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Filmography
1921
A Perfect Crime
1924
Gold Heels
1925
Dick Turpin
Gold and the Girl
Marriage in Transit
Hearts and Spurs
Durand of the Bad Lands
1926
The Road to Glory
1927
My Best Girl
1928
The Divine Sinner
Power
Me, Gangster
Show Folks
Ned McCobb’s Daughter
1929
High Voltage
Big News
The Racketeer
1930
The Arizona Kid
Safety in Numbers
Fast and Loose
1931
It Pays to Advertise
Man of the World
Ladies’ Man
Up Pops the Devil
I Take This Woman
1932
No One Man
Sinners in the Sun
Virtue
No More Orchids
No Man of Her Own
1933
From Hell to Heaven
Supernatural
The Eagle and the Hawk
Brief Moment
White Woman
1934
Bolero
We’re Not Dressing
Twentieth Century
Now and Forever
Lady by Choice
The Gay Bride
1935
Rumba
Hands Across the Table
1936
Love Before Breakfast
The Princess Comes Across
1937
Swing High, Swing Low
True Confession
1938
Fools for Scandal
1939
Made for Each Other
1940
Vigil in the Night
They Knew What They Wanted
1941
1942
To Be or Not to Be
Awards
Carole Lombard was nominated for one Best Actress in a Leading Role Academy Award for My Man Godfrey (1936).
Carole Lombard: Learn more about her, review her filmography and more
Carole Lombard was born Jane Alice Peters, October 6, 1908. She was particularly noted for her energetic, often off-beat roles in the screwball comedies of the 1930s. She was the highest-paid star in Hollywood in the late 1930s.
She was born into a wealthy family in Fort Wayne, Indiana, but was raised in Los Angeles by her single mother. At 12, she was recruited by the film director Allan Dwan and made her screen debut in A Perfect Crime (1921). Eager to become an actress, she signed a contract with the Fox Film Corporation at age 16, but mainly played bit parts. She was dropped by Fox after a car accident left a scar on her face. Lombard appeared in 15 short comedies for Mack Sennett between 1927 and 1929, and then began appearing in feature films such as High Voltage and The Racketeer. After a successful appearance in The Arizona Kid (1930), she was signed to a contract with Paramount Pictures.
Paramount quickly began casting Lombard as a leading lady, primarily in drama films. Her profile increased when she married William Powell in 1931, but the couple divorced after two years. A turning point in Lombard’s career came when she starred in Howard Hawks’ pioneering screwball comedy Twentieth Century (1934). The actress found her niche in this genre, and continued to appear in films such as Hands Across the Table (1935) (forming a popular partnership with Fred MacMurray ), My Man Godfrey (1936), for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress, and Nothing Sacred (1937). At this time, Lombard married “the King of Hollywood”, Clark Gable , and the super-couple gained much attention from the media. Keen to win an Oscar, at the end of the decade, Lombard began to move towards more serious roles. Unsuccessful in this aim, she returned to comedy in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941) and Ernst Lubitsch’s To Be or Not to Be (1942) — her final film role.
Lombard’s career was cut short when she died at the age of 33 in an aircraft crash on Mount Potosi, Nevada, while returning from a War Bond tour. Today, she is remembered as one of the definitive actresses of the screwball comedy genre and American comedy, and ranks among the American Film Institute’s greatest female stars of classic Hollywood cinema.
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