Oscar Profile #66: Carole Lombard

Born Jane Alice Peters on October 6, 1908 in Fort Wayne, Indiana, the young tomboy was discovered by director Allan Dwan at the age of 12 and cast as Monte Blue’s sister in 1921’s A Perfect Crime under her original name. She was Carol Lombard throughout the 1920s and Carole Lombard by 1930’s The Arizona Kid. She fell in love with William Powell, her co-star in 1931’s Man of the World and married him later that year. Starring opposite Clark Gable in 1932’s No Man of Her Own, the two did not hit it off. Divorced from Powell in 1933, the two remained friends. She was engaged to singer Russ Columbo who died tragically in 1934 at the age of 26.

That same year she became a major star opposite John Barrymore in the screwball comedy Twentieth Century. Meeting Gable again in 1935 the two fell madly in love but marriage seemed to be out of the question as Gable’s wife at the time was a wealthy oil heiress who refused to give him a divorce. Four years later Gable agreed to play Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind because the salary allowed him to pay for a divorce from his wife and he and Lombard were quietly married in Arizona.

In the meantime Lombard became a major star with three successful comedies from 1935 to 1937, Mitchell Leisen’s Hands Across the Table; Gregory La Cava’s My Man Godfrey for which she won her only Oscar nomination and William A. Wellman’s Nothing Sacred. Now one of Hollywood’s highest paid actresses, she had her pick of roles and chose to move away from comedy and into drama.

Although she proved a fine dramatic actress in two 1939 films, Made for Each Other opposite James Stewart and In Name Only opposite Cary Grant, both directed by John Cromwell, neither film was a box office success, nor were her two 1940 films, George Stevens’ Vigil in the Night and Garson Kanin’s They Knew What They Wanted. Returning to form in Alfred Hitchcock’s only comedy, Mr. & Mrs. Smith in 1941, her box office prospects improved and she filmed Ernst Lubitsch’s To Be or Not Be opposite Jack Benny. The film was in post-production when her life was cut short on January 16, 1942.

Lombard had been returning from a bond drive in her native Fort Wayne, Indiana with her mother when their plane went down after refueling in Las Vegas on the way to Los Angeles. All aboard, including fifteen servicemen, were killed instantly. Clark Gable immediately joined the U.S. Army, the first major star to do so. He attended the launching of the Liberty Ship, S.S. Carole Lombard on January 15, 1944.

Although remarried at time of his sudden death from a heart attack in 1960, Gable was buried next to Lombard and her mother at Hollywood’s famed Forest Lawn cemetery.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

TWENTIETH CENTURY (1934), directed by Howard Hawks

One of the first screwball comedies, this version of the Broadway hit was co-scripted by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur who were un-credited for their contributions to the original play. Ironically Preston Sturges who contributed to the screenplay was un-credited for his contribution as well.

Generally regarded as John Barrymore’s last great performance and Lombard’s first, the film has some marvelous set pieces, most of them involving the two stars as a Broadway producer and the ungrateful star he takes credit for making made out of nothing. They are, however, not the whole show. There are splendid contributions from supporting players Walter Connolly, roscoe Karns, Etienne Girardot and others.

MY MAN’S GODFREY (1936), directed by Gregory La Cava

Lombard played against type as a scatterbrained heiress to sheer perfection and her only Oscar nomination in this quintessential screwball comedy with obvious social overtones.

Perfectly paired with former husband William Powell, the two play off each other as though they had never parted. He’s a millionaire masquerading as homeless man who becomes her family’s butler. The two are so expert at what they do that they are not at all upstaged by three of the greatest farcical supporting performances of all time provided by Alice Brady as her equally ditsy mother; Eugene Pallette as her exasperated father and Mischa Auer as Brady’s talentless protege.

IN NAME ONLY (1939), directed by John Cromwell

One of Hollywood’s great tearjerkers, this had been intended as a Katharine Hepburn-Cary Grant follow-up to Bringing Up Baby, but due to the box office failure of that film and Hepburn’s abrupt departure for Broadway’s The Philadelphia Story, Lombard was brought in to replace her as the young widow who falls in love with stranded motorist Grant, not knowing he is married to the shrewish Kay Francis. Francis, one of the biggest stars of the early 1930s had one of the most rapid declines in popularity in film history and was cast in her role at Lombard’s insistence. All three stars are superb as are Charles Coburn as Grant’s upper-crust father and Peggy Ann Garner in her first credited role as Lombard’s daughter. The final scene between Lombard, Francis and Coburn is a genuine classic.

VIGIL IN THE NIGHT (1940), directed by George Stevens

Taken from one of A.J. Cronin’s lesser novels, this does not have the sweep of the Scottish writer’s The Citadel; The Keys of the Kingdom or even The Green Years, but it does have Lombard at her heroic best as a self-sacrificing nurse who take the blame for younger sister Anne Shirley’s carelessness which results in the death of a sick child and struggles to reclaim her place in the medical profession. The story may be predictable, but getting there is all the fun with a superb supporting cast that includes Brian Aherne, Peter Cushing, Ethel Griffies and Brenda Forbes.

TO BE OR NOT TO BE (1942), directed by Ernst Lubitsch

Not a success at the time of its release, due both to Lombard’s recent death and the fact that World War II audiences were not quite ready for a comedy about the war, this has since become one of the best loved screen comedies of all time. Lombard is a special treat as the actress young Robert Stack falls in love with while her husband Jack Benny is busy impersonating Der Fuhrer. Felix Bressart, Lionel Atwill, Stanley Ridges, Sig Ruman and Tom Dugan all add to the merriment. Lombard’s line “what can happen on a plane?” was removed out of sensitivity to her passing less than a month before the film’s release.