Happy Anniversary, Clark Gable and Carole Lombard

Clark Gable and Carole Lombard were married 79 years ago today, on March 29, 1939, eloping to Kingman, Arizona on the spur of the moment.

You can read Clark’s description of their wedding day here.

Because they managed to slink away and marry with no fanfare, they dutifully obliged to an early morning press conference on the front lawn of Carole’s home on St. Cloud Rd.  There is newsreel footage of this press conference, with Clark and Carole in their wedding attire, beaming and laughing and constantly touching each other. But it is silent. There are dozens and dozens of pictures of them; every time I think I’ve seen every single one I happen upon one with a different pose or angle. But yet I’ve never been able to find a fully comprehensive article of this press conference, which is rather baffling. Instead I find snippets here and there in different newspapers and magazines. Below I have gathered some of the bits and pieces:

***

Three dogs sweltered on the concrete furnace of a sunbaked tennis court because they wanted to bite the photographers. Grandly a buxom colored maid pressed the button that started a tricky gate-opening mechanism, and the portal of 609 St. Cloud Rd, Bel-Air, swung wide.

Inside the spacious grounds a platoon of press agents marshaled the forces of journalism for a not-so-surprising attack on America’s current No.1 bride and groom. It was all pretty dignified. The head press agent sounded the tenor of the session with the plea: “No gag stuff, fellows, please!”

There was a tense little period of waiting. And then, with flashlight bulbs and camera shutters winking like jitter-junebugs the stars of the scene appeared.

You have guessed it. Mr. and Mrs. Clark Gable were receiving the press at the latter’s home the day after their whirlwind elopement to Kingman, Ariz. There the bewildered Rev. Kenneth M. Engle had married Gable and Jane Peters of Fort Wayne, Ind., who is better known to 85,000,000 moviegoers as Carole Lombard.

“Where’re you going to live, Clark?”

(“Turn this way for a profile shot, Mr. Gable!”)

“Oh, in about a week we’ll move out to my rand in San Fernando Valley–” Gable starts to say as he is interrupted.

(“Kiss her, Mr. Gable!”)

“Say, fellows, let’s keep this straight. We’ll hold hands….Honeymoon? Well, we both have pictures to finish and—” says Clark as the attention turns to his bride.

(“Move in a little closer, Miss Lombard!”)

“Do you know how to cook, Carole?”

“Sure, f—“

Confusing? Very. But that’s exactly how it all happened. Just as in the movies. Refreshed by a few hours’ sleep, Gable and his blonde, slender bride executed a celebrity’s duty. They talked for publication, posed for publication. Even Mrs. Elizabeth Peters, Miss Lombard’s mother, looked astonished.

Hollywood’s best technicians couldn’t have built a more honeymoonish spot than the actress’ St. Cloud Road home. As if placed there by a crafty sound effects man, a bird sang an ambiguous little melody from a nearby tree; even the flowers smelled like a wedding, and the Bel-Air countryside was a landscape gardener’s dream of rusticity.

***

“On Wednesday I go to work at R.K.O,” his bride said, “and it looks like our plans for a honeymoon will have to be as indefinite as they were for our marriage. Only reason we got married yesterday was that Clark suddenly found he’d have the day off.

As for the widely-printed reports that Miss Lombard intends to stop earning $425,000 a year as one of the movie’s top stars and become a housewife and maybe have some children, she smiled and said that was mere guesswork. “Eventually,” she said, “I’m going to retire, but that’s all in the future and I haven’t thought about it much. It’s too far away. But I can say now that Clark is the star of this family. He always has been.”

***

The Gables’ new love nest cottage in San Fernando Valley is practically ready for occupancy, they said, and then added that it was nothing pretentious–just seven rooms. “And one of them is going to be a gun room for Clark,” said his beaming bride, herself an actress of renown.

Discussing the marriage in Kingman, they revealed that there was no difficulty about producing the wedding ring when they stood up before Rev. Kenneth Engle in the First Methodist Episcopal Church. “I’ve had the ring in my pocket for two months,” said Gable. “We weren’t sure when we would be able to get married because of the picture and I didn’t want to be caught unprepared in case the chance came.”

***

“We’d rather not discuss that,” Clark Gable’s reply to reporter’s question about careers and marriage, addressed to Gable and his wife, former Carole Lombard.

***

Carole Lombard says, “I am a very good cook but I don’t know yet what Clark’s favorite dishes are.”

***

Carole though the funniest thing that happened on their wedding trip was the hitchhiker at Daggett, Calif., who came over to their car at a gasoline station and said, “I just heard a broadcast that you were married. May I be the first to ask you for your autograph, Mrs. Gable?”

Carole signed a slip of paper, “Carole Gable.”

“Gee!” exclaimed Carole.

***

Here’s Clark and Carole pictured with other newlyweds of the time, Tyrone Power and Annabelle, Douglas Fairbanks Jr and the new Mrs., and…Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and Sylvia Ashley–who would one day be Mrs. Gable in ten years’ time.