Happy Anniversary, Clark Gable and Carole Lombard

Clark Gable and Carole Lombard finally tied the knot 77 (can you believe it) years ago today!

Associated Press, March 30, 1939:

Happy Ending Written to Courtship of Hollywood Stars

Fun-loving Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, who wrote the long anticipated happy ending to the story of their courtship in a little Arizona town late yesterday, returned early today to the bride’s Bel-Air home.

Exhausted by their 750-mile trip, they retired, to wait until later to move into the home on his One-Mule San Fernando Valley ranch which Gable redecorated in preparation for the wedding.

Friends were not surprised when news of the ceremony reached here last night, although their absence from the film capital during the day had gone unnoticed. The marriage had been expected daily since the screen’s No.1 masculine star was given his freedom earlier this month by his second wife, Maria.

Gable, 38, and his blonde bride, 31,  a top ranking comedienne, scorned the time-tried Hollywood elopement plot. They chose Kingman, Arizona, a desert railroad community, for the rites to filmdom’s more favored Gretna Gardens, Yuma, Arizona and Las Vegas, Nevada. They traveled by automobile instead of by plane, as have most other elopers.

They confided to Howard Cate, Kingman High School principal and a witness when the knot was tied by the Rev. Kenneth M. Engle of the First Methodist Episcopal Church, that they intended to go to Las Vegas or Boulder City, Nevada, spending the day at Boulder Dam.

But a few hours later they were eating dinner in Needles, California and were reported seen at other small communities on the highway across the Mojave Desert, en route home.

They stopped briefly at a state checking station in Daggett, where an inspector said that Gable was sleeping soundly, Miss Lombard appeared drowsy and their companion, Otto Winkler, publicity man, was driving.

Gable was due back on the Selznick lot late today to continue work as Rhett Butler in “Gone with the Wind.” Friends said the couple expected to defer a honeymoon until summer, when both are free of picture engagements.