And the Rest Is History

by Marlene Wagman-Geller

  The first time Wallis met Edward was on January 10, when his mistress, Lady Thelma Furness, introduced them at her country home in Leicestershire, where the Simpsons had been invited as her houseguests. Wallis later recalled that she was taken with Edward’s “slightly wind-rumpled hair, the turned-up nose, and a strange, wistful, almost sad look about the eyes when his expression was in repose.” In his memoirs Edward writes that when he first met Wallis, she was suffering from a bad cold. He asked her if she missed American central heating, to which she replied, “I’m sorry, Sir, but you have disappointed me. Every American woman who comes to your country is always asked that same question. I had hoped for something more original from the Prince of Wales.”

  In 1934, Lady Furness needed to go to New York to support her sister in a custody battle over her daughter, Gloria Vanderbilt, and she asked Wallis, over a luncheon at the Ritz, for a favor in regard to her royal lover: “Look after the little man. See that he does not get into any mischief.” Thelma viewed Wallis as unattractive and therefore not a threat, but soon after the lunch, Thelma discovered the naiveté of her beliefs.

  Lady Simpson became the prince’s ever-present shadow; a special branch of the police trailed them and reported “that the lady seemed to have POW [Prince of Wales] completely under her thumb.” A besotted Edward said, “In character, Wallis was, and still remains, complex and elusive, and from the first I looked upon her as the most independent woman I had ever met. This refreshing trait I was inclined to put down as one of the happiest outcomes of 1776.”

  For Wallis’s part, the prince proved the open sesame to a world she had always longed to enter. She said, “Yachts materialized; the best suites in the finest hotels were flung open; airplanes stood waiting ... it was like being Wallis in Wonderland.” Their love affair assumed critical mass with the death of King George when his son ascended the throne. Three months after his succession, he expressed his desire to marry Mrs. Simpson as soon as her divorce came through. The queen mother refused to accept his choice of bride and referred to Wallis as “that woman.” Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin declared that the British people would never countenance a twice-divorced American woman as their queen; moreover, as the king was head of the Church of England, it would also be against its precepts for him to marry a divorcée. Edward’s choice was clear: take a suitable bride or abdicate.

  If Edward gave up the throne, it would mean renouncing his family, who would not forgive the royal scandal. He was informed that if he ever were to enter Britain without an invitation, his stipend would be terminated. Moreover, from age sixteen he had been trained for his royal role; he knew no other. The official motto of the Prince of Wales is the German motto “Ich dien” (“I serve”), and therefore his betrayal of his family extended to the betrayal of his countrymen. Despite these pressures, on December 11, 1936, Edward made his worldwide broadcast: “I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as king as I would wish without the help and the support of the woman I love.” Surprisingly, Wallis did not want the abdication, offering rather to assume the role of royal mistress. She explained, “How can a woman be a whole empire to a man?”

  To commemorate Wallis’s coup of having a royal abdicate on her behalf, Time named her “Woman of the Year,” the first occasion the magazine had ever given its “Man of the Year” title to a woman. The man who would not be king, the newly titled Duke of Windsor, gave his fiancée an engagement ring with a massive 19.77-karat Mogul emerald with the inscription WE are ours now. (The W stood for Wallis, the E for Edward.) The couple married on June 3, 1937, at Chateau de Cande, France. The new king, George VI, forbade any members of the royal family to attend. The queen mother never changed her view of her despised daughter-in-law and forever maintained, “To give up all this for that.” Proof of the spell their romance cast on the world: In 1998 Sotheby’s sold, for $29,000, a slice of the couple’s wedding cake in a box marked “A piece of our wedding cake WE WE 3-VI-37.” Winston Churchill called their romance “one of the great loves of history.”

  For her part, the newly created Duchess of Windsor took as her maxim, “Never explain, never complain.” Wallis later told writer Gore Vidal that the morning after her nuptials, she woke to find her husband “standing beside the bed, saying, ‘And now what shall we do?’” For their honeymoon they spent time in Venice, where they attended a performance of Romeo and Juliet. As they entered, the audience rose to its feet and roared, “Viva l’amore!”

  The duke and duchess did not have a common love story, nor was their world a common one. They lived in baronial splendor and assumed the role of social royalty who were invited to the grandest soirees of the world. Their own dinner parties were never-to-be-forgotten events; one fortunate guest stated, “An invitation from the Duchess was like a gift from God.” They never had any children but were always surrounded by their adored pugs, who dined from silver bowls, were sprayed with Christian Dior perfume, and wore mink, diamond-studded collars, and gold Cartier leashes.

  In the 1930s, as the Nazi storm clouds gathered over Europe, people welcomed the romance of the duke and his duchess, a true-life fairy tale in which a king relinquished his empire because it meant nothing without the woman he loved.

  Postscript

  Edward passed away in 1972 at his home in Paris. His body was returned from exile and he was laid in state in Windsor Castle. In attendance at the funeral were his niece, Queen Elizabeth II; the royal family, and his wife, the Duchess of Windsor. It concluded with a blessing given by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Eight soldiers from the Welsh Guard carried his coffin draped with the duke’s personal standard. He was laid to rest in the Royal Mausoleum of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert at Frogmore.

  Wallis passed away fourteen years later in her Parisian home and was brought to London for the burial. One hundred guests, including Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Queen Elizabeth, and Prince Philip, as well as the entire royal family, were in attendance for the simple funeral service. Her tombstone bears the inscription “Wallis, Duchess of Windsor.”

  20

  Clark Gable and Carole Lombard

  1932

  When the king of the silver screen fell for the queen of screwball comedy, their romance tugged at the collective strings of Hollywood’s heart. Although their years together were few, their love story remains an iconic one from cinema’s Golden Age.

  Jane Alice Peters was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 1908. After her parents divorced, her mother took Jane and her two brothers to Los Angeles. Protective of their younger sister, her siblings taught her to swear as a verbal shield to fend off unwelcome suitors. She made her film debut at age twelve after a director saw her playing baseball in the street. A natural ham, she dropped out of school at age fifteen to pursue an acting career. Two years later she was signed by Fox Studios; her main assets were her high cheekbones and figure, which she wore to perfection in her trademark clingy gowns. She borrowed the name Lombard from a family friend, as she thought it had more allure than her own. After a devastating car accident, she was dropped by Fox and began working for Mack Sennett, where the legendary director of slapstick helped Carole develop her superb comic timing. The Hoosier became known in Hollywood as “the profane angel” because of the juxtaposition of her flawless face and expert command of four-letter words.

  Carole’s destiny, William Clark Gable, was born in Ohio; his mother passed away when he was ten months old. He enjoyed hunting; however, he also enjoyed reciting Shakespeare. At age sixteen he was talked into traveling to Akron with a friend to work at a tire factory. It was in Ohio that Gable saw his first play and was hooked. He found work acting in a theatrical company until it folded. His net worth: twenty-six cents. Hopping freight trains, he piled logs, sold neckties, and became a telephone repairman. One of the last phones he fixed was at a theater, where he met Josephine Dillon, seventeen years his senior, a woman who was to be more of a mother figure than a wife. The two he
aded to Hollywood, where he hoped to break into movies.

  While his marriage began to deteriorate, his career picked up momentum; he appeared in regional theater, in road shows, and as an extra in the movies. A 1930 Los Angeles stage production made the studios take notice, though many producers felt that Gable’s ears would prove an impediment to success as a leading man. Two years later Clark had attained such heartthrob status that “Who do you think you are—Clark Gable?” became a standard put-down. One of his first reviews raved, “He’s young, vigorous and brutally masculine.” Gable’s off-screen persona mirrored his on-screen persona, and his penchant for sleeping with any woman with a heartbeat led to the demise of his marriage to Josephine. A few days after his divorce came through, he married Texas socialite Ria Langham, a widow ten years his senior.

  In 1932, Clark received a contract with MGM and starred in Possessed opposite Joan Crawford (then married to Douglas Fairbanks Jr.), in which they steamed up the room, both onscreen and off. Journalist Adela Rogers St. Johns deemed the relationship “the affair that nearly burned Hollywood down.” However, it was Gable’s unshaven lovemaking with braless Jean Harlow in Red Dust that put him on Hollywood’s radar. Knowing he was box-office gold for those who possessed estrogen, he was cast as the lead in It Happened One Night. In one scene he took off his shirt to reveal his bare chest. This gesture touched off a crisis among undershirt manufacturers. It also earned him the title “King of Hollywood.”

  The first time Carole met Clark was when they were both hired to star in a Paramount production of No Man of Her Own. At the time, Lombard was married to actor William Powell, and though the marriage was rocky, she still entertained hopes of it lasting. Dorothy Mackaill, who portrayed Gable’s onscreen discarded mistress, recalled a flare-up between Carole and Clark that ensued when Carole saw the leading man, on loan from MGM, under his studio’s directive, wearing a Hoover button. Lombard, objecting to his choice of candidate, ripped it off his lapel and told him he could “shove it up L. B. Mayer’s ass.” Clark, who felt that women should act like ladies, was not impressed. The feeling was mutual—at the final-day party, Lombard gave Gable a ten-pound smoked ham with his photograph pasted on the packaging. However, despite previous tensions, before they parted, they did so with a hug and farewell kiss.

  Four years later Lombard (then divorced) organized the Mayfair Ball in Beverly Hills; for its theme she requested that the women dress in white gowns and the men in white tie and tails. When Norma Shearer entered, clad in crimson, Lombard wanted to demand her expulsion, but columnist Louella Parsons was able to dissuade her.

  William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies brought along Gable (then estranged from Ria), and when he saw Carole, clad in a complimentary white gown, he approached her with words from No Man of Her Own: “I go for you, Ma.” She responded, “I go for you too, Pa.” They began to dance, during which Gable held Carole so tightly he realized she was wearing nothing under her clinging silk dress. When Carole noticed his arousal she began to laugh, causing Gable to turn red. Lombard suggested they have a drink so he could calm down, but Gable proposed an alternative: a ride in his new $16,000 Duesenberg convertible. After his third circling of the Beverly Wilt-shire Hotel, he asked if she’d like to see his room. Lombard, with her trademark sarcasm, responded, “Who do you think you are—Clark Gable?” It spoiled the moment and they returned to the ball.

  Upon their arrival, actor Lyle Talbot made a comment about their absence, and Lombard had to restrain Gable from punching him. Then, spying the lady in red, Carole wanted to ask a waiter to dump a tray of dirty dishes on her. Clark had to restrain her. This led to an argument and his angry departure.

  The next morning Gable awoke to a white dove perched on his chest and another on the chandelier. When he caught one, tied to its leg was the message, “How about it? Carole.” She had bribed a hotel employee to plant the birdcage in his room while he slept. Later he received a note that a present would be arriving at nine p.m., which he assumed was from Carole. However, when he opened his door, standing at the other side in a long mink coat, carrying two bottles of champagne, was actress Merle Oberon. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth (especially when the horse looked like Oberon), Gable embarked on an affair with her.

  In February Oberon and Gable attended a party at J. H. Whitney’s mansion to celebrate a friend’s release from a psychiatric hospital. The festivity came to an abrupt halt when an ambulance pulled up and medics carried in a stretcher bearing Lombard. With a horrified crowd surrounding her, she suddenly sat up and began to laugh. Clark’s face registered his disapproval of her gag, to which she muttered, “I always knew Gable was a stuffed shit—I mean shirt.” Clark was about to storm off when she stood up, revealing her figure sheathed in a white gown. He informed her that she needed a psychiatrist, and she countered that he had lost his sense of humor married to a woman old enough to be his mother.

  After the party, when Gable arrived at MGM he found Carole’s belated Valentine Day mea culpa: an old white Model T with painted large red hearts. A note was attached to its steering wheel: “You’re driving me crazy.” In response, he invited her to dinner at the Café Trocadero. Though Carole may have anticipated Gable pulling up in the Duesenberg, the pair chugged along at ten miles an hour in the Valentine car.

  During this time the actress became engrossed in the novel Gone with the Wind and envisioned Clark and herself playing Rhett and Scarlett. She sent it to Clark with the inscription, “Let’s do it!” He immediately took it as a sexual invitation and phoned her that evening.

  Carole had worried about succumbing to Clark’s Casanova charms (when Gable left his hand and foot imprints on the Grauman’s Chinese Theater forecourt, Lombard quipped that he should have imprinted his “cockprint” as well). However, realizing that his feelings for her were genuine, she allowed herself to lower her romantic resistances. And amazingly enough, the love that resulted was that Hollywood rarity: the real thing. Although Lombard didn’t become Scarlett, when Clark’s divorce came through, she ended up getting an equally coveted role: that of his wife.

  Lombard was dreading a wedding that would resemble a “fucking circus,” and during a few days’ break on Gone with the Wind, they drove to a town hall in Arizona. On June 26, 1931, the clerk on duty stared in disbelief at the Hollywood legends; during the ceremony the bride cried nonstop. When they returned to their Bel Air estate, news of the nuptials between Hollywood’s king and queen had leaked, and six MGM guards surrounded their estate. Carole told the press, “I’ll let Pa be the star, and I’ll stay home, darn the socks, and look after the kids.”

  Preferring life away from their glittering court, they purchased a ranch in Encino, whose gabled roof led to its moniker “the House of the Two Gables.” Gable brought with them a host of pets, including the offspring of the two doves from the post-Mayfair Ball morning. Clark said of his wife, “You can trust that little screwball with your life or your hopes or your weaknesses, and she wouldn’t even know how to think about letting you down.” There they lovingly referred to each other as Ma and Pa; the only blight on their happiness was their lack of a baby.

  In 1942, Clark received a request from Indiana for a star to promote war bonds, and he naturally offered the services of his Hoosier-born wife. He wanted to accompany her but could not because of his work on Somewhere I’ll Find You, so Carole took her mother. Before she left, she gave her secretary sealed envelopes to be given to Clark each day of her absence. In their bed she placed a naked blond dummy with a tag tied around its neck: “So you won’t be lonely.” To even the score he obtained a male dummy, replete with a huge erect phallus, as a surprise gift for his wife’s arrival home. Lombard was to return by train; however, eager to be reunited with Gable as soon as possible, she insisted on a plane, something her superstitious mother was against. They ended the impasse with a toss of a coin; Carole won.

  In anticipation of “Ma’s” return, Clark decorated their ranch with red, white, and b
lue balloons; however, he soon received the devastating news that Carole’s plane had crashed near Las Vegas. Gable flew to the scene and had to be forcibly restrained from climbing the mountainside in an effort to rescue her. There were no survivors.

  Distraught, Gable felt that as his wife had given her life for her country, he should do the same and he enlisted in the army. When he returned to the now-ironically named home, the House of the Two Gables, it echoed his loneliness, bereft of his profane angel.

  Postscript

  When Lombard died, in Hollywood every studio paused at noon for the playing of “Taps” and two minutes of silence in her honor. MGM placed full-page ads in which its trademark, Leo the Lion, dressed in mourning, stood with his head bowed; in his paw he held a large wreath.

  Carole Lombard was interred in her white gown. The name on her crypt marker: Carole Lombard Gable.

  When Clark Gable passed away in 1960 from a heart attack, all the Hollywood studios flew their flags at half staff. On his casket perched a crown made of miniature red roses. At the conclusion of his service, the Air Force Band played “Taps.” He was laid to rest in the crypt next to Carole Lombard.

  21

  Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball

  1940