Happy Birthday, Carole Lombard

Carole Lombard, aka Jane Peters, aka Carole Gable, would have been 105 today!

It wouldn’t be Carole’s birthday without this snippet of Clark singing Happy Birthday to his “Ma”:

HappyBirthday

To celebrate, here is the tale of Carole’s 32nd birthday and how it didn’t go exactly as she planned it…

[On the set of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, on her birthday, Carole Lombard] had a hunch that [director Alfred] Hitchcock would send her a Western Union singing boy, so she decided to top his gag by having ten Western Union singing boys arrive on the set at five o’clock and sing birthday greetings to everyone on the set except herself.
It was a swell gag, she almost broke herself up thinking about it, but it didn’t quite come off.

“Hitch”, it seems, can smell Western Union singing boys a mile away, so he tipped off the entire cast and crew to ignore the boys and not let them sing a note. The boys arrived, and following Carole’s instructions, gathered around Mr. Hitchcock, who immediately awoke from a sound sleep and said, “Get away from me,” in his most directorial manner, thereby frightening them out of seven years’ growth. When they approached Bob Montgomery he simply put on his hat and walked off the set. Then they gathered around Gene Raymond, but Gene pushed them aside with a “Sorry, boys, I’ve got to make a phone call.” All the company gradually walked off the stage.

“Miss Lombard,” the boys wailed, “no one will let us sing to them. Can we sing birthday greetings to you now?”
“No,” snapped Carole, with a distinctly dirty look in the direction of “Hitch’s” broad back.
That night Carole had invited “Hitch” and eight of her close friends to have dinner at Chasen’s. She called Dave Chasen that morning and asked him to reserve a table for eight at seven, a very good table because it was her birthday. But “Hitch” happened to overhear Carole’s phone conversation, so as soon as he could slip away from the set he too called ever agreeable Dave and told him as a gag to cancel Miss Lombard’ reservation, and be as disagreeable to her as possible about it. And reserve him a table for eight. And if Miss Lombard’s Western Union singing boys appeared to pay them generously, but bar them from the restaurant.
At seven sharp—Carole’s probably the promptest person in Hollywood—Carole and Clark arrived with several of their friends and Carole, grinning from ear to ear when she thought how embarrassed both “Paw” and “Hitch” would be when the Western Union boys started singing to them in front of Chasen’s very upper crust clientele, sweetly asked for her table reservation.
“But Mrs. Gable,” said the suave headwaiter with great dignity, “you have no reservation.”
“Yes, I have too,” said Carole, getting hot about it, no table on her birthday, what a place, “I made the reservation with Dave myself this morning. It’s my birthday dinner and I want my table.”
But the headwaiter was discouragingly adamant. “There must have been a misunderstanding, Mrs. Gable. Mr. Chasen has not been in the restaurant all day. Are you sure you talked to him?”
“Of course I talked to him,” stormed Carole. “Do you think I’m crazy!”
The headwaiter shrugged his shoulders annoyingly as if to be saying, “Could be.”
“Now, honey,” said Clark soothingly, with his tongue in his cheek, “you’ve been working hard and you’re tired. Dave’s been out of town for several days. All the tables are taken so we can just go over to a drive-in and get a hamburger. Your guests won’t mind—much.”
Just then a little fat man rose from a big empty table across the room, and bowed politely to Carole.
“Why Mrs. Gable,” he said, “there seems to be some kind of mix-up. Fortunately, I have a table. I made my reservation this morning, and I shall be most pleased if you and your friends will be my guests for dinner.”
Don’t ever mention birthday dinners and Western Union singing boys to Carole, if you value your profile.