Carole Lombard: The Hoosier Tornado

For millions of movie fans during the 1930s, an actress from Fort Wayne, Indiana, personified the madcap adventures of their favorite form of screen comedy screwball. Nicknamed The Hoosier Tornado for her energetic personality, Carole Lombard did as much as anyone to define the genre, in such films as Twentieth Century and My Man Godfrey. She also captured America's attention through her romance and marriage with Clark Gable. Wes D. Gehring examines Lombard's legacy, focusing on the public and private figure from her early days as in Mack Sennett silent films, to her development as the leading motion-picture comedienne of her time, to her tragic death in a January 1942 plane crash following a successful war-bond rally in Indianapolis.

• Title : Carole Lombard: The Hoosier Tornado
• ISBN-13: 9780871951670
• Publisher: Indiana Historical Society
• Publication date: 28/10/2003
• Author : Wes D. Gehring, Ray E. Boomhower (Editor), Kathleen M. Breen (Editor)

Publishers Weekly

Lombard (1908-1942) was the brightest star in screwball comedy's constellation, and her tragic death at 33 made her a Hollywood legend. Ball State film professor Gehring celebrates Lombard's many gifts in this valentine. Born in Fort Wayne, Ind., and raised in California, Lombard has a quintessentially American, star-is-born saga: she parlayed talent and timing into a stellar career and marriage to Clark Gable, the king of MGM. In fact, Lombard, who often doubled as an uncredited producer, loved all things cinematic. A keen intelligence and show-biz savvy defined her as much as her boundless energy. The screen siren was fiercely democratic and wildly generous. Her fame grew with the movie industry-from early Mack Sennett shorts to the deft comic genius of My Man Godfrey and Nothing Sacred-and she embraced all the 20th century had to offer: feminism, free love and fun.

Possessing classic beauty yet renowned for her eccentricity and ability to swear like a sailor, Lombard was also a survivor. A car crash when she was 17 nearly ruined her budding career, and only plastic surgery and, in her words, "determination and tenacity" kept her on film. Her undeniable charm bewitched many leading men of the 1930s, including George Raft and first husband William Powell. Lombard, who longed to flex her dramatic muscle, was killed in her prime. When she was heading home after a war bonds drive, her plane crashed. Gehring is clearly in love with his subject and details Lombard's life, times and some delicious backstage gossip with a historian's eye and a biographer's appetite for discovery. (Sept.) FYI: This is the first in the press's Indiana Biography Series, which pairs Indiana writers with Indiana subjects of note.

Library Journal

Vivacious and beautiful Carole Lombard, nicknamed the "Hoosier Tornado" because of her colorful, take-charge personality, became the queen of screwball comedies through her turns in My Man Godfrey and the acclaimed Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Relying on secondary sources, Gehring (film, Ball State Univ.) retells the well-known story of her life and zeal for practical joking and, consequently, adds no new information. A few years after Lombard sent a ham to Clark Gable with his picture on it, the two married. While on a war-bond campaign, Lombard tragically died at the age of 33 in a plane crash. These narrative threads aside, Gehring takes the standard approach of critiquing all of Lombard's films, which breaks up the natural flow of the biography. Gehring's book will interest only those who don't know anything about Lombard. If your library already owns Warren G. Harris's Gable and Lombard-the definitive biography of both stars-or any other Lombard studies, this is an unnecessary purchase.-Rosalind Dayden, South Regional Lib.,