Born Jane Alice Peters on October 6, 1908, in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Carole Lombard became one of the great comic stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age. After making her film debut as a child, she developed her fearless comic style in early features and Mack Sennett shorts before rising to stardom in the 1930s. In landmark screwball comedies such as Twentieth Century and My Man Godfrey—which earned her an Academy Award nomination—Lombard paired movie-star glamour with dazzling timing, physical abandon, and a modern, independent edge. By the late 1930s, she had become one of Hollywood’s highest-paid performers.
Her professional life also became linked to fellow screen icon Clark Gable. They first appeared together in the 1932 romantic drama No Man of Her Own, the only film they made as co-stars. In it, they played an unconventional married couple years before their real-life romance began. Their eventual relationship helped make them one of classic Hollywood’s most celebrated couples.
Lombard and Gable married in 1939 and made their home at an Encino ranch. Their marriage was cut tragically short on January 16, 1942, when Lombard was killed in the crash of TWA Flight 3 near Las Vegas while returning to California from a hugely successful war-bond rally in Indiana. She was only 33. Today, Lombard is remembered as a pioneering leading lady whose fearless humor, sophistication, and vitality helped define screwball comedy—and whose final public service became an enduring part of her legacy.
