Feature: My Momentary Celebrity Obsession – Carole Lombard

 Your eye  might have been caught by a certain striking image on the left panel of the page of lovely Miss Carole Lombard. She is the first in my latest addition to this blog under the concept of current obsessions. Expect this to change as my tastes do.

Carole Lombard

I discovered Lombard through Alfred Hitchcock’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith, which has the distinction of being the director’s only American film to be a straight comedy. Lombard immediately caught my eye because not only is she beautiful but she is one of the best comedienne’s film has ever seen. Unfortunately, I started this blog just after watching a major handful of her movies I had DVRed off TCM. I have some on my Netflix queue, however, so I’ll be talking about her soon enough.

If you have no clue about whom I’m rattling, My Man Godfrey  is a must see. She plays a daffy young woman belonging to an equally off-center family of wealth who takes in a “forgotten man” (i.e. homeless) as their butler. The story goes that William Powell, who played Godfrey, the butler, insisted Lombard be given the role despite their having been divorced a short time previous. The flick is definitely now a classic, and I think Lombard had much to do with that.

Tragically, Lombard died in a small plane crash (into a mountain) in 1942 when returning with her mother from her home state of Indiana where she had been promoting the U.S. war effort. She was 34 and married to Clark Gable at the time, who, although he remarried, would be buried beside Lombard upon his death.

Sources: Robert Osborne

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