Gossip Friday: On the set of Mr. and Mrs. Smith

Want some candids and behind the scenes scoop from Carole’s film “Mr. and Mrs. Smith”? Happy to oblige.

 Both from February 1941:

Just for good luck Alfred Hitchcock always appears in one brief scene in his pictures. Just to show that he was a good sport he let Carole Lombard, the star of his picture “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” direct the scene in which he appeared. That was a big mistake, as he discovered later.  Miss Lombard, the director, sat in the director’s chair, neatly placed in the shade, and for half an hour or more made Mr. Hitchcock go through his one line. The sun became hotter and hotter on the RKO ranch, but Miss Lombard, thinking of the rain sequence she had to do the net day, kept fat little Mr. Hitchcock perspiring through one “take” after another. After each “take”, she would say “Ashcan!” in the Hitchcock manner. With the director about wilted away, she decided the scene was satisfactory. “Good-day, Mr. De Mille,” Mr. Hitchcock said to her as he made his way to the nearest cold drink stand.

****

When an actress catches cold on a set she has to take several days off and stay home and cure her cold, while the company sits around and twiddles its thumbs. But Director Alfred Hitchcock, wise in the ways of the world and in the ways of movie stars, very carefully delayed the rain sequence in “Mr. and Mrs.”  until the last day of production. If Miss Lombard caught a cold the company would not have to pay for it.

“Tomorrow, Carole,” he explained to her, “we shoot the last scene of the picture. You’re in a parachute in the rain, so we’ll have to turn the hose on you from nine in the morning until six at night.”

“Why, you so-and-so,” retorted Lombard, “you planned it so I’ll have pneumonia on my own time.”

_____________

Why do I have a feeling the exact quote from Lombard wasn’t “you so-and-so”?

On the set of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Carole Lombard gave a birthday party for her personal wardrobe attendant, Mary Tate. Carole gave costar Bob Montgomery a second piece of cake, but he just couldn’t finish it.

As a gag, Carole Lombard brought bull calves to the set of “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” and named them after herself and her costars Bob Montgomery and Gene Raymond. Why? Because director ALfred Hitchcock had proclaimed that actors were like cattle!

____

New this week:

Film page for The Finger Points 

Pictures in the gallery

Two new articles:

A weird one from 1932 on Clark and Greta Garbo

A pretty interesting interview with Clark  from 1940 about him playing Rhett