “courted various studio publicists to keep her name constantly appearing in fan discourse and the press” (Carman 2015, pg. 113). It therefore came as no surprise that Lombard concocted this publicity department idea with her friend and Selznick IP publicity agent, Russell Birdwell.

Working as a de-facto publicity agent brought Lombard a lot of press and public attention. Through her stardom, movie fans could get a glimpse at one of the most important areas of the studio system. The significance of studio publicity departments and the popular news media cannot be overstated, since they almost single-handedly disseminated information about the industry and its key players. Historian Anthony Slide writes that the relationship between these two industry factions was “incestuous” and “built upon trust and mutual necessity” (2010, pg. 7). The studios needed these news outlets to release stories and photos of their stars, while the news outlets required access to the studios’ rosters of talent in order to stay in business. Although there had been some discord between these two factions in the 1920s (Jeffers McDonald 2016, pg. 34), by the mid-1930s they were working together to publish curated stories that would help shape stars’ public personas. Fan magazines and other news outlets even went so far as to “submit stories for studio approval prior to publication” (Slide 2010, pg. 8).

In the case of Lombard, since she had become the unofficial queen of screwball comedy in the mid-1930s, validating her screen image meant portraying her as being equally kooky in her private life. For example, a 1937 article from Hollywood magazine claims that her performance in My Man Godfrey was “achieved by allowing her own personality to come through…she did, literally, betray her real character to the public” (pg. 34). Similarly, in “The Utterly Balmy Home Life of Carole Lombard” – an article that goes to great lengths to convince readers of Lombard’s symbiotic screwball personality – columnist Harry Lang describes Lombard and her home life as chaotic. After listing her ménage of pets (including dogs, cats, ducks, and doves), he reflects: “Does all this sound absolutely batty? Screwy? Insane? Balmy?—okay, then, make the most of it…when it comes to the business of getting the most downright, sheer fun out of this usually drab business of living, then I had all prizes unreservedly to Carole Lombard” (Lang 1937, pg. 24). While fun to read, these types of publicity stories also served a legitimate purpose: to enshrine her screwball persona as “authentic,” in order to legitimize her popular (and financially viable) screen image.

Yet there are instances throughout Lombard’s career where she made it clear that she was quite unlike her popular screen image. In a rare self-reflexive interview with Picture Play columnist Ben Maddox, Lombard appears eager to create some distance between the on and off-screen versions of herself. She says: “I had to struggle for years to do comedy. But I don’t think I was at the top when I was merely an insipid ingénue, and I don’t agree that I’m so proficient in comedy as I can be in straight drama. It’s my goal, professionally. Otherwise I want a sane private life. That’s why I look at those so-called glamour yarns as more of a handicap than a help. Fun’s fun, in its place. I don’t always laugh, though” (Maddox 1937, pg. 17).

In early-1937, Lombard was nearing the end of her seven-year contract with Paramount, and was on the cusp of negotiating lucrative freelance deals with them, Warner Brothers, and Selznick International. Her insistence about not being a proficient comedian would’ve likely come as a shock to readers who, by that time, were familiar with her slapstick and screwball comedy performances. In reality, Lombard had grown tired of the screwball genre, and feared that she was becoming typecast. Instead, she wanted to challenge herself professionally and prove that she was equally adept at other types of film roles.

Therefore, there was an incentive behind Lombard’s publicity schtick: to create buzz for her upcoming Selznick International film, Made for Each Other. This was Lombard’s second film with producer David O. Selznick. In 1937 she signed three-picture deal with his studio, which saw her earning $150,000 per film and, after a 1938 renegotiation, a percentage of the distributors gross (Carman 2015, pg. 158). It was also her first dramatic venture after a string of screwball comedies including Love Before Breakfast, The Princess Comes Across, My Man Godfrey (all 1936), and Fools for Scandal (1938).

A lot was riding on Made for Each Other, and Lombard was eager for the public to accept her in this new type of role. Although the film wouldn’t be released for several more months (in February 1939), Russell Birdwell ensured that Lombard was photographed in the publicity department office alongside her co-star James Stewart. Happily, Lombard received critical praise for her performance in Made for Each Other, with Variety proclaiming that she and Stewart gave “two of Hollywood’s best performances of the year.” Unfortunately, that same review notes that Lombard’s “serious role…is likely to cause comment” from the public (February 1, 1939, pg. 13). Despite promising initial gains, Selznick International reported a total loss of $292,000.

While Hollywood has always enjoyed telling stories about itself, at the time, it was highly unusual for a star to actively participate in pulling back the industry curtain. After her work week was over, Lombard published an essay in The Hollywood Reporter chronicling her experiences. She detailed the work that goes into maintaining star images, explaining to readers: “Publicity is one of the most important – if not the most important topic – under discussion in Hollywood today. The motion picture capital has come to a long overdue realization that its publicity, foremost among its contacts with the rest of the world, has the power to make Hollywood the most beloved place on earth or the most hated. That, of course, goes for all the personalities in Hollywood” (1938, pg. 10).

Lombard claimed that she learned to think like a publicity agent, and shared the types of questions that drives much of the day-to-day decision making. She writes: “what features of a picture are to be sold heaviest? What angle will best convince the public the picture must be seen? How are the personalities in the cast to be handled? What is the best way to present them to the public, considering the type of roles they are playing? These are but a few of the basic questions you will hear around the office…” (1938, pg. 10).

It’s clear that this publicity department experience served an immediate material purpose, but it also influenced Lombard’s own perceptions about her stardom. This manifested itself most clearly in the details of her late-career freelance contracts. One of the perks of freelancing in the studio-era is that it gave actors greater agency over the conditions of their labor. When Lombard went freelance in 1937, she was finally able to be more selective about the types of roles she played. She could also gain control over her star image. Her three-picture contract with Selznick International included provisions that gave her the right to approve any publicity campaigns that used her name and likeness (Carman 2015, pg. 158). Such a provision makes sense in light of the ideas she shared in The Hollywood Reporter article: she was in the midst of reinventing herself as a dramatic actress, and was therefore eager to ensure that any publicity material would “fit” her new screen persona.

Due to a variety of personal and professional reasons (too complicated to outline here), Lombard and Selznick broke the terms of her contract, and eventually settled in March 1940 for a $25,000 payment to the actress. Incidentally, her subsequent contract with RKO included another publicity-related provision: the right to employ the publicity agent of her choice. Ever the loyal friend and shrewd businesswoman, Lombard chose to be represented by none other than Russell Birdwell.

WORKS CITED

Author unknown. “Carole Lombard Betrays Herself.” Hollywood. January 1937, pg. 34 – 35, 66.

Carman, Emily. Independent Stardom: Freelance Women in the Hollywood Studio System. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015.

“Film Reviews.” Variety, February 1, 1939, pg. 13.

Jeffers McDonald, Tamar. “Reviewing Reviewing the Fan Mags.” Film History Vol. 28, No. 4 (Winter 2016): 29 – 57.

Kiriakou, Olympia. Becoming Carole Lombard: Stardom, Comedy, and Legacy. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020.

Lang, Harry. “The Utterly Balmy Home Life of Carole Lombard.” Motion Picture. February 1937, pg. 24 – 25.

Lombard, Carole. “Every Actor Should Take At Least One Week’s Whirl At Publicity.” The Hollywood Reporter. October 24, 1938, pg. 10.

Maddox, Ben. “The Real Low-Down on Lombard.” Picture Play. January 1937, pg. 16-17, 88.

Slide, Anthony. Inside the Hollywood Fan Magazine: A History of Star Makers, Fabricators, and Gossip Mongers. Jackson, MS: University of Mississippi Press, 2010.

Shortly after Christmas 1940, Carole Lombard and her husband, Clark Gable, traveled east from Los Angeles to Baltimore. The reason? A visit to Johns Hopkins Hospital for help with the couple’s infertility.

Throughout her lifetime, Lombard made various public statements about wanting to be a mother. She was famously quoted as saying to gossip columnist, Louella Parsons: “I’ll work a few more years, and then I want a family. I’ll let Pa be the star, and I’ll stay home, darn the socks and look after the kids” (Spicer 2002, pg. 179). These sentiments found their way into publicity stories about the Gable marriage, and gained considerable traction by 1940. For example, in a Movie and Radio Guide article detailing the Gables’ home life, columnist James Street addressed the persistent rumors about Carole being pregnant. He writes, “Mrs. Gable said simply that if she were going to have a baby she would be very proud and would announce it instead of hiding it. One gathers the impression that they would like to have a baby” (1940, pg. 76).

Street’s quote hints at the fact that Lombard’s journey to motherhood was much more difficult than she had expected. In the May 1940 Screenland article entitled “Help Kills Those Crazy Rumors About Me!” columnist Elizabeth Wilson describes how in August 1939, Lombard suffered an alleged appendectomy while filming of Vigil in the Night:

This medical emergency was no appendectomy but, as sources later confirmed, a miscarriage. Towards the end of this article, Lombard mentions with great sadness that “rumors I’m going to have a baby are not true. I wish they were” (Wilson 1940, pg. 91). Lombard’s then-mysterious illness delayed Vigil in the Night’s production schedule, leading RKO to publish a release announcement in several trade papers. This one comes from the August 22, 1939 issue of Motion Picture Daily:

The fact that motherhood eluded Lombard in such a public fashion must have been incredibly painful. Her grief was compounded by the fact that Gable had a child of his own (whom he never publicly acknowledged or cared for): a daughter named Judy Lewis with Loretta Young. While some have argued that Lombard didn’t know about Gable’s daughter (Matzen 2017, pg. 131), that is untrue given that Judy’s parentage was, by her own admission, common knowledge in Hollywood. And, of course, Carole set up a bank account for Judy using her own funds, presumably because Gable was disinterested in providing financial support for his child.

Around that time too, Lombard’s close friends and family were having their own children: her best friend, Madalynne Field, and husband Walter Lang had a son (Lombard’s godson) in July 1939, while her brother, Fred, had a son (her only nephew) in November 1940. While Lombard was a doting aunt and godmother, she also desperately wanted children of her own. It’s therefore no surprise that she and Gable eagerly sought out medical advice from some of the best fertility doctors in the United States.

Prior to their visit to Johns Hopkins, the Gables took in the sights of Washington, D.C. They even paid a visit to the White House on December 29th, 1940. There, they met President Franklin D. Roosevelt and sat in attendance during his national address.

On January 2nd, 1941 the Gables had their Johns Hopkins appointment with doctors Dr. Richard Telnide and Dr. Benjamin Baker. Accompanying them on their trip East was Gable’s best friend and MGM publicity agent, Howard Strickling, who helped monitor the press coverage. Strickling arranged for photographers to take shots of the Gables arriving at the hospital (see below). As an aside: I remember seeing these photographs for the first time years ago and thought that they seemed quite invasive. Of course, publicity comes with the territory of Hollywood stardom, but I can only imagine how unsettling it must have been to have such an intimate event shared with the world.

Although some biographers have offered their speculations about the appointment, I believe that such details should remain private. However, their visit to Johns Hopkins was quite brief. The Gables returned to D.C. for a few more days, and then flew back to Los Angeles on Sunday January 5th. At the time, the press was told that the official reason for their Johns Hopkins visit was to attend to a shoulder injury Gable had sustained years prior. Other news outlets published this same cover story, as the clippings here confirm:

The press stuck with the Gable shoulder injury story for the rest of Lombard’s life, but some outlets later reported that Gable was treated for a toothache. Pregnancy rumors continued to persist until Lombard’s death in 1942, and only afterwards was infertility revealed as the real reason for the visit. One of the first documented accounts comes from the April 1942 issue of Photoplay:

Lombard and Gable never had children of their own, and based on several sources, it is likely that Carole suffered a second miscarriage in 1941. It’s futile to speculate what could’ve happened had Lombard lived: would she have had her own children? Would she have adopted? Would she have even stayed married to Gable? However, it’s clear that beyond any professional goals she might have had, motherhood was the most sacred ambition that went unrealized during her lifetime.

WORKS CITED

Matzen, Robert. Fireball: Carole Lombard and the Mystery of Flight 3. Pittsburgh: GoodKnight Books, 2017.

Spicer, Chrystopher J. Clark Gable: Biography, Filmography, Bibliography. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co. Inc., 2002.

Street, James. “Two Happy People – Part IV.” Movie and Radio Guide (May 18 – 24, 1940), 76.

Waterbury, Ruth. “What the Loss of Carole Lombard Means to Clark Gable.” Photoplay (April 1942): 29 – 30, 68 – 69.

Wilson, Elizabeth. “‘Help Kill Those Crazy Rumors About Me!’ Says Carole Lombard (Mrs. Clark Gable).” Screenland (May 1940): 26 – 27, 91.

Earlier this month we marked the 79th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the United States’s official entry into World War II. Just as it had done during WWI, Hollywood quickly shifted into patriotic mode: studios accelerated production on films with war-time themes and began to work with the newly formed Office of War Information to coordinate the on-screen representation of war-related subjects. Additionally, industry personnel organized special committees and events around the country that would help support the war effort.

On December 10th, 1941 industry personnel met at the Roosevelt Hotel for the first Hollywood Victory Committee meeting, with Clark Gable presiding as the chairman. From December 1941 to December 1945, the Hollywood Victory Committee coordinated the activities of just over 20 separate national organizations, as well as radio and in-person appearances of Hollywood stars around the world, and the service of industry talent in civilian war agencies. According to government records, the Committee helped plan nearly 5000 in-person events during the war (Special Committee on Postwar Economic Policy and Planning 1945, pg. 2619). One such endeavor was the 1942 Hollywood Victory Caravan, which featured nearly 50 stars including Bette Davis, Bob Hope, Humphrey Bogart, and Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy on a train tour to 14 cities across the United States. In total, the Victory Caravan raised around $700,000 for Army and Navy relief funds.

Since the United States was still segregated, the “Hollywood Victory Committee” was all-white. However, there was an equally impactful “Negro Division” chaired by actress Hattie McDaniel. Like their parent organization, the “Negro Division” supported war-related efforts of African-American talent such as Eddie Anderson, Louise Beavers, and Lena Horne. According to historian Donald Bogle, McDaniel devoted much of her time and energy to the cause, including hosting a “massive benefit at the Shrine Auditorium in July 1942 to raise money for black military groups.” Meanwhile, stars like Lena Horne and Hazel Scott toured U.S. military bases, while musician Phil Moore performed on the Armed Services Radio, and became the network’s musical director (Bogle 2005, pg. 234).

Like her husband, Carole Lombard was also a member of the Hollywood Victory Committee, and was eager to participate in the war effort. Of course, Lombard was always known as a patriotic star. For example, in 1938 she made headlines after declaring herself in favor of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s so-called “Wealth Tax.” In a show of support, she issued a public statement saying that it was the patriotic duty of the richest Americans to pay the highest percentage of taxes “for the improvement of the country.” Her pro-tax sentiment came just as she earned nearly $450,000 in annual income, a sum that made her the highest paid actor in Hollywood (Kiriakou 2020, pg. 188). That year, she paid nearly $350,000 in taxes, and after deducting accountants’ fees and other expenses, Lombard announced publicly that she was left with $20,000 (a figure that was still far and above what the average American made in the late-1930s). Lombard told reporters that “$20,000 a year is still plenty for me and as for giving the government most of my income, I think that’s fine” (Othman, 1938, pg. 6). Lombard’s statement boosted her already favorable public image. Implicitly, too, Lombard called attention to the disproportionate wealth of those in Hollywood (including herself), and the devastating economic disparity that existed in the United States during the Depression. As historian Eric Hoyt aptly summarized, her ideology also “anticipated the sense of patriotic tax-paying the U.S. government tried to foster among the public” in World War II (2010, pg. 12), and helped to strengthen her patriotic and atypical Hollywood star image.

After Pearl Harbor, the Gables didn’t quite know how they would be of best use to the government. Earlier that December, Lombard had just wrapped production on To Be or Not To Be (Ernst Lubitsch, 1942) and was preparing to begin shooting They All Kissed the Bride in the new year. Meanwhile, Gable was about to embark on Somewhere I’ll Find You (Wesley Ruggles, 1942); in their down time between films, they hoped that they could somehow lend their support to the war effort. On the 10th (the same day as the first Hollywood Victory Committee meeting), they wrote a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, asking where their talents would be best served:

President Roosevelt sent a reply letter on December 16th thanking the Gables for their offer. He encouraged them to continue acting in “inspirational and patriotic pictures” that would “help maintain the spirit and morale of the nation,” which he described as being “indispensable at this time.” While Lombard and Gable both were flattered that the President believed their work was a comfort in such a dark time, Carole felt like she wanted to do more.

At a subsequent Victory Committee meeting, she volunteered her services. The Committee coordinated with the Gables, MGM (Clark’s home studio), and Carole’s team: it was decided that after the holidays, she would travel to her home state of Indiana on what would be Hollywood’s first war bonds tour of World War II. That trip (the subject of a future blog post) would tragically bring an end to Carole’s life and those of twenty-one others. The fact that Hollywood continued to raise funds and make films to boost public morale was certainly not down to Lombard, nor was she the first civilian casualty. That said, Lombard’s patriotism and fame did help to personalize the war, and her premature death served as a public reminder of the incalculable loss and sacrifice that so many others would also face during that time.

WORKS CITED

Bogle, Donald. Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams: The Story of Black Hollywood. New York: Random House, 2005.

Hoyt, Eric. “Hollywood and the Income Tax, 1929 – 1955.” Film History Vol. 22 (2010): 5 – 21.

Kiriakou, Olympia. Becoming Carole Lombard: Stardom, Comedy, and Legacy. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020.

Othman, Frederick C. “Carole Lombard ‘Glad to pay $445,000 taxes, said.” San Jose News, August 26, 1938, 6.

Special Committee on Postwar Economic Policy and Planning. “Hearings Before the Special Committee on Postwar Economic Policy and Planning,” United States Congressional Records, 1945.