Carole Lombard (born Jane Alice Peters on October 6, 1908) was an American actress, renowned for her energetic, often off-beat roles in screwball comedies. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Lombard no. 23 on its list of the greatest female stars of Classic Hollywood Cinema.
Lombard was born into a wealthy family in Fort Wayne, Indiana, but was raised in Los Angeles, CA by her single mother. At 12, she was recruited by director Allan Dwan and made her screen debut in A Perfect Crime (1921). She signed a contract with the Fox Film Corporation at age 16, but mainly played bit parts and was dropped after a year. Her career came close to ending shortly before her 19th birthday when a shattered windshield from a car accident left a scar on her face. Lombard survived this trauma and later appeared in 15 short comedies for Mack Sennett from 1927 to 1929, and then began appearing in feature films such as High Voltage (1929) and The Racketeer (1929). After a successful appearance in The Arizona Kid (1930), she was signed to a contract by Paramount Pictures.
Paramount quickly began casting Lombard as a leading lady, primarily in drama films. Her profile increased when she married William Powell in 1931, but the couple divorced amicably after two years. A turning point in Lombard’s career came when she starred in Howard Hawks’s pioneering screwball comedy Twentieth Century (1934). The actress found her niche in this genre, and continued to appear in films such as Hands Across the Table (1935, forming a popular partnership with Fred MacMurray); My Man Godfrey (1936), for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress and co-starring with Powell; and Nothing Sacred (1937). At this time, Lombard married Clark Gable, and the glam couple attracted immense attention from the media. Aspiring to win an Oscar, Lombard began to move toward serious roles at the end of the decade. Unsuccessful in this aim, she returned to comedy in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941) and Ernst Lubitsch’s To Be or Not to Be (1942), which would be her final film role.
Lombard died at the age of 33 (Jan. 16, 1942) in the crash of TWA Flight 3 on Mount Potosi, Nevada, while returning from a war bond tour which raised about $2. The plane mis-navigated the mountain range.
Lombard played tennis, volleyball and swam at Virgil Junior High School.
Away from her career as an entertainer, Lombard loved tennis. She hung out on tennis courts from 1934 on, she played tennis to stay in shape, played for hours at a stretch, she took pride in her outstanding skills.
A little known fact is Lombard was involved in the career of a Grand Slam champion – her sponsorship of a then down-and-out young American player Alice Marble influenced tennis history. Carole motivated Alice out of her sick bed in a Monrovia, California, tuberculosis sanitarium and willed her back onto the court. At the start, Marble was 45 pounds overweight and lacked the strength to walk a flight of stairs, let alone play three sets of tennis. Within a couple of years Marble was winning Wimbledon and the U.S. Open after treatment by doctors that Carole recommended. Marble played her matches in clothes bought by Lombard, with Carole and hubby Gable court side at every opportunity. Carole hustled Marble nightclub gigs as a singer and tried to land her in the motion picture business.
Marble won a total of 18 Grand Slam titles between 1936-1940 (all on grass): five in singles (5-0 in finals, 4 US, one Wimbledon), six in women’s doubles, and seven in mixed doubles. She was ranked world No. 1 in 1939. (Marble never played French Open or Australian Open.)
After Lombard’s untimely death, Marble continued as a tennis pro and evolved to teaching, with pupils that included the woman who changed the modern game, Billie Jean (Moffitt) King.
Alice Marble · Carole Lombard · Clark Gable · Hollywood