{New Article} 1939: Will Clark Gable Ever Marry Carole Lombard?

We all know the answer to the question asked, but an interesting article nonetheless. Especially since they did wed a month after this was published.

The speculation over whether or not they would actually marry isn’t ridiculous, really, because although it did seem the norm for most couples of the day to marry early on in their courtship, many of the big couples of this period–George Raft and Virginia Pine, Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Taylor–were unmarried.

As a matter of fact, the real low-downers of Hollywood are convinced that there’ll never be a Ria-Clark divorce, they feel, although the principals never openly discuss the matter, that Clark and Carole both feel that the situation is quite all right where it stands. Hollywood has its own table of ethics about things like this—a set of rules and taboos that are governed to a large extent by such things as publicity and the so-called “hinterland reaction.” Hollywood fears, above all else, the wrath of millions of moviegoers whose moral sensibilities are assumed to be as fragile as gold-leaf, and as pure. There is justification, says that part of Hollywood which treads lightly, for an assumption that if Clark Gable should be divorced from Ria Gable, and then leap headlong into an immediate re-marriage with Carole Lombard, that the box-office status of both Gable and the Lombard would suffer a deep pain in the intake.

 

And what Hollywood can’t stand at all is a drop in box-office rating.

 

So, since the world of movie fans apparently takes it for granted, and quite all right, too, that Clark is not in love with his wife, but is in love with Carole, the two of them seem content to let it lie at that, and why change the situation?

I find it strange that it says that they could have a drop in box office receipts if they married. I actually believe that getting married HELPED their box office. In several movie magazines from 1936-1938, I have seen letters from fans chastising the magazine for glorifying Clark and Carole’s romance when Clark was married to another woman. And, I don’t think Carole was ever “content” at being the other woman. She wanted to marry him. They weren’t in a big hurry, true, but she wasn’t going to sit idly by and play second fiddle while that society matron got to have the title.–no ma’am, that wasn’t going to do for Miss Lombard!

There has, in the past, been terrific studio pressure to “kill” all publicity linking the Lombard and Gable names. It was a policy in line with that fear of the hinterland reaction. But of late, we in Hollywood who make our living by writing about it have noticed that from the two studios concerned—Carole’s Paramount and Clark’s MGM—there has been a gradual but definite lightening of the taboo.

 

That is straight-up not true. In fact, their relationship was very well publicized and even exaggerated from the very start. I’ve seen marriage rumors dating back to fall 1936, long before I am sure they even considered the possibility. And the studio publicists controlled the press. They were probably the ones drumming up the rumors! You didn’t see much printed about Clark and Joan Crawford did you? Or Clark’s rendezvous with Loretta Young? Nope. Notably, Clark was actually encouraged by MGM publicists to take Carole to premieres and company functions. She was his date to the MGM annual picnic in 1937 and to the grand gala premiere of the Norma Shearer epic Marie Antoinette in 1938 (Pictures of these events are in the Carole Lombard section of the gallery). The studios were salivating at the worldwide appeal of the pairing of two mega watt stars.

True, he was married twice—the first time to Josephine Dillon, some years older than himself, who taught him a lot about voice control and diction and stage deportment, because that’s her business. The second time (and still) to Ria Langham, the society woman, years older than himself, again. Ria dazzled him, and gave him a taste of how things are done in the upper tiers of social life. But she didn’t bring him sheer, downright fun. Neither of those women, admirable as they are in their spheres of life, brought him the fun that fun-loving Carole Lombard did. Carole is an ex-Mack Sennett girl. She has no social aspirations, yet she is one of Hollywood’s most sought-after guests. She has no exalted ideas about histrionics, yet she is one of Hollywood’s top box office stars. Carole, therefore, can and does give Clark the social status Ria gave, and the theatrical standing and help Josephine gave—but in addition, she also gives a whole-hearted comradeship and good-fellowship.

 

Quite true. Something he looked for the rest of his life and  I don’t think he found again in its entirety.

Read the complete article in The Article Archive.