{New Article} Hollywood’s Happiest Woman

Below is one of Carole Lombard’s final interviews, printed by the Associated Press in the days following her January 16, 1942 death.

Hollywood’s Happiest Woman

by Mayme Ober Peak

Hollywood-Jan. 17–Sitting in her portable dressing room on the set of “To Be or Not To Be,” only seven weeks ago, Carole Lombard told me she was the happiest woman in Hollywood.

I remarked that she was making her first picture in more than a year. She nodded, looked at me a little quizzically, and then said, almost sharply, “I don’t care if I never make another picture.”

“No matter what career women tell you,” she said, “you cannot find happiness in a career. Pictures are just a side issue to me now. If one comes up that interest me–all right. Certainly I’ll never make a picture that interferes with my married life.”

“Do you mean to say you find life on the Gable farm satisfying enough to make up for the loss of limelight you bathed in for so long?” I asked.

“Gosh, yes! Farm life is the most exciting I’ve ever lived. We don’t sit in the house and listen to the radio. Clark’s running the tractor or building a fence–I’m feeding the chickens and counting the eggs!”

Coming from erstwhile screwball Carole, this was funny enough. But for her terrific sincerity it might have been ludicrous, for she was costumed as Ophelia–her long golden tresses garlanded with flowers, her streamlined figure lost under a flowing Grecian gown of white and gold!

“We are shopping for a big ranch now,” she went on, “and this is going to be commercial. Believe me, it will be thrilling when we start raising cattle…Clark and I hunt and fish. We travel a lot, too. We have a gorgeous time!”

While the Gables were on their last hunting trip, producer Alexander Korda sent Carole the script of “To Be or Not to Be” urging her to read it. Clark was due back anyhow to prepare for his next MGM film, and so Carole said, “I couldn’t resist it. It was a divine comedy. To play opposite Jack Benny was fun enough but another big inducement was Ernst Lubitsch directing.”

“All the 10 years we were on the same lot at Paramount, I ever had a chance to work under him. He’s marvelous and he’s the greatest actor on the set. Every night I go home and tell the old man (“Pappy” is another of her pet names for the glamorous Gable) all the amazing things Lubitsch has done that day.”

In “To Be or Not to Be” Carole Lombard and Jack Benny are the Lunt and Fontanne of Poland, who do a scene from Hamlet. The Clark Gables might aspire to be the Lunt and Fontanne of the movies. They could afford to have their own producing company, such as Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks once had. Their joint salaries approach a million a year. They could make their home represent what Pickfair once stood for in the film capital.

But Carole and Clark had different plans. They started life in a modest farmhouse on a model 70-acre ranch in San Fernando Valley, purchased from Raoul Walsh. They remodeled and enlarged the barns, stables and built model chicken houses. Gable painted these as well as the fences with a spray gun…while Carole was having a wonderful time dashing about in the station wagon looking for antiques, or making gingham curtains for the kitchen windows, and hemmng the ruffles for the organdy curtains in her bedroom.

When she met Clark Gable he was estranged from his second wife, Rhea Langham Gable. She amused Clark–they had a grand time laughing together, outdoing each other’s gags. Clark had never had a playmate before in a woman.

He grew up with an inferiority complex which was responsible for his marrying two mature wives. He first married Josephine Dillon, dramatic teacher–she taught him how to act. After their divorce he married the wealthy widow, Rhea Langham, who taught him how to act–in drawing rooms. Unsure of himself then, he needed a helpmate more than a playmate.

Not until Clark reached a certain height and could afford to play did he meet capricious, prank-loving Lombard. They laughed themselves into love. Each had a sense of humor that lighted every hour of life for them.

Carole told me that instead of going gunning for the gossips who were constantly “separating” them, that’s the time they laughed the loudest!