{New Article} 1936: A Heart to Heart Letter to Carole Lombard and Clark Gable

This article was printed early in Clark Gable and Carole Lombard’s relationship, before anyone was really sure if this union was a passing fling or a sweeping romance.  I’ve discovered that the fan magazines did this often–“An Open Letter To”…like the stars are really sitting down and reading some journalist’s advice. Oh well. Above is an artist’s rendering of Clark and Carole that accompanied the article. What do you think? Looks more like Ginger Rogers than Carole to me. I’ve seen worse Clark drawings but I’ve also seen much better!

Dear Carole and Clark,

Lately I’ve been thinking about the two of you and even envying you in an impersonal sort of way. For I know you both well enough to have a pretty good idea of the splendid kind of friendship you have found together.

For years I’ve watched Hollywood couples go places and do things, their hearts shining in their eyes. For the most part I’ve never given any of them much thought. With you two it’s different. When I hear about you turning up at a premiere with berets pulled down over your heads, having arrived in Clark’s roadster; eating peanuts and laughing at the circus clowns, well, I enjoy a vicarious excitement. So do a lot of other people.

I wonder if you have any idea how incessantly and romantically Hollywood talks about you, how they tell of the way you, Carole, went to the broadcasting station with Clark and sat, patient as a lamb, while he rehearsed his program. How they pretty well go to town when they relate how every once in a while during that rehearsal Clark would turn to give you a quick look, not meant for anyone else to see. How, on a recent Sunday, even before the last match had been played on your courts, the film colony knew that Clark, tennis crazy as he is, had spent most of the afternoon as a spectator because you were playing such a swell game.

There are a dozen love stories being lived in Hollywood these days but it’s the two of you that people talk about. Even those who’ve never met either of you personally sense the fact that you have something special.

I wouldn’t take those words to heart, really. I’ve seen similar articles written about so many a Hollywood twosome that didn’t work out. I recall reading a gushy article once about George Brent and Ann Sheridan and about their “eternal love”–their marriage didn’t last a year. Anyhow. “Tennis crazy” is a term I might use to describe Carole, who often played the game and often went to matches, especially during her friendship with tennis ace Alice Marble. But I don’t recall Clark picking up a racket much. To play Carole that fateful night in 1936 at Jock Whitney’s party, certainly, but not much afterward.

You know, Carole, for a long time now whenever a girl or a woman has come to me weeping or bitter because some love affair has ended I’ve always thought of you. And wished the girl or woman in question might have a little of the swell, healthy philosophy which marks you in these matters. So often you’ve said to me, “When I feel a love affair is drawing to close I end it—and remain friends with the guy!” And when I’ve questioned you as to how you’ve been able to tell when a love affair was about to end you’ve given me one of your square looks, laughed, and said: “We women with our sensitive antennae always can tell about such things, you know we can. It’s just that we’re romantic and that we hope against hope and—hang on!”

And you don’t merely spout those fine sounding sentiments, you actually practice them. And you do remain friends with the guy. Even Bill Powell to whom you were married—and that’s the acid test—would sign an affidavit that you’re One in a Million.

Another thing about you—I hope all of this doesn’t embarrass you for I’m building up to the reason that Clark, the catch of Hollywood, sought you when a dozen charming ladies were ready and willing to have him seek them—is that you never are possessive about men. Let a man so much as look at a gun and you say to him: “Why don’t you go off on a hunting trip? You haven’t had one in ages.” So that he either decides he doesn’t want to go off on any old hunting trip or he does go, has a fine time, and comes back grateful to you for being a good sport. Whichever way it works out it’s better than if he had wanted to go but remained resentfully at home, satisfied no trip in the world would be worth the recriminations and tears.

Besides, neither during a love affair nor following one has anyone heard you wail about the time-out-of-your-life or the affection you gave any man. Instead you manage to be healthily mindful of some of the things the man gave you, of the pleasure you had with him to have spent so much time with him, and of other things too, depending upon the man. I’ve told you, you know, that you are the inspiration for a short story I’m going to write in which a glamorous woman traces her individual development—her interest in books, her feeling for music, her appreciation of good food and wine, her keen zest in sports, and so on—to the different men who have been important in her life. For because of your attitude to men invariably you are enriched by your association with them and not impoverished by being made over-sentimental and depressed and maudlin.

However, in spite of the fact that you never talk of what you have given a man, it seems to me that you give them the greatest gift there is, laughter. Take you and Clark, for instance. You began with a laugh and you’re laughing still. I remember a few years ago which you and Clark played together in “No Man of Her Own.” Clark was married then and you were interested in someone else. But it amused you to see the way some of the girls on your lot acted about them. They maneuvered to leave their cars near his in the parking space. If he lunched in the studio commissary they were there. If he went across the street to Lucey’s, famous for its spaghetti and tete-a-tete booths, they followed. Not you. You overreacted, as a matter of fact. Clark saw you on the set and on the set only. There you ribbed him. I remember the big ham you sent him with his picture on it. And before the love sequence you presented him with a large bottle of Lavoris. He used it too, before every love scene, with an absolutely dead pan. And that time he seemed a little nervous about your gags, probably wondering if they weren’t part of a game which hadn’t been tried on him before, you put him right. After which you got on handsomely.

Most of this is pretty true, I think. Carole was easygoing, fun-loving and more of a man’s woman, even in her “glamour days.” That is one of the reasons Clark fell for her–it was easy to! She didn’t play a lot of games like other women in Hollywood did–leaking stories to the press and such. I find it strange that the author mentions that Clark was married during filming of “No Man of Her Own” but just says that Carole was “interested in someone else.” Uh, Carole was married as well–to aforementioned Bill Powell.  Some articles and bad biographies say that Clark and Carole didn’t get along on the set of “No Man of Her Own.” But that’s just creating drama. They were friendly, but no love or hate.

You can read this “letter” in its entirety in The Article Archive.