4 April 2023

I am not career minded at all any more

When in early November 1941 Carole Lombard started filming To Be Or Not To Be (1942), it had been a year since she made her last film (i.e. Alfred Hitchcock's Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941)). Lombard was quite happy focusing on her home and marriage to Clark Gable and was selective in choosing her projects. In a letter to her friends, socialites and polo stars Babs and Eric Tyrell-Martin, dated 29 November 1941, Lombard writes how she is "not career minded at all any more", being mostly concerned with pleasing her husband. The letter was written just six weeks before Lombard would meet her untimely death in a plane crash on 16 January 1942, returning home after a war bond rally. To Be Or Not To Be was released after Lombard's death, the film reportedly the happiest experience of her career.    

Beautiful Carole Lombard, below pictured with husband Clark Gable. There had been rumours that the couple was experiencing marital problems in 1941 and had separated and then reconciled. Lombard was also trying to get pregnant but had problems conceiving.
Source: RR Auction
Ranch life with husband Clark Gable (above) and on the set of To Be or Not To Be with co-star Robert Stack and Ernst Lubitsch, the latter Lombard's favourite comedy director whom she had long wanted to work with (below).

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