{New Article} Two Happy People: Part 1

Let’s kick off the weekend of Clark Gable and Carole Lombard’s 75th wedding anniversary with a new article, shall we?

There were a LOT of articles written about Clark and Carole from the second they started flirting in 1936 through 1942 and even beyond. But my favorites, by far, are the series of articles written by James Street for Movie and Radio Guide magazine in May 1940. They are straightforward, laid back, non-fluffy and make you think you are sitting there chatting with Clark and Carole yourself. The series was four parts, with one focusing on Carole, one on Clark, one on their ranch home, and the final on their marriage in general.Up until now, I only had three parts and was missing the Carole one. Thank you to Vincent of Carole & Co for sending me Part One…all about Carole!

She talks so fast, so much and so cleverly that Clark Gable, her husband and by legal rights the master of the manor, scarcely can slip a word in sideways even if he wants to. And he usually doesn’t try, for he likes to listen to and laugh with his wife, the firecracker girl who talks a man’s language, including a few oaths, on occasion.

It’s a winning marital combination—two happy people who do just as they please but never bruise anybody or anything. It’s been a long haul with the Gables, a mighty rough road and a high grade, but now they have what they want—fame and each other.

Just to appease a lot of teacup and tatting curiosity, including my wife’s, Mrs. Gable is not going to have a baby. At least she said she isn’t, and I believe her because I trust her word.

“If I were to have a baby, I’d shout it from the housetops,” she said. “And I can shout. Want to hear me?”

We didn’t. But she shouted anyway, just because she felt like shouting. After judging the quality of her shout I hazard the opinion she can make herself heard.

Mrs. Gable hereafter will be referred to as Miss Lombard in this piece. She is very proud to be Mrs. Gable and is doing a good job of wifing, but she simply will not submerge herself in matrimony. It would be impossible to keep Miss Lombard submerged in anything. She’s an actress and she always will be.

She’s Carole Lombard, the reliable morning star in this incredible kingdom where so many stars fall as they did on Alabama.

He’s Clark Gable, the evening star that is always there. You can chart your course by those two stars. You can count on them. But when knocking-off time comes, when the day’s work is done Miss Lombard becomes Mrs. Gable and her husband is “the old man.”

Some folks call her “Ma Gable.” It doesn’t fit. She’s not the “ma” type. She’s the girl next door with whom you sit on the steps and talk, to whom you tell your plans and hopes. And she never laughs at you, but squeezes your hand and says, “I know how you feel and I’m on your side.”

The Gables insist upon their private lives being kept private. They think there are some things that are nobody’s pop-eyed business and Hollywood can lump it. Their home at Encino is their castle and they allow only the chosen few to enter. They have been criticized. The public and press demand many things of the stars they make, but you don’t make demands of the Gables. They deglamorize themselves at home.

Miss Lombard doesn’t like glamour, anyway, although she oozes it naturally. She can make the old feel young, arouse the living and quicken the dead.

She’s as easy to meet as the neighbor’s wife. At the introduction, she tosses her head and shakes hands, a good husky handshake—the kind you get back in Indiana, where she came from. Then she walks across the room and pops into a chair, crosses her legs, reaches for one of her own cigarettes and bums a match. She bends quickly and scratches her ankle. I don’t know if her ankle itched or if it’s a habit. I didn’t ask her. I reckoned it was none of my business—or yours.

“What goes on?” she asked. Then she began interviewing us—Evans and Plummer of Movie and Radio Guide and me. Finally, simply by the ungentlemanly method of interrupting, I got in a question, something like “What are you doing this afternoon?”

“Oh, I’m taking a golf lesson. Want to come along? It’s a mar-ve-lous game. Simply won-der-ful! Of course, I’m not so hot at it, but I’m learning.”

If Miss Lombard doesn’t master golf it’ll be just about the only sport she hasn’t mastered.

It is just how I imagine her, lounging in a chair, shouting if she feels like it, bumming matches and talking to the interviewers about themselves rather than her. In so many interviews with her they mention her tendency to add inflections to everything she says—“mar-ve-lous and won-der-ful“—she just comes across as someone you would want to chat with, someone you would want to be friends with, to go next door and borrow a cup of sugar from.

The talk got around to pictures and to her husband. She called him “the old man” four times and “pa” twice. “He’s a great guy,” she said. “Look him up. Run out to the farm and see him. We’ve got a great farm. Twenty acres. It’s mar-ve-lous. Chickens, dogs, cats! That remind me. Here’s a funny one. When we got the cat we named it Joe Louis. But had to change it to Josephine. What a scrapper. Chases the dogs and ever’thing.”

Only Carole could get away with calling Clark “the old man”!

There has just been a tragedy at the Gables’. A tree was blown down. A twelve-year-old tree. When the Gables had it set out the tree expert neglected to take it out of the tub, but just planted tub and all. So a breeze got it. Oh yes, they have winds in Hollywood. In fact, the wind blows quite often and so does Hollywood.

But Miss Lombard is not upset about the tree. They are going to replant it, this time out of the tub so the roots can grab a hold of the earth and live and thrive as a good tree should.

She’s a mite bothered, however, about the chicken situation out at “the farm.” She and “pa” have 100 New Hampshire Reds. She knows her chickens. Nine out of ten persons in Hollywood don’t know the difference between a New Hampshire and a Rhode Island, but she does. However, she frets a bit because they artificial lights in the hen-houses and the lights go on before darn. The hens work overtime.

“I expect to wake up some morning and see the chickens picketing us.” She lit another cigarette and bummed another match. I gave her a deck of matches.

She sells the eggs to the retailers for all the traffic will bear and to her friends for twenty-five cents a dozen, C.O.D. Miss Lombard is a very smart business woman. She is very rich and pulled herself up by her shoulder-straps. She began to get famous, however, by not wearing shoulder-straps or much else.

The chickens were mainly Carole’s responsibility and even though they were a lot of work to care for, Clark kept those New Hampshire Reds and their descendants on the ranch until the day he died.

I think Carole was one of those people who you would stop by her house for what you thought would be five minutes and before you knew it, you got to chatting and five minutes became five hours. She just comes across as such a warm, chatty, forthcoming person.

On how she chose her stage name:

“I took Lombard because I adored Mr. and Mrs. Harry Lombard, friends of our family. I just picked up Carole because I liked it. At first I dropped the ‘e’, but I tacked it on later for good measure. My first idea was to name myself Carrolle. There’s a flossy one.”

She broke into a laugh. “Then I thought of Carrulle. Isn’t it won-der-ful. Carrulle Lombard! But I got sane in time.”

On the premiere of Gone with the Wind in Atlanta:

“The mayor of Atlanta is the best mayor in the country. He’s mar-ve-lous! He handled that thing just right.”

On Margaret Mitchell and her husband, John Marsh:

“They are won-der-ful,” Miss Lombard reached for a coke. (Maybe that’s the Atlanta influence.) “John Marsh is a real fellow. He protects his wife as though she were a little girl. And they have such a happy home.”

On comedy: