Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!
Screwball comedy suited Carole Lombard perfectly. She was an engaging, and energetic performer, possessing the fine ability to invest the lines with a real sense of fun. Called upon to play the vain, the arrogant, the naïve and the street smart, she always made you want to find out what these characters were going to get up to. For all the silliness in the plots, you have to be invested in the predicament of the leads to buy into it all, and Lombard’s effortless big screen charisma made that happen.
Raised comfortably in a wealthy household, Lombard’s route to stardom doesn’t come with the usual trappings of extreme poverty or starstruck desperation. Her natural good looks, an interest in acting and a mother willing to pull strings to enable it got her her first studio contract. Early in her career she appeared in numerous bit parts, being generally well-liked on set and embracing the developing party scene in Hollywood.
It’s at some point in all this that Carole Lombard developed an aspect of her character that remains talked about to this day: a legendary ability to swear on set and in company, a trait that earned her the nickname “The Profane Angel”.
Friends, lovers and husbands all talk of her ability to wield curse words. To drop the strongest of language to the shock (and delight) or her predominantly male co-workers. The story is that, with the help of two older brothers, she had worked out that to play this foul mouthed but friendly person was a way to succeed in a man’s world. It helped her stand her own ground, part confrontational but also part “one of the boys”.
But here’s the weirdest thing. For all that you can find many folk who knew her who will talk – often in impressed tones – of her way with four-letter words, it’s incredibly difficult to find examples and transcripts of what she actually said. Swearing, like any use of language, can be an art – and one in which Lombard seemed to have excelled. But there’s virtually nothing out there of her artistry with hard-edged vocabulary.
Over the years, outtakes have emerged, which have given a few hints about the sound of one Lombard swearing. Clips of these are available online – such as the example below, but the language is so mild compared to the legend that it only really feels like scratching the sweary surface.
Life Magazine was to profile her as “The Screwball Girl” in their October 1938 issue while includes the following line that alerted those outside Hollywood circles to her reputation:
“She is a scribbler on telephone pad, inhibited nail-nibbler, toe-scuffler, pillow-grabber, head-and-elbow scratcher and chain cigaret smoker. When Carole Lombard talks her conversation, often brilliant, is punctuated by screeches, laighs, growls, gesticulations and the expletives of a sailor’s parrot.”
The best portrait I could find that probably Lombard in her “Profane Angel “glory is in Garson Kanin’s 1974 book Hollywood. Kanin and Lombard worked together and were good friends, and it seems unlikely that Kanin would want to misrepresent someone he’d got on with and admired. Kanin recalls numerous chats with Lombard that paint a fascinating picture of her. When he quotes Lombard, even though he was writing it down decades later, it seems credible.
Lombard talks of her love for Clark Gable:
“Clark’s a wonder. I’m really nuts about him. And it isn’t all that great-love crap because if you want to know the truth, I’ve had better…. What I was trying to tell you was that I’m nuts about him. Not just nuts about his nuts.”
While also reflecting on her earlier marriage to William Powell, with whom she stayed friends even after her divorce:
“I was the best fuckin’ wife you ever saw. I mean a ladylike wife.”
She talks candidly about her time with the songwriter Russ Columbo:
“I even started writing songs. Sometimes with him. We’d be in the hay and in between we’d make up songs. Can you imagine it? Listen, there were a few times there we got so interesting in the songs we forgot to get her ashes hauled!”
Her close friends and former lovers that do talk about her all suggest that Kanin’s portrait is accurate. Indeed that her casual honest charm is what they so loved about her. And yet, they, or others, don’t actually give examples of her in her cuss-toting glory. The actual phrases that shocked yet attracted William Powell are lost because he never recounted them. The rugged language that convinced Gable he had found a soulmate was not something he ever wanted to share. In the absence of this detail, what survives are anecdotes and myths.
They are great anecdotes and myths, though. Full of tales such as the time she worked alongside Frederic March. An actor with a reputation for his wandering hands on set, slithering around to assault his co-stars. So, in order to deter the man, Lombard strapped on a large dildo under her skirt so that when his hands might wander in the dressing room he’d get “the fucking shock of his life”. Or that she became so associated with the phrase “Kiss My Ass”, she had it engraved onto a fancy brass plate on the front door of the palatial home she bought with her Hollywood money.
Another anecdote tells of the time when Columbia Studio boss Harry Cohn made an unsubtle pass at her. “Look, Mr Cohn,” Carole is said to have replied, “I’ve agreed to be in your shitty little picture, but fucking you is no part of the deal.” All of these tales fit into the legend of the Profane Angel, but they rarely come with much by way of attribution or source. Such stories about Carole Lombard can be found, but how truly accurate they are remains a mystery.
Carole Lombard was to die aged just thirty three years, in a plane crash while returning from a tour promoting war bonds. So she never got to see the tight censorship rules of the Production Code disappear or enjoy society’s increasingly relaxed attitudes to language and honesty. I can just imagine her being a sensation in the ’60s and ’70s – on late-night talk shows or even personal interview tours. A raconteur with the skills to make Peter Ustinov blush. Maybe even the star of a fascinating TV documentary made about her and her life and career?
Of course, all of this wittering on about Lombard’s gifts with language really is a sideshow. Yes, it feels like an absence but a very minor one. Because what is really important is her work. And that’s still out there., much of it readily available. It’s her final film 1942’s To Be Or Not To Be that remains my personal favourite, and a great illustration of how utterly charming she could be on the big screen. She was Hollywood’s best paid actress for a while for a reason, and even in weaker films she’s often the highlight. Or, as she almost certainly didn’t say it, “the best fucking thing in this little shitty picture.“
A Damn Fine Cup of Culture 