Goodbye, Carole

Carole Lombard Gable died 70 years ago today. Amazing to think that it has been that long, as Carole left in her wake films and tales that seem so modern. I’ve often thought you could drop Carole down in this day and age and she wouldn’t miss a beat.

There is no denying that her death infintely shaped Clark Gable’s life from that day on. He was different…and he was never quite the same.

From “The Story Gable Wouldn’t Tell”, Modern Screen magazine, November 1942:

Dorothy Canfield Fisher once wrote a story about a girl whose parents’ love and dependence on each other grew with every passing year. Then her mother died. In the shadow of her father’s desolation, she cried out: “People shouldn’t be happily married. It’s too terrible when one of them goes.”

Of course she was wrong, though in first anguish many might be inclined to agree with her. Cut those three years with Carole out of Clark’s life, take his memories from him, and you’d leave him an infinitely poorer man.

They’d been everything to each other, their devotion more complete than even their closest friends could have foreseen, than they themselves could have foreseen perhaps. They’d both been around. It wasn’t first love for either, but that rarer thing–a perfect blend of love, companionship, undoubtedly treasured the more because they hadn’t found it earlier. Carole went into marriage with the single thought of making Clark happy. His way of life–animals, farming, hunting–hadn’t been hers. She made it hers, knowing he’d be miserable any other way, not caring what way she went so long as it was with him. So they lived on a twenty-two acre ranch, and she hobnobbed with beef and poultry on the hoof and carried pitchers of milk like any farmwife to her lord and master sweating atop his tractor.

Before their marriage Clark had had plenty of friends. Carole had always been the hub of a crowd. Now they were sufficient unto themselves. Not that they turned into solitaries; both were to warm and genial for that. But as one friend put it: “They found something in each other that took care of everything.” they’d spend weeks on the farm, content to see nobody. You couldn’t even get them on the phone.

Clark never wrote letters. The only exception was the letter he wrote once a year on their anniversary to the girl who was living right there in the house with him. Carole wouldn’t work when he was off. he might take it into his head any old time to say, “Let’s go huntin’, Ma.” She wanted to be free to sling their stuff into the station wagon and go. First, second and third she was his wife. Being a movie star could take its chances.

Then came the Friday when he left the studio at five to pick her up at the airport. He raised the top on the car, since she didn’t like it down. With him was a friend whom we’ll call Ed because that’s not his name, and he shrinks from any publicity resulting from Clark’s tragedy.

Ed went in to check while Clark waited in the car. The plane, they told him, would be an hour late, so they drive to a hamburger joint for sandwiches and coffee. Clark was in high spirits, because Ma was coming home. When they got back forty-five minutes later, Ed was informed that the plane had come down at Las Vegas with motor trouble. Clark shook his head. “There must be something wrong.” They returned to the office together.

“It’s all right, Mr. Gable,” the clerk said. “Just a little engine trouble. They’re putting the passengers up at Las Vegas overnight.”

“What hotel?”

“That information hasn’t come through yet.”

“Look, Clark,” said Ed, “why don’t you go home? Maybe Carole’s trying to get you there. I’ll call Las Vegas and find out what hotel they’re stopping at.”

“Come over to the house and do it.”

“No, I’ll do it here.” Why he wanted to do it there he couldn’t have said–call it premonition or natural uneasiness caused by the delay.

He was in the telephone booth, coins in hand, when three men entered the place. He looked at their faces, and knew the worst had happened. Heavily he hung up the receiver and walked out. “How bad is it?”

“Very bad–” They added the few essential details.

He went up to the sky room where and MGM executive was dining. They phoned the studio. Eddie Mannix got the job of driving out to Clark’s house. There had been an accident, he said, that was all they knew. He got back to the airport with Clark as Jill Winkler, wife of the publicity man who’d accompanied Carole, came stumbling out of her car. The radio had blared the news at her as she drive to meet her husband. Clark stiffened. His face went a shade whiter. But his mind refused to accept what his ears heard. His brain was blocked at one point. There had been an accident, that was all they knew, that was all they knew–

The last trip…

The people around him were shadows. All his will was concentrated on getting to wherever Carole was. There were planes on the field, he moved toward them. Someone led him back. Someone said they’d have to charter a plane. It wasn’t easy. Planes were needed for soldiers. At last they managed to get an old crate. Its capacity was limited. There wasn’t room for Ed. He stood on the field, watching it disappear into the sky out of which–short hours or an eternity earlier–they’d been waiting to welcome Carole.

On Sunday Ed went to Las Vegas to bring Jill Winkler home. Otto’s body hadn’t been brought down yet. The regulations were–army first, then women, then male passengers, then the crew. Carole and her mother had been found. Clark refused to leave till they could take Otto back with them. But Jill was prevailed upon to go.

One of the friends who’d accompanied Clark met Ed.
“He hasn’t eaten since we got here. Go see if you can get him to eat.”

“If you can’t, I can’t–”

“Maybe a new face–”

He went in. “Hello, Clark.”

Gable lifted his ravaged face. “Hello.”
His eyes returned to the window. But the sight of Ed seemed to have dragged him back to the incredibly beautiful time when there had been a Carole in the world–back and then forward. He looked up again. ‘We didn’t meet the plane, did we, Ed?”

Ed’s heart turned to water. “No, Clark,” He said quietly, “we didn’t meet the plane.”

Then, a little later, “Want something to eat?”

“No.”
“Mind if I eat something?”
“No.”

He ordered a hamburger sent to him there. Maybe it was a lousy idea, but what could he lose? It worked. “Think you could get me some stewed fruit?” asked Clark. Ed was out of there like a bat out of hell. He wasn’t leaving this to the telephone. With the fruit, he brought back a bottle of milk. Clark finished the bottle, by which time Ed had stealthily introduced another. Clark finished that, too. No general ever got more satisfaction from a well-planned maneuver than strategist Ed.

A crumbled world…

Clark kept himself going till everything was done that had to be done. Otto was buried the day after Carole and her mother. He insisted on going. He went with Jill. Then he relapsed into what seemed a kind of stupor. They couldn’t get him to love; they could hardly get him to speak. He just sat.

Gable’s been rated a tough guy, who could take what blows fate handed out and come back for more. Those who wondered over his collapse are those who confused toughness with lack of deep feeling. Sure, Gable’s tough, none of which precludes the softer emotions. Tenderness is none the less tender when wrapped in a gag. One day there had been Carole, warm, alive, the dear companion of today and all the years to come. Next day there was Carole, a searing pain. She’d woven herself into every fiber of his being. Torn out, he was left bleeding. She’d been the heart of his world. When it stopped beating, the world crumbled. He was in no stupor. He’d crawled into the hole of himself, because every outside contact flayed his raw grief.

The few friends he did see where those who had loved Carole, who kept their hands off his grief. Instinctively, as a child does, he grew closer to his father. It was to his father that he first spoke of Carole, and the older man silently thanked the Lord. It was like the shadow of a crack in the ice. Presently he seemed to find his only relief in talking about her–this was what Carole had said, this is what she’d done. He seemed to be walking with her in the past. Between him and the future rose a night of horror. He wouldn’t approach it.

Gossip Friday: 2:00am Evidence

From August 1937:

Of course, I’m not one to gossip, but they do say that the Lombard girl waited at the MGM studio till two o’clock the other morning for Clark Gable, who was having a long session in front of the cameras. That, in Hollywood, is love….

The burning question of the moment is, “Will Carole marry Clark?” The Lombard-Gable affair has been a headline romance for some time now. their friendship began back in 1933, when they appeared together in No Man of Her Own. Carole at the time did have a man of her own (she was married to William Powell), and no whisper of romance came from the set. Apart from the fact that Hollywood thought he took it like a good sport when his co-star publicly presented him, in his hour of triumph a the Chinese Theatre premiere, with a large ham, with his picture pasted firmly on the wrapper, the association arroused no comment at all. They parted at the evend of the picture just two artistes who had done a job of work together and Gable’s name was in no way involved when shortly afterwards she got a divorce from Powell.

Neither, it must be clearly understood, was Carole’s when Clark and rhea Gable separated.

Their romance really began at a “gag” party thrown by Jock Whitney in 1936. Carole contributed to the gaiety of the proceedings by arriving in an ambulance and being carried into the house on a stretcher. Gable was there. They got together and had so much fun, that they made another date. A week later he was driving round Hollywood in a battered white Ford car with a large red heart painted on it and the whole town was talking. Carole had sent it to him on St. Valentine;s Day. Tied around the body was a huge red ribbon with a card reading: “To my Valentine, from Carole Lombard.” Since then they have been inseparable. But will it end in marriage with roses round the door and, perhaps, the patter of little footsteps in the hall, or will it just be another of those things? Hollywood can only guess. Both stars have steadfastly refused to discuss the romance. Gable, moreover, though living apart from his wife, is still married. There are complicated legal formalities to be faced (mostly in connection with the property settlement, a difficult business where film contracts are concerned) before he will be free.

Moreover Carole is a play girl; she likes the gay social life. Gable does not, though he has, at her side, thrown himself cheerfully into the party whirl in the past months.

Some of the gossips declare that he won’t keep up the Lombard pace for long.

And, it is pointed out,  this is not exactly the first rosy picture of love’s young dream for either of them. Clark has been married twice. Carole has loved both William Powell and Russ Colombo, to whom she was engaged at the time of his death.

On the other hand, the affair has already lasted a long time as Hollywood affairs go and there;s the evidence of that two a.m. wait…

'30s Star Carole Lombard Feted In Film Retrospective

Carole Lombard, subject of a seven-film retrospective beginning Tuesday at the Film Center of the Art Institute of Chicago, was the most effervescent of the '30s movie sex goddesses. She was a sleek, lissome blond with a wicked smile and flashing eyes, and though usually dressed and coifed to the nines, she was never above giving her male lover-combatants a scathing wisecrack, a rough shove or even a swift kick.

Without the Depression, the former Jane Alice Peters of Ft. Wayne, Ind., might not have made it to the top. But the '30s brought a newer, more adult movie queen to the fore, and Lombard, like Claudette Colbert and Greta Garbo, was a beneficiary.

Lombard's forte was screwball comedy (the title of the Film Center's series is "Siren of Screwball"). These romantic comedys were set among the very rich, where, the characters acted wild, screwy and rambunctious. Lombard-whose specialty was headstrong, reckless rich vamps or lower-class climbers-empitomized them all.

"No Man of Her Own," the 1932 comedy that starts the series (6 p.m. Tuesday), isn't really much of a movie. It's a silly romance in which a Manhattan cardsharp falls for a librarian and sees the light. The script is negligible, the characters are cutesy, the direction-by Wesley Ruggles-is only serviceable.

But it's an essential Lombard film, because it's her one screen pairing with her eventual husband Clark Gable (gambler to her librarian). To call their scenes electric is putting it mildly. For the first 10 minutes of their screen courtship here-when Gable spies her at a magazine stand, pursues her into the library and then waylays her at one bookshelf after another-the stars literally seem besotted with each other (and probably were). This is screen chemistry with a vengeance.

"Twentieth Century" (6 p.m. Jan. 6) is one of six 1934 Lombard films. But it's the key one, the movie that set her image and made her career.

Playing Lily Garland (nee Mildred Plotka), Broadway ingenue turned Hollywood glamor queen, Lombard seized the screwball crown, holding her own against the '30s most formidable ham, John Barrymore. Barrymore, in his wild prime, plays egomaniacal producer Oscar Jaffe, determined at all costs to wrest his erstwhile star back from Movieland while on a coast-to-coast race on the famous luxury train, the Twentieth Century Limited.

Wordmasters Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur adapted their own play, and the roaring, pell-mell, brilliantly sustained pace comes from ace director Howard Hawks-who also deserves full credit for helping Lombard's new image. When one argument scene with Barrymore dragged in rehearsal, Hawks asked Lombard what she'd do in the same situation. "I'd kick him!" she snarled. "Well, go ahead and kick him," Hawks told her, and a screwball legend was born.

- Cinematographers don't always get their due, but they do in "Visions of Light" Saturday and Sunday at the Music Box, 3733 N.

This warmly knowledgeable and glitteringly illustrated history of the craft was directed by Arnold Glassman, Stuart Samuels and Todd McCarthy, and written by McCarthy, then Variety's lead film critic.

McCarthy interviewed dozens of luminaries for the film, ranging from Golden Age masters (film noir legend John Alton) to the generations after them ("Prince of Darkness" Gordon Willis, Conrad Hall, William Fraker). Present-day cinematographers include Allen Daviau ("E.T.") and Spike Lee's right-hand man, Ernest Dickerson, who opens the film with his boyhood recollections of watching the David Lean-Freddie Young "Oliver Twist."

The film glows with lustrous pictures. More important, it takes us inside and backstage, to explain how those images were crafted-and to celebrate the artists who lit them, and who, at their best, deserve the appellation "painters of light."

Movie stars at war

Bob Hope led the pack of popular performers who entertained the troops during World War II. John Wayne and other actors fought the war in feature films, and other Hollywood favorites tirelessly toured the country on war bond drives. In fact, beloved actress Carole Lombard died in early 1942 in a plane crash returning from a war bond drive.

But there were numerous established stars, directors, producers and workers in other branches of the film industry who put their careers on hold to serve the country during WWII.

In honor of Memorial Day, here's a look at some of the superstars who put themselves in harm's way during the war.

James Stewart

Prewar: With his lanky, boy-next-door charm, Stewart was one of MGM's top young leading men. Besides winning an Oscar for 1940's "The Philadelphia Story," he also starred in the 1938 best picture winner, "You Can't Take It With You," and earned an Oscar nomination for 1939's "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington."

Joining up: Stewart, then 32, was one of the men whose number was called in early 1941 in the first peacetime draft. However, he was turned down for service because he was 5 pounds underweight. But Stewart wanted to serve his country, so he fattened up, enlisted in the Army Air Corps and passed the physical, becoming the first Hollywood star to join the military before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

War record: After being assigned as a flight instructor for nearly two years stateside, Stewart was stationed in England, where he piloted bombing missions including raids on Germany. His numerous honors included the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Air Medal and the World War II Victory Medal. A colonel by war's end, Stewart remained with the U.S. Air Force Reserves and was promoted to brigadier general in 1959. He retired from the Air Force in 1968.

Clark Gable

Prewar: One of the biggest stars in Hollywood, Gable had won the lead actor Oscar for 1934's "It Happened One Night," a nomination for 1935's "Mutiny on the Bounty" and another nomination for his most famous role as Rhett Butler in 1939's "Gone With the Wind."

Joining up: Married to Lombard at the time of her death, the 41-year-old Gable joined the Army Air Forces in August 1942, as a private.

War record: Trained as a photographer and aerial gunner, he was assigned to England to make a movie to recruit air gunners. He saw combat during bombing missions and nearly lost his life when enemy flak just missed hitting him the head. He received an Air Medal and a Distinguished Flying Cross.

Gable, who returned to the U.S. in late 1943, became a major in May 1944. By then, he was too old for combat duty, so he requested and received a discharge the following month. Capt. Ronald Reagan signed his discharge papers. (A side note: Adolf Hitler considered Gable his favorite actor and offered a substantial reward for his safe capture.)

Tyrone Power

Prewar: 20th Century Fox's top matinee idol starred in such films as 1936's "Lloyds of London" 1939's and "Jesse James."

Joining up: After completing the war film "Crash Dive," the 28-year-old Power enlisted in the Marine Corps as a private in August 1942 and was commissioned as a second lieutenant the following summer and a first lieutenant in 1944.

War record: As a transport pilot, he participated in the air supply into and evacuation of the wounded from Iwo Jima and Okinawa. He received the American Campaign Medal, the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with two bronze stars and the World War II Victory Medal.