Carole Lombard

This documentary offers a loving tribute to one of Hollywood's most beloved actors, Clark Gable. Burgess Meredith narrates and many of Gable's closest friends and colleagues remember him. Their stories are rounded out with rarely-seen home movies of the great actor and his wife Carole Lombard and many film clips. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This documentary highlights the careers and lives of some of the most famous actresses of early cinema. Some of the ladies featured in this video are Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Carole Lombard, and Joan Crawford. These actresses from Hollywood's Golden Age were different in the types of films they were known for, from romantic comedy to high drama, but they were all the queens of the movie industry. You will watch some of their performances, listen to stories from historians and critics about their illustrious careers, and hear to the stars themselves in excerpts from interviews they did on television. There are rare photographs of the stars and outtakes from many of their movies. ~ Cecilia Cygnar, All Movie Guide

The first of documentary producer Robert Youngson's feature-length silent comedy compilations, The Golden Age of Comedy began life as a short subject, consisting of vintage clips from the Mack Sennett vaults. When Youngson struck a deal with the Hal Roach studios, he was able to expand the film's running time with pristine-quality vignettes from the Roach catalogue. While many past greats are highlighted in Golden Age, the compilation's true "stars" are Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, shown at their very best in lengthy excerpts from such 2-reel classics as The Second Hundred Years (1927), You're Darn Tootin' (1928) Two Tars (1928) and Double Whoopee (1929) (the latter featuring a 17-year-old starlet named Jean Harlow). Thanks to Youngson, the legendary pie fight scene from Laurel and Hardy's Battle of the Century (1927) was saved from the brink of extinction and is included herein. The rest of the film offers choice comic bits from the likes of Ben Turpin, Billy Bevan, Will Rogers, Charley Chase, Harry Langdon, and even Carole Lombard. Our only carp is that the narration is frequently superfluous; we can see the gags, we don't need them explained to us. The Golden Age of Comedy was the surprise hit of 1958, spawning several future Youngson compilations, including a brace of 1960s films devoted almost exclusively to Laurel and Hardy. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Ernst Lubitsch directs the 1942 political satire classic To Be or Not to Be, which marked the final screen appearance of comedienne Carole Lombard. In Warsaw at the beginning of WWII, Maria Tura (Lombard) and husband Joseph (Jack Benny) perform anti-Nazi plays with their theater troupe until they are forced to switch to Shakespeare's Hamlet. Lt. Stanislav Sobinski (Robert Stack) falls for Maria and meets up with her during Joseph's famous "To Be or Not to Be" speech as Hamlet. When Stanislav is eventually dispatched for war, he implicates Maria with Professor Siletsky (Stanley Ridges), who has a secret plan to destroy the Warsaw resistance. The Polish theater troupe is then forced to use their theatrical skills to ensure their survival. Eventually, they turn to impersonating Nazi officers -- and even Hitler himself -- in order to outwit the enemy and keep the resistance safe from spies. To Be or Not to Be opened to a controversial release in 1942, when the U.S. was still very much involved in WWII. It was remade in 1983 starring Mel Brooks and real-life wife Anne Bancroft. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

A dedicated nurse in a British hospital takes a nervous rookie under her wing. When the new nurse messes up and causes a patient's death, she protects her and loses her job. She eventually finds work at another bigger and more rundown hospital and there falls in love with a handsome young doctor. Trouble comes in the form of a lustful chief of staff who makes a play for the nurse. When she spurns him, he arranges to have her fired. Still determined to practice her profession the nurse and her fledgling assistant start their own service. Later a terrible epidemic strikes and she and her helper suddenly find themselves in demand at the hospital. There, the younger nurse redeems herself by making a great sacrifice and her mentor's own selfless devotion is finally recognized. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Based on Memory of Love, a novel by Bessie Breuer, In Name Only is soap opera par excellence, blessed with a peerless cast. Carole Lombard plays widow Julie Eden, who meets and falls in love with unhappily married Alec Walker (Cary Grant). Having married Alec solely for his wealth and family prestige, his manipulative wife, Maida (Kay Francis), has managed to convince everyone -- even Alec's parents -- that she is the victimized one and that Alec is an irresponsible philanderer. Making matters worse, Maida refuses to give Alec a divorce so that he can find happiness in the arms of the sweet, unassuming Julie. Almost miraculously, Maida agrees to let Alec go, only to capriciously renege at the last minute and sue Julie for alienation of affections. Disconsolately, Alec goes on a bender, falling asleep in front of an open window and contracting pneumonia. As Alec lays seriously ill in a hospital bed, Julie tearfully agrees to give him up if only Maida will try to make him happy. But Maida isn't about to give up this moment of triumph, cheerfully bragging about her underhanded methods and her intention to take Alec for every penny that he has. Without giving away the outcome, it can be noted that, figuratively speaking, loose lips sink ships. Though In Name Only could have been a wallow in bathos, the performances by the stars -- and the knowing direction of John Cromwell -- elevate the production to the level of "romance classic." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In her only Warner Bros. starring film, Carole Lombard plays a Hollywood movie actress who makes the park-bench acquaintance of an impoverished French marquis (Fernand Gravet). Hoping to coerce Carole into marriage, the nobleman poses as a butler and enters her household. His plan is to compromise Lombard and force her to make him an "honest man"--with the attendant cash settlement. Ralph Bellamy, as ever, is the poor clod who really loves Lombard but who loses her in the end to the chastened Gravet. Rodgers and Hart were commissioned to write several songs for this film, but found most of their efforts consigned to the cutting room floor. Fools for Scandal was based on Nancy Hamilton's stage play Return Engagement. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

"This is New York, Skyscraper Champion of the World...Where the Slickers and Know-It-Alls peddle gold bricks to each other...And where Truth, crushed to earth, rises again more phony than a glass eye..." With this jaundiced opening title, scripter Ben Hecht introduces his classic comedy Nothing Sacred. Fredric March plays Wally Cook, a hotshot reporter condemned to writing obituaries because of his unwitting complicity in a fraud. Anxious to get back in the good graces of his editor Oliver Stone (Walter Connolly), Cook pounces on the story of New England girl Hazel Flagg (Carole Lombard), who is reportedly dying from radiation poisoning. Actually, Hazel isn't dying at all; she's been misdiagnosed by Moscow's eternally drunk doctor (Charles Winninger). But when Cook offers to take her on an all-expenses-paid trip to New York in exchange for her exclusive story, it's too good an offer to pass up. Once in the Big Apple, Hazel is feted as a heroine by the novelty-seeking populac; she enjoys the adulation at first, but soon (and with the help of gallons of alcoholic beverages) suffers the pangs of conscience. She confesses her deception to Cook, who by now has fallen in love with her. Cook and Stone conspire to keep the public from discovering the truth, eventually dreaming up a phony suicide. Travelling incognito to avoid arrest, Wally and Hazel marry and go on a honeymoon, secure in the knowledge that New York City has forgotten all about her and moved on to their next fad. Brimming with witty, acerbic dialogue and hilarious bits of physical business, Nothing Sacred is among the best "screwball" comedies of the 1930s. The musical score by Oscar Levant both mocks and celebrates the George Gershwinesque musical style then in vogue. As an added bonus, the film is lensed in Technicolor (avoid those two-color reissue prints), allowing modern viewers to see what New York City looked liked back in 1937. Nothing Sacred was later adapted into a Broadway musical, Hazel Flagg, which in turn was filmed by Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis as Living It Up (1954), with Lewis in the Carole Lombard role. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The 1936 comedy-mystery The Princess Comes Across might well have been inspired by a real-life incident during the silent-movie era, in which a crafty San Francisco stenographer hoodwinked the Hollywood elite into believing that she was a Spanish princess. Carole Lombard stars as an alluring Swedish beauty who travels under the name of Princess Olga. Everyone whom she meets en route to America on the steamship Mammoth bows and scrapes to the Princess, while Hollywood anxiously awaits her arrival to star her in a big-budget film. Only the ship's bandleader, King Mantell (Fred MacMurray), refuses to defer to Olga, sensing that she may not be all she claims. Mantell's instincts are right on target: the "Princess" is a brass-nickel phony, a Brooklyn girl named Wanda Nash who has cooked up her royal guise with drama coach Gertrude (Alison Skipworth) as a publicity stunt to crash into movies. Unfortunately, a weaselly blackmailer Darcy (Porter Hall) gloms onto Wanda's true identity and offers to keep quiet in exchange for a huge cash settlment. At the same time, Darcy is attempting to shake down several other passengers on the Mammoth, including King Mantell. Inevitably, Darcy is found murdered in the "Princess"'s stateroom, and Wanda finds herself one of several likely suspects, among them Mantell. A quintet of international detectives, travelling to a convention in America, sets out to solve the mystery, which becomes even more mysterious when one of the detectives also turns up dead. Taking matters in his own hands, Mantell vows to clear Wanda's name, and in the course of things he realizes that he's madly in love with her--but will Wanda give up her hoax, and her future showbiz career, for Mantell's sake? Among the many highlights in this engagingly daffy film is Fred MacMurray's rendition of the enchantingly forgettable song "My Concertina." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

One of the landmark "screwball" comedies of the 1930s, My Man Godfrey offers the radiant Carole Lombard in her definitive performance as flighty young heiress Irene Bullock, who on a society scavenger hunt stumbles on Godfrey (William Powell), an erudite hobo residing in the city dump. Godfrey becomes the family's butler, much to the dismay of Irene's father Alexander (Eugene Pallette), who thinks his household is crazy enough without another apparent lunatic under his roof. Halfway through the film, we discover that Godfrey isn't a penniless bum at all, but the scion of a wealthy Boston family. Having been burned by an unhappy romance, Godfrey dropped out of life, taking up residence in the dump. Here his faith in humanity was restored by his fellow indigents, who managed to survive and remain optimistic despite the worst deprivations. Meanwhile, however, he wants to straighten out the Bullock family, who he feels are a basically decent bunch beneath all their pretensions and eccentricities -- and along the way, of course, Irene determines that Godfrey will be her husband. While Godfrey's ultimate "solution" to the exigencies of the Depression seems more of a placebo, My Man Godfrey is all in all a totally satisfying jolt of 1930s-style wish fulfillment. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A follow-up to the highly successful Bolero, this lively romantic drama stars George Raft as Joe Martin, a Cuban-American dancer who lives and works in Havana with his lovely partner Goldie Allen until a bad case of varicose veins forces impacts his career. One night, the beauteous gringa heiress Diane Harrison (Carole Lombard) comes to the club. Joe is immediately smitten. His interest takes a less fleshly turn when he learns that she owns a yacht. When Diane compliments Joe on his moves, her escort gets jealous and a fight ensues. Joe finds himself jobless and flees to the jungle where he learns the rumba from the exotic Carmelita (Margo). He loves the dance and predicts that it will be the next fad. To promote it, he and Margo open a new club in Havana. The place is a smash. Diane returns, is wowed by both Joe and the dance and offers to bring back to his native New York. But Joe came to Havana after ratting on a gangster and if he returns, will surely die. Still, he and Margo decide to take the risk and their choice results in romance. The spectacular dance numbers were choreographed by the famed dance team Veloz and Yolanda. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Carole Lombard's only MGM film, The Gay Bride has been cited by some as a precursor to 1988's Married to the Mob -- only without the laughs. Adapted by the usually reliable Samuel and Bella Spewack from Charles Francis Coe's magazine story Repeal, the film charts the misadventures of gold-digging chorine Mary (Lombard), who marries powerful bootlegger Shoots Magis (Nat Pendleton) so that she can live in the lap of luxury -- only to suffer a major disappointment when Prohibition is repealed. After a few amusing episodes with the deadly but basically likeable Magis, he's unexpectedly bumped off by gangster Dingle (Sam Hardy). Mary takes this in stride and moves in on Dingle, whereupon he's killed by mob boss Mickey (Leo Carrillo) -- so guess whom Mary snuggles up to next. Handsome "Office Boy" (Chester Morris), Magis' former chauffeur/bodyguard, continues carrying a torch for Mary throughout the picture, undoubtedly hoping that all of his rivals will eventually kill each other off. Wavering uncertainly between screwball comedy and gangster melodrama, The Gay Bride was met with indifference by the public -- and by its studio, which virtually threw the picture away. In later years, Carole Lombard tagged the film as her worst; it's not that by any means, but it's a far distance from her best. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Bolero stars George Raft as Raoul de Barre, an arrogant dancer who rises to fame in the years prior to, during, and after WW I. Raoul is helped along the way by his promoter brother Mike (William Frawley) and scores of willing females, matriculating from two-bit gigolo to the greatest ballroom dancer in Paris. Determining that nothing will stand in his way to the top, he regularly fires any female dancing partner who has the misfortune to fall in love with him -- until the last of his partners, the beautiful Helen (Carole Lombard) beats him to the punch by walking out on him. His heart weakened during the war, Raoul aspires to open his own nightclub, despite warnings that if he ever dances again the consequences will be fatal. On opening night of his new establishment, Raoul dances Maurice Ravel's "Bolero" with Helen, now the wife of a British nobleman. Having reached his emotional and professional pinnacle, Raoul collapses and dies in his dressing room -- as the nightclub patrons, oblivious to his fate, loudly demand an encore. Surprisingly, George Raft and Carole Lombard's dancing is doubled by others, but the same cannot be said of the inimitable Sally Rand, whose famous fan dance is tastefully re-created here. Raft and Lombard later reteamed in 1935's Rumba. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide