Line #18 Creator/CaroleLombard


1	[[quoteright:325:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/highly_photogenic_lombard.jpg]]
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3	->''"She was so alive, modern, frank, and natural that she stands out like a beacon on a lightship in this odd place called Hollywood."''
4	-->-- '''Creator/BarbaraStanwyck'''
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6	Carole Lombard (born Jane Alice Peters; October 6, 1908 – January 16, 1942) was an American actor during UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfHollywood, renowned for her ditzy ScrewballComedy heroines and her playful personality. Think of her as the Creator/ReeseWitherspoon of her time.
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8	Lombard began her film career in low-budget [[SilentMovie silent]] Creator/TwentiethCenturyFox films playing blonde ingénues and the like. Discovered by Mack Sennett (famous for his two-reel comedies during the Silent Era), she became one of his Bathing Beauties, and honed in her skills as a comedienne during this time.
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10	With the emergence of sound, Lombard transitioned easily, and she signed a contract with Creator/{{Paramount}} in 1930. There she met Creator/WilliamPowell, who she married the following year. They divorced in 1933, but [[AmicablyDivorced continued to be good friends afterwards]]. Lombard was also good friends with actor William Haines, and after Haines was fired by MGM for refusing to hide his homosexuality, she helped him transition to a successful interior design career by hiring him to decorate her home and having that promoted in film and decorating magazines.
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12	During the early 1930s, Lombard mostly appeared in mediocre film, playing variants on the brainless blonde. All that changed, however, with her breakout hit, ''Film/TwentiethCentury''. Alongside the respected actor Creator/JohnBarrymore, she held her own, and the film not only solidified her star power, but cemented the ScrewballComedy genre, leading ''Life'' magazine to subsequently dub her Hollywood's "Screwball Comedy Queen."
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14	Other classics followed: ''Film/HandsAcrossTheTable'' (1935, featuring a young Creator/FredMacMurray), ''Film/MyManGodfrey'' (1936, co-starring William Powell), ''Film/NothingSacred'' (1937, co-starring Creator/FredricMarch) -- the latter being her favorite film. Her daft sense of humor made her a favorite among colleagues and friends alike; she was the glamorous leading lady who [[LadySwearsALot loved swearing like a sailor]] -- they called her "the Profane Angel" -- who also loved hunting, playing sports, and hanging out with everyone, from the glamorous stars to the crew.
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16	Notoriously, Lombard was also known for [[ThePrankster her mischievous antics]] throughout her life and here are just ''some'' [[Funny/CaroleLombard outrageous examples]]: on her first and only movie with Creator/ClarkGable (''Film/{{No Man of Her Own\|1932}}''), she [[https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/clark_and_carole_clark_ham_present.jpg gave him a ham with his picture on the front]], thinking him a stuffed shirt; she gave director Creator/WilliamAWellman a straitjacket as a gift while shooting ''Film/NothingSacred''; Creator/AlfredHitchcock was known for his infamous remark about actors being cattle, so while filming ''[[Film/MrAndMrsSmith1941 Mr. & Mrs. Smith]]'' with him she [[https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/lombard_and_montgomery_with_cattle.jpg brought three calves onto the set]], calling them "Carole", "Bob", and "Gene" (Creator/RobertMontgomery and Gene Raymond being her co-stars) and hanging a sign on their pen reading "Mr. Hitchcock's Cattle"; always the attention-lover, she went to a party for a friend who had been released from a sanitarium, arrived in an ambulance, and shocked the guests as she was lifted into the room on a stretcher. Clark Gable, who was also a guest, thought the joke in poor taste.
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18	Late in 1936, though, Lombard and Gable became completely smitten and were soon inseparable. They became Hollywood’s most glamorous couple and got HappilyMarried on March 29th, 1939.
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20	In the late '30s and early '40s, Lombard [[TomHanksSyndrome tried her hand at dramas]], but they failed with the public and critics. Due to these box offices duds, she returned to comedies; her two last were, respectively, the aforementioned ''Mr. & Mrs. Smith'' (which also happened to be Hitchcock's only pure comedy) and Creator/ErnstLubitsch's ''Film/ToBeOrNotToBe''.
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22	America's entrance into UsefulNotes/WorldWarTwo sparked Lombard's patriotism, and she traveled the country to promote war bonds for the effort. After selling more than $2 million in bonds at one Indianapolis rally, Carole, along with her mother Bessie and Gable's friend and publicist Otto Winkler, boarded a flight to Calfornia on January 16, 1942. After stopping to refuel in Las Vegas, their DC-3 plane lost course and crashed into a nearby mountain, with none of the passengers surviving. Lombard was only 33 years old.
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24	The country mourned what it considered its first celebrity casualty of the war, [[TheMourningAfter Gable was never the same again]] [[TheLostLenore without her]], and the silver screen lost its most revered comedic star.
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26	Carole's influence would continue to be felt beyond the grave, when her best friend Creator/LucilleBall would claim that Carole had appeared to her in a dream and convinced her to "give it a whirl" -- ''it'' being the then-new and untested medium of television. The result was ''Series/ILoveLucy'', which came to define the television {{sitcom}} even more profoundly than Carole's own work had defined the ScrewballComedy genre.
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29	!!Carole Lombard films on TV Tropes:
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31	* ''Film/TheJohnstownFlood'' (1926)
32	* ''Film/LadiesMan'' (1931)
33	* ''Film/ManOfTheWorld'' (1931)
34	* ''Film/{{No Man of Her Own\|1932}}'' (1932)
35	* ''Film/{{Virtue}}'' (1932)
36	* ''Film/BriefMoment'' (1933)
37	* ''Film/TheEagleAndTheHawk'' (1933)
38	* ''Film/TwentiethCentury'' (1934)
39	* ''Film/HandsAcrossTheTable'' (1935)
40	* ''Film/LoveBeforeBreakfast'' (1936)
41	* ''Film/MyManGodfrey'' (1936)
42	* ''Film/NothingSacred'' (1937) — Her only Technicolor film.
43	* ''Film/SwingHighSwingLow'' (1937)
44	* ''Film/TrueConfession'' (1937)
45	* ''Film/FoolsForScandal'' (1938)
46	* ''Film/{{In Name Only\|1939}}'' (1939)
47	* ''Film/MadeForEachOther'' (1939)
48	* ''Theatre/TheyKnewWhatTheyWanted'' (1940)
49	* ''[[Film/MrAndMrsSmith1941 Mr. & Mrs. Smith]]'' (1941)
50	* ''Film/ToBeOrNotToBe'' (1942)
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53	!!Tropes associated with Carole Lombard's works:
54	* {{Cloudcuckoolander}}: Her best-remembered characters are often wrapped up in their own worlds.
55	* GaussianGirl: Invoked. After Lombard experienced a horrific car accident in 1926 (the windshield shattered and the glass landed on both her and her friend in the passenger seat), she had to have emergency surgery (without anesthetic!), which left her with a few scars; a noticeable one was on her left cheek but manipulated lighting hid it most of the time and made her look softer on camera.
56	* HairOfGoldHeartOfGold: Many of Lombard's protagonist characters are innocent and kind-hearted, with Irene in ''My Man Godfrey'' being perhaps the most notable example.
57	* StageNames: She took the name "Carol Lombard" when she signed with Fox. After Paramount mistakenly billed her as "Carole" for one of her early pictures with them, she decided she liked it better that way and kept it.
58	* WhatCouldHaveBeen:
59	** She was cast to play the lead in a film called ''They All Kissed the Bride'', but was killed shortly before filming began. Her part was recast with Creator/JoanCrawford, who donated her salary from the film to the American Red Cross.
60	** Creator/AlfredHitchcock wanted to cast her in more of his films in serious roles, feeling that she was a capable dramatic actor. However, she died shortly after their only film together, which ironically enough was yet another screwball comedy (''Mr. & Mrs. Smith'').

Context Creator / CaroleLombard