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| Birth Name(s) : Jane Alice Peters |
Date of Birth: October 6, 1908 |
| Status:
Married
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Partner:
Clark Gable |
| Profession:
Actor |
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Full Carole Lombard Biography
Carole Lombard was born Jane Alice Peters in Fort Wayne, Indiana on October 6, 1908. Her parents divorced in 1916 and Carole's mother took the family on a trip out West. While there they decided to settle down in the Los Angeles area in California. After being spotted playing baseball in the street with the neighborhood boys by a film director, Carole was signed to a one picture contract in 1921 when she was 12. The film in question was A PERFECT CRIME. Although she tried for other acting jobs, she would not be seen again for four years. For the time being she returned to a normal life, going to school and participating in athletics at which she was very good particularly track and field. At 15, Carole had had enough of school and quit. She joined a theater troupe and played in several stage shows, which were for the most part nothing to write home about.
In 1925, she passed a screen test and was signed to a contract with 20th Century Fox. Her first role as a Fox player was HEARTS AND SPURS where she had the lead. Right after that film Carole appeared in a western called DURAND OF THE BADLANDS. She rounded out 1925 in the comedy MARRIAGE IN TRANSIT. Other films that year included a number of shorts. In 1926, Carole was seriously injured in an automobile accident which left the left side of her face scarred. Once she had recovered, Fox canceled her contract. She did find work in a number of shorts during 1928 (thirteen of them), but did go back for a one time shot with Fox called ME, GANGSTER.
By now, the film industry was moving from the silent era to "talkies". While some had their careers end due to sound, Carole made a very smooth transition. Her first film with sound was HIGH VOLTAGE with Pathe (her new studio employer) in 1929. In 1931, Carole was teamed with William Powell in MAN OF THE WORLD. (In fact, she married Powell, but the union was a failure with a divorce in 1933). NO MAN OF HER OWN (1932) put Carole opposite Clark Gable for the first and only time. (They married in seven years later in 1939). By now she was with Paramount Studios and was one of their top stars. But it was 1934's TWENTIETH CENTURY that showed her true comedic talents and proved to the world what a fine actress she really was.
In 1936, Carole received her only Oscar nomination for Best Actress in MY MAN GODFREY. As Irene Bullock, she was superb in the role. Unfortunately, the coveted award went to Luise Ranier in THE GREAT ZIEGFELD which also won for Best Picture. She was now working about one film a year at her choosing, because she wanted any role she picked to be a good one. She was very adept at picking just the right part. And why not? She was smart enough to see through the good-ol-boy syndrome of the studio moguls. She commanded and received one of the top salaries in the business. At one time it was reported she was making $35, 000 a week.
She made but one film in 1941, that being MR. & MRS. SMITH. Her last film was in 1942, when Carole played Maria Tura in TO BE OR NOT TO BE. She did not live to see its release. Finished in 1941 at the time the US entered World War II, Carole went home to Indiana for a war bond rally. On January 16, 1942, Carole, her mother, and 20 other people were flying back to California when the plane went down outside of Las Vegas, Nevada. All perished. The highly acclaimed comedy actress was dead at the age of 33 and few have been able to match her talents since. |
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Additional Carole Lombard Biography
Her parents were Frederick C. Peters and Elizabeth Knight. Lombard's paternal grandfather, John Claus Peters, was the son of German immigrants, Claus Peters and Caroline Catherine Eberlin. One distant branch of Lombard's mother's family originated in England; her ancestors John and Martha Cheney emigrated to North America in 1634.
She was the youngest of three children. She spent her early childhood in a sprawling, two-story house at 704 Rockhill Street in Fort Wayne, near the St. Mary's River. Her parents divorced and her mother took the three children to Los Angeles in 1914, where Lombard eventually attended Fairfax High School. She was elected "May Queen" in 1924. She quit school to pursue acting full time, but graduated from Fairfax in 1927.
In October 1930, she met William Powell. They married on June 26, 1931. Lombard commented to fan magazines that she did not believe their sixteen-year age difference would present a problem, but friends felt they were ill-suited, as Lombard had an extroverted personality while Powell was more reserved. They divorced in 1933, but remained friends and worked together without acrimony, notably in My Man Godfrey. She was linked romantically to crooner Russ Columbo until his accidental death late in 1934.
Off-screen, she was much loved for her unpretentious personality and well known for her earthy sense of humor. She loved playing pranks during filming, and once joked about husband Gable (widely acknowledged the "King of Hollywood"), "If his pee-pee was one inch shorter, they'd be calling him the Queen of Hollywood."
When the US entered World War II at the end of 1941, Lombard travelled to her home state of Indiana for a war bond rally. At four o'clock (04:00 local time) on the morning of Friday, January 16, 1942, Lombard and her mother boarded a Trans World Airlines DC-3 airplane to return to California. After refueling in Las Vegas, Flight 3 took off on a clear night. However, beacons in the area had been blacked out because of the war, and the plane was 6.7 miles (10.8 km) off course. Twenty-three minutes after takeoff, the plane crashed into "Double Up Peak" near the 8,300-foot (2500 meter) level of Mount Potosi, 32 miles (52 km) southwest of Las Vegas. All 22 passengers were killed. A plaque marks the spot.
Just before boarding the plane, Carole had addressed her fans, saying: "Before I say goodbye to you all, come on and join me in a big cheer! V for Victory!" President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who admired her patriotism, declared her the first woman killed in the line of duty during the war and posthumously awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Shortly after her death at the age of thirty-three, Gable (who was inconsolable and devastated by his loss) joined the United States Army Air Forces, serving as a gunner on a bomber on combat missions over Europe. The Liberty ship SS Lombard was named for her and Gable attended its launch on January 15, 1944.
Her final film, To Be or Not to Be, directed by Ernst Lubitsch and co-starring Jack Benny, a satire about Nazism and World War II, was in post-production at the time of her death. The film's producers decided to cut the part of the film in which her character asks "What can happen in a plane?" as they felt it was in poor taste, given the circumstances of Lombard's death. A similar editing instance happened when the 1940 Warner Brother cartoon A Wild Hare was reissued. Lombard's name was originally mentioned in a game of "Guess Who" between Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd, but all reissue prints have the name dubbed over with Barbara Stanwyck's.
On January 18, 1942, Jack Benny did not perform his usual program, both out of respect for Lombard and grief at her death. Instead, he devoted his program to an all-music format.
Lombard is interred at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. The name on her crypt marker is "Carole Lombard Gable". Although Gable remarried, he was interred next to her when he died in 1960. Her mother, Elizabeth Peters, who also perished in the plane crash that killed her daughter, was interred on the other side of her.
In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Lombard 23rd on its list of the 50 greatest American female screen legends. She received one Academy Award for Best Actress nomination, for My Man Godfrey. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 6930 Hollywood Blvd.
Her Fort Wayne childhood home has been designated an historic landmark. The city named the nearby bridge over the St. Mary's River the "Carole Lombard Memorial Bridge." |
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Carole Lombard Quote(s)
| I've lived by a man's code designed to fit a man's world, yet at the same time I never forget that a woman's first job is to choose the right shade of lipstick. |
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