{New Article} 1938: Lombard as She Sees Herself

I try very hard to make sure that, while I have a lot of information about Carole Lombard, this website doesn’t become a Clark and Carole website because it isn’t, after all. I come across a lot of Carole articles and usually if they are before she was with Clark or don’t mention Clark, I don’t include them.

When this article was written in 1938, Clark and Carole were very much together, although he doesn’t get too much of a mention. But this article is wonderful and yet somehwat sad; it paints such a lovely picture of Carole–young, vibrant, full of life and talking about looking forward to old age.

Here’s Carole’s takes on a number of subjects.

On taking life by the horns (one of my favorite, if not my very favorite, Carole quotes ever):

“I love everything I do. I’m immensely interested in and enthusiastic in everything I do, everything. No matter what it is I’m doing, no matter how trivial, it isn’t trivial to me. I give it all I got and love it. I love living. I love life. Eating, sleeping, waking up again, skeet-shooting, sitting around an old barn doing nothing, my work, taking a bath, talking my ears off, the little things, the big things, the simplest things, the most complicated things—I get a kick out of everything I do while I’m doing it.

“If I don’t love what I’m doing I don’t DO it. But if I have to do something I’m not nuts about now and then, as who doesn’t, I DO it and get it over with. I never anticipate trouble. I never worry, never fret. I can’t duck issues. Ducking issues causes more grief than the issues themselves ever do. I never sit around and clutch my head and moan, ‘I HAVE to do so-and-so, alas Lo, the poor Lombard!’—I just say, ‘Let’s DO it’ or ‘Okay, let’s GO!’—and it’s done and there’s nothing to it.”

On which she prefers, playing comedy or drama:

“They’re not really so different. You know the old thing, comedy and tragedy are akin? Like lots of old things, it’s the truth. Back of all comedy, there is tragedy; back of every good belly-laugh there is a familiarity with things not funny at all. There must be. You laugh with tears in your eyes, don’t you?” demanded Lombard, “most of us do. And Irene in [My Man] Godfrey was, I’d say, the most difficult part I ever played. Because Irene was a complicated and, believe it or not, essentially a tragic person…I had a lot of fun doing the screwy comedies, but I was getting pretty tired of them. Hollywood has done too
many of them. The old ‘sheep’ angle, you know. Now, I’d like to do two dramatic
pictures, then another comedy and so vary the ingredients a bit.”

Her worst trait:

“Too much energy.”

Her best trait:

“My disposition. It’s veddy good. I was born that way. I’m always happy. I never get mad at little things, trifles. It takes a terrific thing to make me mad. Then, when the terrific thing gets me I do a beautiful job of it.”

Her pet hates:

“Affectations. I can’t STAND affected people—or snobs. And I don’t stand them. I do something horrible to them to break them down. I hate to be yessed, too. If someone doesn’t like me in a picture, for instance, I don’t want them to purr over me, I want them to TELL me so.”

On her fears–and if she fears old age (this one really brought a lump to my throat):

“I don’t like height. I fly, I don’t mind that. But I can’t stand on high buildings or high places and look down. Apart from that, no. There is nothing I am afraid of. Least of all, old age. I NEVER want to be sixteen again. I think that eighteen is the DULLEST age in the world. If ever I was unhappy, it was when I was in my teens. That’s because you don’t understand anything when you’re that young. You’re puzzled and so you’re hurt. For only the things you don’t understand have the power to hurt you, like the Power of Darkness. With age there comes a richness that’s divine. Age takes on a beauty everyone can’t see, perhaps. But I see it…I don’t know of anything in the world more beautiful, more fascinating than a woman ripe with years, rich and lush as velvet with experience, her humor as tangy and flavorous as sunripened fruit. If women wouldn’t get so self-conscious about getting old they wouldn’t get old mentally and then they wouldn’t be old at all, only wise and simply divine. I LOVE the idea of getting old,” said Lombard, thus loving one aspect of life which is nightmare to nine women out of every ten and the Bugaboo, certainly, to every celebrated beauty.”

On money:

“I save my dough, I’m no fool. The terribly important thing to me is a home. I have a lot of fun out of having a home. And I know exactly the kind of a house I’m going to build one of these days, probably in the San Fernando Valley. It will be terribly small but every detail will be exactly as I want it. I’m not the type to say it’s my Dream House but IT IS!”

I suppose then, it was no coincidence that less than a year later, she was the proud owner of a small house in the San Fernando Valley?

What a gal!

You can read the article in its entirely in The Article Archive.