It’s her birthday today!
Carole Lombard played ditzy and impulsive, but she didn’t play dumb. One of her greatest gifts as a comedienne is her craftiness, how well she creates cunning and sometimes selfish women, women who are heedless, sometimes manipulative, who do not know their own minds (or, to put it more accurately, lead from the mind, and ignore the heart). It’s most fun to watch her do battle with herself, as expressions of annoyance and panic and “A-ha!” flutter across her beautiful face. She was un-tameable, as a person, as an actress.
Lombard hit her stride in her short career, finding her place in the world of screwball (after some years in the trenches of melodrama and drama). She is stunningly beautiful, with a perfect face, really, porcelain skin and huge eyes … But when she was cast as “the beautiful girl”(TM), as she inevitably was early on, her performances are often un-distinguished. Not sloppy or bad, just … generalized, cliched. She’s not given enough to do, she’s not allowed to just go OFF. And Lombard, more than anyone else I can think of in that era, needed to be given space to just GO OFF.
She doesn’t know who she is in conventional material. Conventional material put a lid on her. She suffered more under unimaginative direction than other actresses. Howard Hawks (and others) helped take that lid off and release the zany girl. Hawks had seen her in full tilt at a party, tipsy, hilarious, profane, nobody’s fool, a girl’s girl and a trash-talking sailor, simultaneously. Nobody had captured that. Hawks perceived that her talent could express itself when she was on the verge of either a panic attack, a temper tantrum, or some horribly crafty scheme to get what she wants. Traditional female roles were not for her.
Lombard was incapable of phoniness and incapable of being shy and/or ingratiating. If the project wasn’t right for her, she went down with the ship. She couldn’t stoop down to bad material. Either she was totally natural as her crazy self, or she was almost invisible, unsure of where to put her energy. More than other actresses, Lombard needed a vehicle, a vehicle very specifically designed for her, and her alone. Every actor needs a break, a visibility-heightening project, but that’s not really what I’m talking about here. Screwball arrived, and Carole Lombard took to the slopes like she was born on skis. Unleashed. She could express her talent to the fullest in that context.
It could have gone one of two ways with Lombard: She could have been pigeonholed as a pretty young starlet, and she would have had a short career, and nobody would have remembered her as anything other than a footnote. Perfectly plausible way it could go. Or, it could have gone the way it actually went. There was no in-between with Lombard. She could have been in the biggest picture in the world, but if the movie didn’t “get” her, it wouldn’t have been a “vehicle”. It’s quite precarious! It might not have happened!
Side note, related: Julia Roberts is a similar type of actress. She needed a vehicle. She needed a vehicle where her sense of humor and her self-pleasure and self-confidence could freely express it. She needed to be set FREE, which Garry Marshall did for her in the highly improvisational Pretty Woman. Think about it: Before Pretty Woman came out, she was making Sleeping With the Enemy, pretty conventional where she had to fit into a genre-context – and before that, she had been in ensemble dramas, where she was fine, often good, but no doubt about it: her natural milieu was to be a GIGANTIC STAR. She just doesn’t fit in otherwise.
That’s the difference between Julia Roberts and other stars of her (my) generation. And trust me: you had to be there. Julia wasn’t there and then she was and she took over the WORLD. Pre-social media. She was huge. FAN-chosen, too – not industry-chosen. Nobody was prepared for Pretty Woman and the reaction to HER. The world went nuts. The status given to her from that lingers to this day. There were other big actors, but nobody became a star on the level she did. It was an explosion. That has to do with HER, not some industry-generated “buzz”. But if you compare Roberts to her contemporary Gwyneth Paltrow (pre-Goop Gwyneth): Paltrow seemed to have had stardom thrust upon her, by the Weinsteins, basically, and in her Oscar speech she seemed almost cowed by all the industry power behind her. Up until that point, she had done small independent films and stage productions – she could have had a very satisfying career as a character actress, or even a stage actress (following in her mother’s footsteps). I think Paltrow is more suited to that kind of career, less pressure, less attention, and she would be more comfortable in her own skin than she seems now.
All of this being said: Lombard was not limited in any way, it’s just that comedy allowed her to express EVERYthing, whereas straight dramas or melodramas forced her to leave stuff OUT. You feel me? She was a fantastic dramatic actress – and you saw it in silly stuff, in rom-coms, in dramas (I wrote a whole piece about how female comedians are often better dramatic actors than “straight” dramatic actors.) Everything is real. Her swoon of love in My Man Godfrey is HILARIOUS but she doesn’t seem to play it explicitly for laughs. It’s funny because it’s REAL to her.
I love watching her. You never know what’s going to happen. She thinks fast. Lightning quick. She doesn’t “act on” her impulses so much as she feels the impulse firing up and her body/spirit/intelligence is already up to speed. She’s FAST. It’s like improv. You don’t have time to THINK about what you’re going to do, you have to just trust yourself and DO it. Lombard does. This is true with her slapstick business AND with her emotions. A rare blend!
So many movies to mention but let’s talk about 1936’s Love Before Breakfast. First of all, there’s the famous poster, which not only graces my wall but is also my Twitter avatar:
Walker Evans captured this poster in one of his photographs:
In Love Before Breakfast, Preston Foster and Cesar Romero are rivals for Lombard’s affections. Lombard was so feisty and strong that she needed to be man-handled a bit, that was the fun of it, watching a strong confident man (like Godfrey) take this bucking pony in hand. However, Foster and Romero are not up to the task. At all.
Foster plays Scott Miller, a successful businessman (so successful he can buy his rival’s oil company in order to send the rival off to Japan). Scott hangs out with a snooty Countess in his spare time, but has the hots for Kay Colby (Carole Lombard). Kay, though, is already engaged to Bill Wadsworth (Cesar Romero, better than Foster here). Scott sends Bill off to Japan, leaving Kay unprotected, so Scott moves in for the kill, following her around town, buying her drinks, popping up everywhere. Lombard does her best with these actors (although you watch her with William Powell and you can see the difference). Kay is torn between two loves, and Lombard is very VERY funny in how much WORK she puts in to her own denial. She is sure, SURE, that she loves BILL, not Scott. She finds Bill amusing, but she is only interested in his money, or so she says, and she jumps through fiery hoops to keep up her attitude of scorn and condescension. Foster is a bit stuffy, he doesn’t have the right arrogant attitude. Clark Gable – Lombard’s future husband – would have been maddeningly good in the role. You would have wanted to wring his neck, and he would have turned everything sizzlingly hot. You should be dying for the two to leap into the sack.
There are a couple of great scenes where Lombard gets to show her stuff. One is a costume ball. She does the entire scene in this get-up …
… and it gets funnier and funnier the longer the scene goes on. She sets up Scott to dance with a visiting Southern belle, and she tells both of them (secretly) that the other one is deaf and “you have to shout” at them to be heard. So poor Scott and the visiting Southern woman needlessly shout banalities at one another on the dance floor, as Lombard, in that crazy costume, laughs until she almost falls down on the sidelines. She is irresistible. Especially in that totally outrageous outfit.
There’s also a very well-written scene where Scott proposes to Kay. He presents her with three enormous engagement rings. Kay, beleaguered by now, beaten down, she accepts the proposal, but listen to this dialogue!
Scott: You’ll be sorry to hear my feelings haven’t changed. I’m still going to marry you.
Kay: You’d better be careful. One of these days I might take you up on that.
Scott: Couldn’t make it today, could you?
Kay: If I did it would only be for your money.
Scott: I never look a gift horse in the mouth.
Kay: You want me anyway?
Scott: Definitely.
Kay: All right. But this isn’t going to be any Taming of the Shrew, you know. I’m not going to come crawling after you’ve broken my spirit.
Scott: I’ll take my chance.
Kay: It’s a long one.
Scott: I like ’em that way.
Kay: I guess that settles it.
Scott: Oh, no, there should be a kiss to seal the bargain.
Kay: Is that necessary?
Scott: It’s pretty standard.
Kay: All right.
Scott: Can you spare it?
Kay: I think so.
They kiss.
Kay: Well, goodbye.
Scott: Oh, no, there’s one more detail.
Kay: What happens now?
Scott: Come on, I’ll show you.
Kay: I warn you, I won’t sign anything without a lawyer.
Scott: You won’t have to sign a thing. Just one minute.
He takes out a small box.
Kay: What’s this?
Scott: The customary engagement ring.
Kay: Oh, you were all prepared.
Scott: Oh, yes, yes, indeed. Well prepared.
He takes out two more boxes.
Kay: When did you get these?
Scott: The day after you turned me down.
Kay: Sure of yourself, weren’t you.
Scott: Just a gambler.
Kay: A gambler who knew he’d win. The fact that I don’t love you doesn’t spoil your victory. Well, I’m glad we understand each other. Which one of these little knick-knacks would you like me to wear?
Scott: Oh, they’re all for you. I thought you might like to change off.
Kay: How romantic.
Scott: Now that we’re engaged, I hope we’ll see each other occasionally.
Kay: Whatever is customary, Mr. Miller.
This plays out with no pauses except for the business of taking out the rings. It’s rat-a-tat-tat, machine-gun style.
Lombard plays that great dialogue with the perfect amount of exhaustion and annoyance (but again, imagining Scott’s dialogue in the mouth of Clark Gable makes me ache to see THAT scene.) Lombard doesn’t have much to buck up against here.
But her talent is always in operation. She’s so clever, so inventive, and so RESPONSIVE to what is generally called in acting circles “the given circumstances”. If all you have is your emotional state, and you have no sense of the given circumstances, then it doesn’t matter how beautifully you are crying. You are doing bad acting. The given circumstances is ALL, whether you’re in a surrealist play or Ibsen. What is happening right now. Here’s a good example of that from Love Before Breakfast:
She’s on a sailboat with Bill, her ex-fiance, who has returned from Japan. She is annoyed because Scott is on a boat across the bay, and naturally, things are not going as she wants them to go. Lombard is perpetually cranky throughout Love Before Breakfast. She feels dominated, and afraid of more domination. She senses (correctly?) that Scott would demand something more of her than she would have to give (like her heart, like love), and she wriggles out of those chains the second they are on her. Bill is not a bad guy, but he’s had it with being used as a pawn in the love-game between the other two. At one point, during the argument on the sailboat, Lombard lies on a couch below-deck, annoyed, exasperated. Bill takes out a champagne bottle and pops the cork. The sound startles her. She jumps.
It’s one of those subtle sometimes unnoticed pieces of behavior that Lombard did like nobody else. She doesn’t make into a “bit” – she doesn’t scream, there is no dialogue referencing it, she doesn’t “act” it, even – it’s just Lombard’s comedic sensibility tuned in, ALWAYS, to the potential in every moment. The slight jump she gives, startling her out of her depression, is hysterical: it is these moments that I treasure most from Lombard, and it never stops with her. She is a runaway freight train, hurtling into the reality of every moment, into the given circumstances, all pistons churning, and she vibrates with life and feeling and responsiveness.
Other actresses would have missed the cork-pop. They would be too taken up with their emotional state to jump at the cork-pop. It wouldn’t have even occurred to them to include a little scared jump at the sound. That’s not what the scene is “about” after all. But Lombard’s startled jump – so funny, so real – is what separates the men from the boys in an acting career. The women from the girls, more like. And Lombard from everyone else.
