Apr. 10, 1939

Clark Gable and Carole Lombard met first in 1932, while making a picture called No Man of Her Own. Gable was then a novice leading man, only four years removed from the career of bumming, lumberjacking and cheap stock company acting that had preceded his debut on Broadway in Machinal. Carole Lombard was an ex-Mack Sennett comedienne trying hard to make a reputation as a serious actress. Both were married. Gable's wife was a well-to-do Texas widow ten years his senior, whom he had married the year before, after divorcing a dramatic coach. Lombard's husband was Actor William Powell. At this first meeting, neither Gable nor Lombard showed any interest in the other.

Their next meeting of importance occurred at a party given by Hollywood's famed Countess di Frasso in 1935. By this time, Carole Lombard had divorced William Powell and Gable was no longer living with his wife. Countess di Frasso's guests had been asked to come in something white. Carole Lombard arrived in a white ambulance, wearing a white nightgown, lying on a white cot which was carried in by three white-clad interns. She and Gable danced together all evening. Later, Lombard had the ambulance decorated with a red heart and sent it to Gable. He had the motor supercharged and drove about in it for two years.

Later on, to show her affection for Gable, Carole Lombard sent him hams with his picture painted on them. He reciprocated with a gift of a fire engine. Soon Gable and Lombard called each other "Ma" and "Pa."

The progress of the Gable-Lombard romance was apparently impeded by Mrs. Gable until last January, when she announced that she would sue for a divorce. When the divorce was granted, March 7, Clark Gable and Carole Lombard at last admitted they would marry, without saying when.

One day last week, Clark Gable got into his cream-colored roadster, picked up Carole Lombard and drove 350 miles east to Kingman, Ariz. There they bought a license from an awestruck clerk named Viola Olsen, and proceeded to the home of a Methodist Episcopal minister named Kenneth M. Engle. In the presence of his wife and a high-school principal named Cate, who later defined their behavior as "lovey-dovey," Mr. Engle made Clark Gable and Carole Lombard man & wife. Gable wore blue, Lombard grey.

Immediately after the ceremony, Mr. & Mrs. Gable started back to Hollywood. They told reporters they would not take a honeymoon until Gable was through making Gone With the Wind, and Lombard her next picture, Memory of Love, for RKO. They expected, within two weeks, to move into Gable's ranch house in San Fernando Valley. They did not expect to call it "the House of the Seven Gables." Asked whether she would retire and have children, Carole Lombard blushed.