by David Bret
Clark and Carole were included in the guests in the White House Oval Room on 30 December 1940 when President Roosevelt delivered one of his Fireside Chat speeches on national radio. These were so popular that in most cinemas the features were arranged around them so that they could be broadcast during the intermission. ‘Never before has our American civilisation been in such danger as now,’ Roosevelt began, accusing Nazi Germany of enslaving Europe. Then he urged America to support Britain in preventing Hitler from dominating the rest of the civilised world. ‘If Britain goes down,’ he concluded, ‘all of us in the Americas would be living at the point of a gun.’
Though under current draft regulations Clark, at 40, was too old to be called up, there was nothing to prevent him from volunteering. He wrote to Roosevelt, begging him to find him something to do. Despite his busy schedule, the President afforded him a reply wherein he advised the Gables to stick to what they were best at - making movies and maintaining public morale. Carole was having none of this. It was all very well for ‘FDR sitting in his wheelchair and spouting crap’, she declared, but brave men were dying out there - men who did not need movie glamour, but medical assistance and muscle. She was scheduled to begin shooting They All Kissed The Bride for Columbia early in the New Year, but announced that she was putting this on hold so that she could join the Red Cross. She would return to making movies only when the War was over, and dared the studio to even think of suing her for breach of contract.
As for Clark, Carole declared, he would be enlisting to fight, whether Louis B. Mayer approved or not. He was interviewed by the film industry’s war-time liaison officer Lewell Mellett, who told him what he already knew: he was too old. Mellett then gave a statement to Walter Winchell, who syndicated this across the country: ‘Gable is one of the American people’s daily habits and we don’t want to rob them of their steady habits all at once. That’s the one thing we have copied from the Goebbels’ propaganda machine.’
Some recompense came when Clark was asked to chair the Actors’ Division of the Hollywood Victory Committee, the body formed to organise and recruit movie talent for hospital and camp tours, fund-raisers and war-bonds rallies. His first job was to draw up a 15-strong committee, which met on 22 December 1941 at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel: Bette Davis, Rosalind Russell, Ginger Rogers, Charles Boyer, Myrna Loy, Bob Hope, Claudette Colbert, Irene Dunne, Jack Benny, Ronald Colman, Cary Grant, Gary Cooper, Tyrone Power and John Garfield.
On 24 December, shooting wrapped on To Be Or Not To Be, and Carole and Clark celebrated what would be their last Christmas together, beginning with a party that same evening for soldiers at MGM. Clark helped man the buses ferrying the men to the bash, while Carole greeted each one at the door with a kiss. Judy Garland and Eleanor Powell headed a hastily put together revue and Wallace Beery, one of the most miserable actors in Hollywood who hated Christmas and children, dressed up as Santa Claus!
Usually a shopaholic when it came to Christmas presents, Carole mailed her hundreds of friends and colleagues cards, announcing she had donated cash in their names to the Red Cross. Many doubled the donation. Her last gift to Clark was a gold cigarette case inscribed, ‘To Pa. I Love You. Ma’. He gave her diamond and ruby clip-on earrings to match her wedding ring and the heart pendant he had given her the previous Christmas. The festive season itself was a muted affair in Hollywood: with no one sure what was lurking around the corner, few felt like celebrating.
Three days after Christmas, Clark was made aware of the new draft bill, approved by Congress. Effectively, all males between the ages of 18 and 64 would be able to register for active service, but with priority going to those between 20 and 44. Louis B. Mayer intervened, as he had with Robert Taylor and Mickey Rooney, claiming the studios needed these men more than the military, to boost public morale. Mayer was, of course, thinking only of himself and when Clark refused to listen, he called Lowell Mellett and ordered him to find Gable a position as a commissioned officer - in other words, a desk job in Washington so he could be called upon to work. Before Clark was given the opportunity to speak for himself, Carole called Ben Maddox. Her husband was not interested in Mayer’s ‘phoney bullshit commission’ - he wanted to set an example for the rest of the country by starting military life as an ordinary private. His enlistment would take place, she added, as soon as he had finished Somewhere I’ll Find You.
Carole’s war-bonds promotion came about by way of Howard Dietz and Clark himself. Dietz had been shanghaied into the project by Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau - and as the drive was to be launched in Indiana, Dietz plumped for the state’s best-known Hoosier, Carole Lombard. To acquire her services, however, Dietz had to petition the head of the Actors Victory Committee - Clark, who would regret his decision to let her go for the rest of his life. The drive was scheduled to peak in Indianapolis on 15 January, with Carole taking the long route via train, as opposed to flying, so that she could stop off at Salt Lake City, Chicago and Ogden (Utah), and at Albuquerque and Kansas City on the way home. It was her intention to make the Hollywood première of To Be Or Not To Be on 18 January. Clark should have accompanied her, but Louis B. Mayer would not release him from his contract, which meant that for the first time since their marriage began they would be apart for more than a week. His place was taken by Otto Winkler and when best friend Fieldsie dropped out owing to illness, Carole’s mother Bessie Peters was invited to tag along.
Neither did Clark see the group off from Union Station - according to the statement given by Howard Strickling because he was scheduled that day to begin working on Somewhere I’ll Find You. And in any case, Strickling added, he would not have wished to rob his wife of her moment of glory. The real reason for him not being there appears to have been because that morning the couple had had an almighty bust-up over Clark’s tomcat ways - one of those arguments that sees both parties flinging insults they do not really mean, which in this case would haunt him for ever.
This was an age when film stars turned out looking the part, so Carole’s wardrobe had been carefully selected for the trip - the proven theory being that the better she presented herself, the more money she would raise for her cause. Irene Sharaff provided her with several black creations to match the sombre political climate. For her main speeches she would wear an ankle-length gown adorned with huge white roses representing the quest for peace - over which she wore the sable coat Clark had given her to protect against the frequently sub-zero temperatures. The diamond and ruby clip-on earrings he had bought her that Christmas were attached to either side of the plunging neckline so they could be close to her heart, which suggests she had not taken their argument too seriously.
Before leaving Hollywood Carole gave her secretary, Jean Garceau, a bundle of billets-doux to be passed on to Clark at the rate of one a day while she was away. Though this has never been disputed, Garceau later added to the mystery that there had been just five of these, and not six or seven, which would have covered the period between her leaving and the première of To Be Or Not To Be. In other words, it was suggested Carole had planned defying Howard Dietz’s strict no-flying policy. As all the protagonists are now dead, we shall never know whether Garceau made up the number to add to the drama, or simply made a mistake on account of her own distress. Neither does the suggestion hold good that Carole departed Hollywood in a miserable mood, as if forewarned of impending doom. With her usual zaniness she left a gift in Clark’s bed - a large-breasted love-doll wearing a Lana Turner wig - along with a note that read, ‘So you won’t be lonely’. She knew exactly what Clark might have been getting up to during her absence and this was undoubtedly her offbeat way of reminding him that she was on to him, and that there would be merry hell to pay when she returned home. The fact that Clark knew she was on to him was apparent from his reaction: he had a couple of friends ‘customise’ a male dummy with a 12-inch erect penis, so that he could place it - forming a tent - in Carole’s bed to surprise her. This related to a private joke between them tha
t she had made public. Clark, boasting that he was known as ‘King of Hollywood’ because he had a penis which measured a ‘regal’ 12 inches, had been put in his place by his wife, who retorted, ‘One inch less and you’d be the Queen of Hollywood!’
The rally in Indianapolis concluded with Carole tearfully leading the crowd at the Cadle Tabernacle into ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’, then encouraging them to give Churchill V-sign salutes and cheer ‘loud enough to be heard in Tokyo and Berlin’. When this happened, rarely for her, she burst into tears - and did so again upon learning that her efforts that day had raised a staggering $2 million. Each bond had been dispensed with a receipt carrying a personally signed photograph and the printed logo, ‘Thank you for joining me in this vital campaign to make America strong’. Sitting hunched over a table for six hours, Carole signed thousands of these and never once complained. Unlikely support for her truly inspired campaigning came from clean-up merchant Will Hays, a fellow Hoosier (Sullivan, Indiana), who not so long ago had denounced her as immoral. Though Carole was still describing him - more than once to his face - as ‘that vomitable old fuck’, this did not prevent Hays from dispatching a telegram to Clark, via Louis B. Mayer: ‘Carole was perfect, really she was MAGNIFICENT! Sold in this one day $2,017,513 worth of bonds. Everyone deeply GRATEFUL!’
Carole had not spoken to Clark since leaving Hollywood, but she wired him at least once and Jean Garceau passed on her notes. One of these is said to have read, ‘Hey, Pa. You’d better get into this man’s army!’ - ribbing him to the very end over his frequent lack of confidence in his machismo. This was hardly helped by his father’s persistent reminders that ‘real men’ were going off to fight and die while he was wasting time play-acting. Why Carole changed her mind about taking the train and opted to fly back to Los Angeles has been much discussed over the years, giving way to the pure speculation that inevitably arises in the wake of a tragedy when the victim is young and beautiful. The demises of Valentino, James Dean, Elvis Presley and Princess Diana have all loaned themselves to some of the wildest and highly improbable conspiracy theories.
It is highly unlikely that Carole would have wanted to hurry home just to catch Clark with Lana Turner. As already explained, she would not have put anything past him where an attractive woman was concerned and she knew that even if she did end his antics with this one, he would have another waiting in the wings. Cheating had always been part of Clark’s nature, and had he not already convinced her that his sleeping around did not mean he had become any less enamoured of her? Equally far-fetched seems to be the story put about that Carole’s mother had been warned not to fly by her astrologer and that she had declared 3 and 16 to be her ‘unlucky’ numbers: the plane was a TWA DC-3, Carole was 33 and the date was the sixteenth. Had this been so, Bessie Peters would have been suspicious of the fact that the train journey also took three days, and that there were three in the Lombard party.
The real reason for Carole’s change of plan almost certainly pertained to her being a practical woman. Barring the visits to Albuquerque and Kansas City, which she promised to make after the To Be Or Not To Be première, the war-bond tour was over. It had been more successful than anyone could have imagined, but quite simply she wanted to get back to her regular life as expediently as possible. This was a fact reiterated by a reporter from Life magazine who spoke to her on the Saturday evening after the Cadle Tabernacle rally. Observing how exhausted she looked, he expressed his surprise that she was not planning an early night so that she might be properly refreshed before taking the train the next morning. Her response had been that if she caught the 4am so-called ‘milk-train’ flight from Indianapolis - an unusually long 17-hour flight - she would be home for dinner with Clark, and then be able to sleep in her own bed. ‘And in any case,’ she added, ‘I don’t like choo-choos!’
Howard Dietz had imposed a no-flying ban on his stars for good reason: on account of the blackouts, fewer beacons were kept lit for private flights. Carole, however, was permitted to ignore this ruling because this was not a private flight but a military one chartered to convey up to 20 Army personnel. The fact that she was doing war work automatically entitled her to a seat: her mother, Otto Winkler and several other civilians were allowed on board only because there was room. Clark was wired with news that the plane was scheduled to touch down in Burbank at around 9pm and as he was still at the studio, he arranged for MGM publicist Larry Barbier to meet the plane. A few times along its route it was delayed. In Albuquerque, several civilian passengers were ordered off and left to make their own way to Los Angeles when their seats were required for men from the Flying Command. Because the plane was overloaded and owing to the night-landing restrictions, the next stop on the route (Boulder, Colorado) was cancelled and the flight diverted to Las Vegas for refuelling - otherwise it would have flown straight to its destination. Instead, at 7.20pm on 16 January, 15 minutes after take-off and some 30 miles south west of Las Vegas, Carole’s plane crashed into a ball of flames 70 feet from the summit of Mount Potosi (aka Table Rock Mountain). All 22 on board died instantly.
Larry Barbier was first to hear the news and notified Howard Strickling, who chartered a plane to transport Clark, MGM’s second-in-command Eddie Mannix, Stuart Peters (Carole’s brother, whom Clark could not stand) and Jill Winkler to las Vegas. By the time they arrived here, the first search party consisting of Army personnel was about to set off to clear the snow-blocked passes to enable the medical team to get through. There was no road up the 8,500-foot mountain, and the only way to bring any survivors or bodies back down would be via stretcher or mule-train. Clark wanted to accompany the medics, but was persuaded not to and sequestered a bungalow at the El Rancho Las Vegas hotel. One report stated he had to be physically restrained from heading off up the mountain - Louis B. Mayer did not want one of his biggest investments to come a cropper less than a week into his new film, so Eddie Mannix went in his place. It was he who wired Clark from a mountain way station with the news that Carole was dead.
The recovery of the bodies took three days on account of the snow and harsh terrain. One part of the mountain was so treacherous that a mule transporting a bodybag slipped on the ice and plummeted over a rock-face. Clark was permitted to watch from a safe distance, and through his binoculars had a clear picture of the mangled, still-smoking wreckage. All the victims were burned beyond recognition - there was no question of identification, even by checking dental records. Most, including ‘a young female’, almost certainly Carole, had been decapitated on impact. Found close to the wreckage was one diamond and ruby ear-clip that Clark had given her: he would have it set in a locket and wear it for years until he eventually lost it. The matching heart pendant was never found. One fanciful journalist wrote that it had been embedded within Carole’s own heart. Scattered across the snow were charred pages from They All Kissed The Bride. None of the relatives of the dead were permitted to see what was left of them. And all that Clark could mutter to a friend was, ‘Ma’s gone.’
Among the thousands of letters of condolence was a telegram from Buckingham Palace and there was a personal eulogy from President and Mrs Roosevelt, who would later posthumously present Carole with a medal bearing the citation, ‘The first US woman killed in action in the defence of her country against the AXIS powers’.
The Roosevelts observed,
Carole was our friend, our guest in happier days. She brought great joy to all who knew her not only as a great artist. She gave unselfishly of her time and talent to serve her government in peace and in war. She loved her country. She is and always will be a star, one we shall never forget nor cease to be grateful to.
On 19 January, Clark helped load the wooden crates inscribed with the names of his wife, mother-in-law and best friend onto the train bound for Los Angeles. Identifying the charred remains, in pre-DNA days, had been mostly guesswork. The grisly truth is that each bodybag contained a head, four limbs if possible, but not guaranteed to have come from the same person. Clumps of
blonde hair found at the crash site were assumed to have been Carole’s, but really they could have been anybody’s and it is very likely that the crates in Clark’s charge contained the remains of servicemen, as well as those of his loved ones.
To avoid the media circus expected in Los Angeles, Clark and his grisly cargo disembarked at Colton, the next but last stop before Union Station. Here, the crates were loaded onto the back of a truck that conveyed them to a funeral parlour. Carole had died serving her country, and as such was entitled to a funeral with full military honours. Clark would not hear of this nor of the Government erecting a monument in her memory. Cynics suggested he did not wish for her to be more fêted than he was. Attention was also drawn to the fact that in August 1939, five months after their marriage, Carole had drafted another will. This was common practice among the Hollywood fraternity, as was the clause within which Carole stipulated that no one but her immediate family should see her body after death. Garbo, Dietrich and Hepburn made similar requests, expecting to live until they were old and no longer possessed of the great beauty that had contributed to their fame.
Fashionable to the last, Carole had asked to be laid out in a white gown designed by Irene Sharaff, though this of course was her being her usual wacky self - there is no way she had expected to die at just 33. Even so, the dress was commissioned and added to the steel casket that would be sealed without Clark looking inside. Carole wanted to be buried in a ‘modestly priced’ crypt at Forest Lawn. Clark bought three: one for Carole, one for Bessie Peters and the third for himself. No matter who he married in the future, he declared, when his time came he would lie next to Lombard because he had loved her more than he could possibly love anyone else.
Carole and her mother were buried on 22 January, with the Methodist service conducted by a Reverend Chapman at the Church of the Recessional. To Clark’s grief-stricken way of thinking, no God could have robbed him of his anchor, so there were neither prayers nor hymns. He did consent to the reading of Psalm 23, a short poem that Carole had loved and a quotation from the self-proclaimed Persian prophet and leader of the Baha’i faith, Baha-Allah: ‘I have made death even as glad tidings unto thee. Why dost thou mourn at its approach?’ Just 46 mourners were invited to the ceremony, including Carole’s brothers, who Clark refused to acknowledge - he had always dismissed them as scroungers. The only stars present were William Powell, Myrna Loy, Fred MacMurray, Dorothy Lamour, Spencer Tracy and Jack Benny. With the exception of friends Adela Rogers St Johns and Ben Maddox, along with ‘acquaintances’ Lloyd Pantages and Louella Parsons, the press were excluded.