Modern Screen (Dec 1938 - Nov 1939 (assorted issues))

WHAT'S THE 1HHTTER WITH Is it true that her marriage to Clark Gable is responsible for Carole's re THERE ARE persons in Hollywood who are sore at Lombard. She doesn't care, however, because she probably doesn't know of her misfortune. If she did, she would doubtless do something about it, because Carole is too good a business woman to wilfully make anyone sore at her and too warm-hearted to deliberately give offense to anyone. It never pays to make enemies. Least of all in Hollywood where that little, old office boy you've heard about today may be a producer tomorrow. Lombard knows all this. Yet she is making folks mad. What's the matter with Lombard? That's what Hollywood is asking. Carole has long been a particular pet of the boys and girls who write stories about the stars, because she was always cooperative, because she always gave swell, honest copy, told the truth and didn't blue-pencil every word she spoke that was more pithy than a nursery rhyme. Lately all is changed. There is, these days, an un-Lombardian evasiveness, a disregard of matters she once attended to richly and generously. Perhaps, you may say, Lombard has been shy of people, of the Press, because she has not wanted to discuss her recent marriage with Gable. But that is no good, for Carole has gone out socially, and has given interviews since the beginning of her romance with Gable. In my effort to diagnose the case of Carole I've talked to her best friends. I've talked to Fieldsie, now Mrs. Walter Lang. And Fieldsie, as every Lombard fan knows, is Carole's most intimate friend. Carole and Fieldsie were Sennett girls together, sharing the same custard pie, driving to and from the studio in Fieldsie's car so that they could pool the expense of gasoline. Later, they shared a house together, and Fieldsie acted as Carole's business manager. And so, from Fieldsie and one or two other old pals, I garnered the material I needed to answer the question, "What is the matter with Lombard?" Out of it all, came these pertinent facts — and they are facts: In the first place, Carole, so her friends believe, is being badly advised of late concerning her relations with Press and Public. They say that she is being counseled to be difficult, aloof, hard-to-get; advice which neither fits nor becomes the good fellow who is Lombard. But if she hearkens to this counsel, one might say, isn't shejof the same stripe herself? The truth of the matter is, she doesn't hear it. Not properly. Not so she makes sense of it. Carole doesn't rightly pay heed to what is said to her. . Not unless she is backed up against a wall and told about appointments in good trenchant words of one syllable. She doesn't heed because she hears so much all the time, so many demands — requests buzz around her until there is confusion in her head. Fieldsie told me that, after being away from Carole and the studio for some months, she went back one day and wondered how she had ever kept her reason in the melee which is Lombard's life. She said, "It's a wonder people didn't hate both of us, Carole and me. You get so lost in that world of too much to do." Phones ringing incessantly. Agents calling. Conferences. Telegrams. Fittings. Noise, So that, when someone says to Carole, "Will you come to my baby shower next Tuesday?" or "Will you give me an interview next Friday?" her natural Mr. and Mrs. Clark Gable snapped at Cafe Lamaze on one of their very rare night club appearances. Carole goes dramatic again in "The Kind Men Marry," with Cary Grant. Few people realize how seriously she takes her work. 24