Looking for Mabel Normand

CAROLE LOMBARD

and yet another

"madcap"

Sennett actress

Last week I was remembered that Carole Lombard had been born 100 years ago as of October 6; I posted a picture of her in the 2008 Silent Star Album at Looking-for-Mabel. Since than I have received a number of articles in my email mailbox about the lovely and funny Carole (with an “E”). Why there was even a reprint of the announcement of her birth, October 6, 1908, a couple of early notices from 1925 where they refer to Carole with an “E” at the end of her name, so it seems it wasn’t added later, it was there at the beginning. The reprints that are part of this birthday wish for the lovely madcap comedian were supplied by the film historian, William M. Drew.

The internet has a large number of tribute site dedicated to “the lovely MADCAP Sennett actress”, she is a wonderful example of the style and class of the woman that peopled Hollywood. She was her own person.

Jane Alice Peters (Carole Lombard) was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana on October 6, 1908. After her parents divorced, her mother moved with Jane and her two older brothers to Los Angeles. Jane even went to Fairfax High School, over on Melrose, she dropped out of school when Fox Studio signed her to a film called ‘Marriage in Transit’ and changed her name to Carole Lombard, in 1925. Her career almost came to an end when she was in a car accident and her face was scared, in 1926.

Mack Sennett put Carole under contract and in 1927, she was a ‘Bathing Beauty’ Mack had begun to moved the ‘Beauties” from the background to the foreground in his films, and found that Carole had real comedy talent. The costumes were getting pretty scanty and needed to be glued on, Carole was noticed. So another, talented, madcap, beauty slipped away from Mack, Carole moved on to bigger contracts, better pictures.

By October 1931, she was married to William Powell, the bride was just 23 and the groom was 39. This was a rather short marriage; they divorced in 1933 but remained friends and worked together later on the fantastic ‘My Man Godfrey.’ Carole married a second time to the mega star, Clark Gable in 1939.

She was the queen of Screwball Comedy, her public adored her and her husband loved her. When the United States entered WW II, Carole began to work with the government to sell War Bonds, much like Mabel had done during WW I. In a flight back to Los Angeles after a bond rally in Indiana on January 16, 1942 with her mother with some twenty people on broad, her plane crushed near Las Vegas, everyone was killed.