{In the News} 1941: Carole Lombard Declares Open Season on Gossipers

Here’s a syndicated newspaper article from October 1941 (similar to this article in the Archive from 1940: “Help Kill Crazy Rumors about Me!”)

Carole Lombard Declares Open Season on Gossipers

Goes Hunting After Denying She’s Dead or Is to Divorce Clark Gable

Hollywood, Oct. 13–Carole Lombard went gunning today, not only for birds with feathers on ’em, but also for the radio oracles who claim she’s about to divorce Clark Gable, or die, or both.

Miss Lombard will get the ducks when the season starts Thursday. On the gossipers she has declared open season. They’re causing her phone to ring so much she’s not getting enough sleep.

Last week Miss Lombard and Gable were near Watertown, S.D., hunting pheasants. They went to their cabin after a day’s tramp through the fields and turned on the radio.

“And there I was at home in Hollywood in bed, according to the man, about to die,” Miss Lombard said. “It was a laugh, all right, until everybody started calling. It’s a wonder I didn’t get a wreath.”

So Miss Lombard and Gable bought a sedan in North Dakota, with a radio on the dash, and started home.

“There was another of these Hollywood talkers on the air,” she reported. “He said Clark and I were righting, fighting, fighting, all the time. It looked to him, he said, like we were headed for the divorce courts, though he did say this was not definite yet.

“He should have seen what Mr. G. did to that radio. As for me, I almost got hysterical.”

The Gables got home the other day.

“And neither of these radio men has given us a jingle,” Miss Lombard said. “They seem to talk to everybody in town, except us. And somehow they never seem to broadcast anything about us, except when we are a couple of thousand miles away.

“Now Clark and I are going up to Harry Fleischman’s duck hunting camp near Bakersfield this week and after we’re taking a little jaunt into Mexico and no telling what they’ll be saying about us.

“Last time we were in Bakersfield it was broadcast that we were split up, and I was on the verge of death, and that Clark was living with George Raft.

“Mr. G. and I don’t much care what these people say; in fact, their stories always give us a big laugh. But the after-effects do bother us. The phone calls indicate that people are worried. We hate to lose our sleep, and we hate even more to have our friends worrying about us.”

Gable now is on his annual three-month vacation from picture-making. He is spending every minute of it with Miss Lombard. She has been functioning for almost a year as housewife and hunting companion, exclusively.

“And it’s nice not to have to be getting up at 4 a.m. and going to the studio,” she said. “I have no desire to go back to work, though I suppose I’ll make a picture next year some time if a good role comes along.

“In the meantime I’ll just stay handy to the telephone so I can deny I’m dead, or whatever.”

Times haven’t changed much. In fact it’s worse. I recall reading an interview with Jennifer Garner recently about how the constant rumors and speculation about her marriage with Ben Affleck seriously affected their relationship. And nowadays, it’s not just the radio and newspapers. It’s social media, television and internet too.