Gossip Friday: Miss Lombard on the Set

Since this week was the 101st birthday of the love of Clark’s life, Carole Lombard, here’s a bit of gossip about her from February 1937:

A very colorful set is the one for “Swing High, Swing Low”, co-starring Carole Lombard and Fred MacMurray. It is a street scene, but built entirely indoors. It is a hot, soiled street somewhere in Panama.

Carole has been having a salary quarrel with Paramount. It is now settled. Jut how completely it is settled is testified by a brand new portable dressing room behind the false front of a Panama bodega. It is a gift to Carole from the director of the picture, Mitchell Leisen–who, by the way, looks a bit like her first and only husband, William Powell.

At the moment, she isn’t in it. She is watching director Leisen and dance director Leroy Prinz  select some dancing girls for the picture.

The girls go through a stiff test of self-consciousness. They come into the sound stage, two dozen of them, in dresses and slacks, and strip down to swim suits. They stand in a wide semi-circle in front of the two men. The sound stage is hushed. Everyone watches them. Everyone, that is, except Fred MacMurray and Charles Butterworth.

Carole asks them if they aren’t interested. “I’m a married man,” says Fred. “I’m near-sighted,” says Charlie.

A prop man crowding into the front row of spectators attracts Prinz’s attention. “Is someone asking you to pick anybody?” asks Prinz.

“No, ” answers the prop man as he ducks for cover, “but it isn’t a bad idea.”

Six are singled out of the semi-circle and asked to stand at one side. These six are picked as “good showgirl types”. All are about the same height. Prinz asks Carole to step over to them for height comparison. They will dance with her.

“Let them see your kicks,” he says to Carole, as she starts walking away afterward.

“You’ll see ’em!” she quips over her shoulder.