Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Great On Screen Couples: Clark Gable and Carole Lombard.


Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, first met when they worked together in their only film, No Man of Her Own(1932). The story begins when, Gambler Babe Steward is in trouble with the law and decides to hide out in a small town. There he meets librarian Connie Randall. They flip a coin to decide whether or not to get married, which of course it does. Babe, meanwhile, continues his gambling while Connie believes that he has a respectable job working on Wall Street. Then one day, Connie finds Babe's marked cards in his desk. She shuffles the cards and when Babe plays a game of poker, he loses. Angry, Babe leaves for Rio de Janeiro. But, realizing that he loves Connie, he gives himself up to serve his jail sentence. Will the couple be reunited when he is free?

After filming was over Carole Lombard gave Clark Gable a ham with his picture on it.

Gable makes a very charming card shark and Lombard makes a very playful librarian, with a bit of a wild side. They both performed well together. I'm very surprised they only did one film together.



They met again and fell in love in 1936 while attending the Mayfair Ball hosted by Lombard. Gable, at the time, was married to oil heiress, Rhea Langham. It was major factor in Gable accepting the role of Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind, Louis B. Mayer sweetened the deal for Clark Gable by giving him enough money to settle a divorce agreement with Langham and marry Lombard. Gable divorced Langham on March 7, 1939 and proposed to Lombard in a telephone booth at the Brown Derby.

Gable and Lombard drove out to Kingman, Arizona on March 29, 1939 and were married. They bought a ranch previously owned by director Raoul Walsh in Encino, California, where they raised chickens and horses.

Unfortunately, On January 16, 1942, Lombard was a passenger on Trans-World Airlines Flight 3. She had just finished her 57th movie, To Be or Not to Be, and was on her way home when the flight's DC-3 airliner crashed into a mountain near Las Vegas, Nevada, killing all aboard. Clark Gable was never the same.

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