By Calvin Trager

July 30, 2002

There will never be another Carole Lombard. Though history is littered with characters once deemed irreplaceable who are bested in just years' time and fade to sorry oblivion, in this case it is no mere hyperbole. Carole Lombard today remains the single greatest screen comedienne ever produced by Hollywood, as well as one of the brightest stars ever to shimmer across the silver screen. From the late 1930s until her tragic death at the age of 33 in 1942, the woman born Jane Alice Peters added her brilliant contributions to what some have called the Golden Age of screen comedy, creating a body of work that survives today as a radiant testament to her boundless talent.

Born in Indiana in 1908, the future actress was self-professedly prone to being a tomboy as a young girl, engaging in the rough-and-tumble games natural to her two brothers. After her parents divorced and the family moved to Los Angeles, this tendency towards being a hoyden would pay off for her when director Allen Dwan spotted her during a backstreet baseball game and cast her for a small part in a silent film called A Perfect Crime. Some theater company work followed, as did enough film roles to instigate a name change when signed by 20th Century Fox. Unfortunately, this budding career was nearly cut short by a terrible automobile accident in 1926 that almost killed her and scarred the left side of her face so badly that it led the heartless studio to cancel her contract as soon as she left the hospital.

However, this woman was not the type to allow the brutal realities of life to overwhelm her fighting spirit, and she undertook her recuperation with characteristic aplomb. Learning ways to cover up the reconstruction of her damaged face with makeup, Lombard fought her way back onto the screen by lending her natural physical talents to some two-reel comedy teamwork with the legendary slapstick director Mack Sennett. Shortly thereafter, she benefited from Hollywood's tumultuous transition to talking pictures, with her innate facility for the spoken word making her well-positioned for success in this new sonic realm. The swing to sound would indeed aid her greatly, for over the next decade she would become one of the biggest stars during an era in which those stars loomed larger than in any time before or since.

During the 1930s and early 1940s, Lombard would create some of the greatest comic roles ever committed to celluloid, and her personal life would see marriages to fellow stars William Powell and Clark Gable. As the years went on, her breezy style and onscreen (and off-screen) charm would make her the darling of both the fans and the Hollywood set. Her legendary profanity, lusty persona and love for the common people she worked with (which actually seems to be the reality in this case and not simply Marketing Department piffle) would endear her to nearly everyone with whom she came into contact. Her hold on the world was so complete that even the notoriously macabre and cantankerous director Alfred Hitchcock would go out of his way to make the completely out of character (and somewhat flat) screwball comedy Mr and Mrs Smith simply because he wanted to direct her so badly.

Unfortunately for the world that loved her, at the apex of her career destiny intervened to end Lombard's screwball reign in a most tragic manner. A confessed patriot who claimed to be glad to pay her income tax, during the wartime period the actress was active in campaigning to sell war bonds to aid the country's efforts against the Axis. Shortly after completing her last film role with Jack Benny in To Be or Not to Be, she agreed to participate in a fundraising rally in Indiana. Afterward, along with 22 others (including her mother), Carole Lombard was killed when the plane they were in crashed into the side of a mountain outside Las Vegas on the flight back to California, and the motion picture world was cruelly robbed of one of its greatest talents.

Yet, although her career came to such an abrupt and seemingly incorrect end, there is at least the solace that this once luminous soul has left a body of work that remains available for viewing today. Though the look of unmitigated glee that often passed over her features may have been stilled somewhat on that terrible day in January 1942 when the star plunged disastrously to Earth, it luckily still lives on through the magic of film and video. Combining small-town girl beauty, ravishing feistiness, a brilliant sense of comic timing, and a warmth of character that positively leaps off the frame, she has left us a choice slice of cinema history with which to honor her memory. Though certainly clichéd, there is simply a single sentiment that comes to mind when perusing the career remnants of this vivacious and incandescent star: There will never be another Carole Lombard.

Recommended

My Man Godfrey (1936): Teaming up with ex-husband William Powell, this one places Lombard as a rich socialite who hires a down-on-his-luck drifter as a butler after using him as a pawn in a high-class scavenger hunt. This being a screwball comedy, the tribulations follow, and a brisk pace and the sharp interplay of the lead duo buoy the whole. Also featuring the immortal Eugene Pallette and with a hilarious bit part from Mischa Auer as the soft and sensitive protégée, Carlo.

Nothing Sacred (1937): Quite possibly the greatest role of Lombard's career, the actress here portrays Hazel Flagg, a small town girl first thought to have radium poisoning whose supposedly tragic story makes big news in the New York papers. Though she finds she's not really dying, Lombard still takes the junket to the big city that's offered her, only to be run ragged through a vicious gauntlet of yellow journalism and mixed emotions. A great take on the vagaries of 1930s media (again scripted by Ben Hecht), with a wonderful supporting cast including the aforementioned Walter Connolly, Frederic March, Sig Ruman and Margaret Hamilton.

To Be or Not to Be (1942): The final feather in the actress' cap, this dark comedy about an acting company in Poland under the Nazis was a daring proposition for all involved, considering the context in which it was made. A scathingly satirical film, Lombard here is at the top of her form under the influence of the famed "Lubitsch touch". With Jack Benny, Robert Stack and Sig Ruman along for the ride, this film serves as a fitting finale to the career of one of Hollywood's greatest screen stars.

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