I completely adore Carole Lombard. She's sophisticated and funny and completely unique. No one talked faster, moved more gracefully, or wore clothes better. Lucille Ball was, obviously, just as funny and also very pretty, but nowhere near as glamorous. They could both take a fall or a pie in the face, but Lucy was always Everywoman, and Carole was always a Vogue model. Whenever Carole Lombard shows up on my TV, I stop to watch her, enchanted.
But I hate her smoking. She smokes freaking constantly in her films. I just watched her in a trifle called Love Before Breakfast (1936), and her leading men match her puff for puff. When I see these handsome men with their skinny mustaches and this beautiful woman in her feather boas and fur stoles, I don't think of how captivating they look. I think of how terrible they must smell. I feel a little stinky myself after spending 90 minutes in their company.
Yes so glamorous and stinky. She was also married to Clark Gable until she died in an airplane crash. I had a crush on his character Rhett Butler I was a teen after reading Gone With the Wind.
ReplyDeleteI have never thought about that. I show my students a video of JFK's space speech and there are people smoking in the audience (right behind the President!) and my students are shocked.
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