Gossip Friday: The Truth about Matrimony
From April 1940:
What, in a word, is the truth about matrimony on the coast?
On a recent whirlwind tour of the colony I became the Marriage Reporter Pro Tem of the coast. I looked at the stars with no eye for their wardrobes, their coiffures or their conversation, if any. I studied them as wives. Not even Clark Gable’s eyelashes were able to deter me from my chosen point of view. Mr. Gable, bless his heart, was interesting to me only as a married man. And having angled some of the famous pairs from a strictly Married Love approach, I can report that things out there are just about as always. There are more divorces, to the mile, than there are in Newton, Kansas. There are fewer Darbys and Joans than in, say, South Carolina. But when a Hollywood marriage is good, it’s terribly, terribly good!
Mr. and Mrs. Gable are a case in point. They are a good case simply because we have here two stellar personalities in a field which is supposed to be the most highly competitive in the field. The legend has it that no marriage can survive when one partner exceeds the other’s success. Well, both Carole Lombard and Clark Gable are doing everything in their power to hoist each other to as high a step on the ladder as possible. Miss Lombard, when talked to, was full of excitement over—guess what?—her husband’s picture, “Gone with the Wind”! She was as delighted about the praise for his magnificent portrayal of Rhett Butler as if she had never been inside a studio herself!
Clark Gable is as thrilled over his ranch as any settled, married man. He has taught his wife to ride and to enjoy his out-of-door life with him—because, you see, he doesn’t want to be married to a mere glamour girl of the cafes—he wants a wife who will share his interests and hobbies.
6 Comments
Ginger
I am so glad that I did not live in the 1930s and 40s. Articles like this make me happy that we have advanced as a society from this view of marriage and of a wife’s role in the marriage. While the author’s premise is that Clark and Carole have a “terribly, terribly good” marriage because of mutual support and adoration, the whole premise was ruined for me in the paragraphs that followed. Carole expressed her pride over Clark’s accomplishments while Clark was “thrilled over his ranch”. Instead of expressing his pride over Carole’s accomplishments, he was too busy turning her into “a wife who will share his interests and hobbies” because he “doesn’t want to be married to a mere glamour girl”! I wonder what Carole really thought about gossip articles like that? Did it hurt her feelings that Clark didn’t offer any words of praise for her or that the author insinuated that she was a “mere glamour girl” before hooking up with Gable? I felt bad for Carole after I read it.
June
My theory is that Carole just became angrier and angrier as time went by, and would have left him eventually if there were no children. Before I retired as a psychotherapist last year, I worked with many couples, and used Carole and Clark sometimes in making a point. Believe it or not, some of their “issues” still stand today, just in different language. Sad, right? But at least we have options now that my mother didn’t think she had back then.
Vincent
Do remember that Carole chose to subjugate her career to accede to Clark, especially their goal of having a child. She also talked frequently about becoming a producer (she enjoyed work in the film industry, and wanted to go beyond acting, though she likely would have continued doing that as well).
admin
I agree, Ginger, it is rather sexist. But unfortunately fitting with the time. I don’t think it is really Clark’s mindset as much as the press at the time. He never seemed to care that she made more money than him. I don’t think Carole minded being known as Clark’s little wife. He never made her become anything; she wanted to. She realized that to make him happy she would have to hunt and fish and live on a ranch so that’s what she did. That’s what the “little wives” did then, be the wife your husband wants you to be. Her plans were to stop acting and have babies and “let Pa be the star.” I do think that their marriage would have lasted if they had had children. She would have had a renewed sense of purpose and he would have matured a bit and felt settled. If she had lived and children never came, I am not so sure. She might have, as years went by, grown tired of being Mrs. Clark Gable and not her own entity.
All I can say is I am very glad I am a wife nowadays rather than seventy years ago because being the little wife who caters to my husband’s every need and want is certainly not how my marriage works!! 🙂
Coco B
Carole had to have had the last laugh with this article. Everyone thinks she subjugated herself to/for Clark but all she really did was take his opinions and likes and dislikes into consideration in an honest manner. Something that really no one before did. Not his father nor first two wives. Is it sexist? Maybe. However, really only Carole can answer that. If I were in her shoes just seeing the smile on his face the day after they eloped would be reward enough for me. One thing sets her apart from most of the women of her time, though she could divorce him anytime she pleased if her really made her mad.
We are lucky to not have to cater to every whim of our husband’s these days, but how much do we do anyway, without even realizing it. I know I do alot, but I get the devotion back in so many ways too. I think Carole did too otherwise she wouldn’t have to bother. Just my two cents.
Ginger
My whole disappointment with the article had everything to do with Carole’s treatment in it. I am convinced that we’ll never know the true dynamic of the Gable/Lombard marriage due to Carole’s untimely death and Clark’s refusal to discuss the relationship after her death. My personal take on it is that they were a very handsome, marketable couple and that both the media and the movie studios gained considerable revenue by promoting them to the public as the perfect couple. I hope that they were happy together, but I don’t know that the relationship was as perfect as portrayed at the time. I don’t think the photos of them together are all that telling, because they both were excellent actors and knew that the cameras were on them. Cameras were rather large in that time, and it would have been very easy for excellent actors to strike a pose. By way of example, Carole looks very happy in photos with William Powell taken when the two of them were a couple.
Anyway, my disappointment stemmed from the fact that Carole was an accomplished actress in April 1940. Instead of mentioning her next film or philanthropic project, the article focused on Carole becoming “Gable’s type of woman.” (I borrowed that quote from “Making of a Legend: Gone With the Wind.”) It saddens me for women who lived during that time that women’s accomplishments were overlooked or downplayed. Personally, I would rather know about Carole’s career than what about what she was doing on the ranch. I must admit, though, that I indirectly benefitted from the 1940s view of women and appropriate careers. When I was a student, I had several wonderful, intelligent female teachers who could have handled any number of careers, but became teachers because that’s what women did back then.