{New Article} 1940: Help Kill Crazy Rumors About Me!

This article is a little bit of fun. I’ve read here and there over the years about Carole Lombard’s “fragile health” after she married Clark Gable. I know she had poison ivy at one point, and appendicitis, but I’ve always suspected that this whole “fragile health” scenario was a bit of a cover-up for her struggle with fertility. It gave a reason as to why she wasn’t pregnant yet despite everyone’s held breath for the news, and as to why she had slowed down making movies.  Well, here is one time where she is denying she’s an invalid; this article addresses Carole’s feelings on the subject of her being gravely ill…

…suddenly one night I heard over the radio that Carole Lombard, or rather Mrs. Clark Gable, was in wretched health, that she was bordering on a nervous breakdown, and that the doctors had ordered her to retire from the screen for at least a year. It sounded even worse than that. It sounded like Carole was completely shot, and might drop off any minute. Goodness, was I scared! I couldn’t live without my laughs from Lombard. I knew she had looked pale the last time I had seen her but she was playing a nurse in “Vigil in the Night” and I thought she was only in character. I called her immediately to console with her, but learned from her secretary that she was out of town, but would be back Friday. Nerves, I said, probably her nerves are shattered, poor dear, and Clark had to take her to some quiet place to rest. I was out at the Gable Ranch early Friday morning all prepared to hold a wan hand, stroke a fevered brow, maybe even say, while bravely choking back sobs, Carole, old girl, you look wonderful.

Her nerves were shattered, like hell! With fifty million dogs barking and chickens cackling as I got out of my car it was I who had shattered nerves. If only the Gables would teach their dogs to differentiate between guests and burglars. I, evidently, looked like a hatchet woman.

Carole, all wrapped up in a white robe, was seated at her dressing table while the ever faithful Loretta fussed with her hair. She did look a bit peaked. Poor child. My heart simply overflowed with sympathy and I fought to keep the tears out of my eyes.

“Did you have a good rest, darling?” I asked softly and solicitously.

“Rest?” screamed Carole. “Are you crazy? Did you ever shoot quail? Do you know how fast they can dart over the mountains? And with me right after them with eight pounds of gun and three pounds of shells over my shoulder? Rest? I’ll have you know I walked ten miles a day, every day. Look at the blisters on my heels.”

“But, darling,” I said, so quietly and patiently, the way one speaks to a petulant invalid, “do you think you ought to do that? So much exercise isn’t good for your health, you know.”

“What’s wrong with you?” Carole demanded indignantly. “You can talk louder than that. There’s no one sleeping around here. Unless it’s Loretta.” (Loretta gave her dome a none too gentle whack with the hair brush). “And what, may I ask, is all this hooey about my health? When we got in from Mexico this morning I found a whole stack of letters from fans saying they were so worried about me. Several of them suggested specialists I should see, and different medicines which they guaranteed would cure me. I appreciate their interest. But I’m not sick. Maybe I’m a little goofy. I’ll even admit that maybe I’m a little dopey, at time. But I certainly am not sick. Why are people worried about me? Why are you giving me the Camille business? What’s it all about?”

“It was on the radio,” I gulped. “And in all the newspapers: Your health is supposed to be completely wrecked. You’re run down, your nerves are shattered, you haven’t any red corpuscles, and you’re in the last stages of something. You’re dying, too, or something like that. Anyway, you have to retire from the screen for at least a year. You’re—“

“Oh, so I’m retiring from the screen, am I? Well that is news! You don’t think that rumor could have been started by some people who say ‘Vigil in the Night’ do you? No, it can’t be that bad. In fact I think it’s rather good. If I were going to retire from the screen because of bad pictures I should have retired after ‘Fools for Scandal.’ See this—“ she showed me a slip which had a message on it that Mr. Pasternak had called. “Well, that means that I am going to do a picture at Universal in a few months. As soon as Boyer is available. And maybe before that even I have to do the Norman Krasna story which David Selznick will produce. And I have just signed a new contract with RKO which calls for three pictures. So please stop worrying about me retiring from the screen. Or, maybe you aren’t.”

“But you do look a bit peaked,” I insisted. When I come to bury Caesar I don’t give up drink. “you are run-down, just a little, aren’t you?”

“If it means so much to you,” said Carole with one of those Lombard guffaws, “I’ll be big about it and admit that maybe I am just a teensy weensy bit off-color. Now—does that make you and the radio commentators and the newspaper columnists feel better? But I fey any of you to go through what I have been through for the past few months and not look a little pale. You, cutie-pie, would look bedraggled.  As you know, I had an acute attack of appendicitis last August and was rushed to the hospital for an emergency appendectomy. Three weeks later I reported to RKO for ‘Vigil in the Night,’ the Cronin story with Brian Aherne and Anne Shirley, who, by the way, is a grand actress. For seventy-eight days I worked from nine to six on that picture without one single day off, didn’t I, Loretta? And me fresh out of a hospital. The studio kept planning for me to have a collapse, but I fooled em. I didn’t miss a day.”

You have to appreciate that she knocks “Fools for Scandal,” which indeed is one of her lesser films.  A lot of people don’t like “Vigil in the Night” but I think it’s a good little drama. Perhaps people would feel differently if Joan Fontaine or someone similar was the lead?

I completely love this description of Carole sitting at her vanity at the ranch in a robe, laughing and kidding her hairdresser. What is it about descriptions of Carole that just seem to be like sunshine? I think she really was one of those people who lit up a room just by being in it. Even in descriptions of her, you feel it.

Read the article in its entirety in The Article Archive.