Carole Lombard’s Films Cure the Bail-Out Blues

Just in time for the sub-8,000-point Dow Jones Industrial Average, Film Forum is running a movie series fraught with droll films and good ticket deals. From Nov. 22 until Dec. 2, Film Forum is showing the films of Carole Lombard, an American comedy starlet from cinema’s Golden Age, who once commanded the highest salary in Hollywood. This Lombard retrospective, coinciding with the centennial of her birth, offers access to at least two Lombard films with every admission, stretching the value of everyone’s dissipating dollars. Most of the films are on high-quality 35mm archive prints, and some are restored prints being screened for the first time.

Nearly 70 years after her last film, Lombard’s sharp comedic timing and astute acting still shine. Lombard starred in a wide range of films during her career, mixing serious drama with lighter screwball comedies and satires. Whatever the genre, her appeal always came from her willingness to push the envelope. The best Lombard characters are generally a tad batty. In the 1942 satire of Nazism, To Be or Not to Be, Lombard, playing a self-infatuated actress, strides up to her director wearing a stunning ball gown. When the director asks her if she thinks the sizzling dress is appropriate for her role as a concentration camp prisoner, she responds, “Think of me being flogged in the darkness, screaming—suddenly, the lights go on, and the audience discovers me on the floor in this gorgeous dress!” In the middle of World War II, making that line of work took nerve, something Lombard never lacked.

“Lombard’s acting style is completely modern,” said Bruce Goldstein, a programming director at Film Forum. “Her screen persona was something completely new to audiences. ... Here was a beautiful, sexy, completely liberated woman with a great sense of humor.”

Lombard’s career, though cut short by a 1942 plane crash during a tour to sell war bonds, is also worth a retrospective because of the renowned actors and directors with whom she worked. Her movies present an impressive cross-section of film legends from the 1930s and ’40s. She acted alongside some of film’s greatest leading men: Garry Cooper, John Barrymore, Cary Grant, Clark Gable, and Jimmy Stewart, to name just a few. She also worked with a prestigious assembly of directors, including Howard Hawks, Ernst Lubitsch (one of cinema’s greatest comedic directors), and Alfred Hitchcock.
When choosing which Lombard films to view, though, the fame of other cast members should not be the sole criterion. Not all of Lombard’s work with cinematic titans is engaging. Mr. & Mrs. Smith—the romantic comedy she did with Hitchcock—is a misogynist bore. Though the film is notably Hitchcock’s sole foray into romantic comedy, the dull script prevents Lombard from playing her usual savvy character, reducing her to a middling, subservient housewife. The film’s jokes are unfunny, sexist variations on her character’s stereotypical stupidity.

At her best, Lombard asserts herself as an actress, going toe-to-toe with her legendary leading men. In Hawks’ Twentieth Century, Lombard plays a melodramatic actress to John Barrymore’s egotistical director. Late in the film, as Barrymore tries to steal the show with his character’s hilarious histrionics, Lombard keeps up with the cinema great, her own character’s over-the-top emotionalism matching that of Barrymore. Likewise, in To Be or Not to Be, Lombard is just as good as Jack Benny, who plays her husband and fellow anti-Nazi conspirator.

For the most part, Lombard’s films appeal to the modern viewer. “Her best films haven’t dated at all. Audiences respond to them as they may have 70 years ago,” Goldstein said. Carole Lombard changed the way subsequent comediennes approached film and television, empowering them with her self-confidence and charm. She made these strides while remaining entertaining, and many of her progressive roles enlivened Depression-era America. As the financial hailstorm continues to pummel America, Lombard’s meaningful escapism is worth revisiting.