Programmed June 2021

Carole Lombard: First Lady of Screwball

Carole Lombard was already a Hollywood veteran when a whirlwind comedic revolution took Tinseltown by storm in the 1930s. The genre was screwball, and it fit Lombard like a glove. In definitive classics of the form like Hands Across the Table , Twentieth Century , My Man Godfrey , and Nothing Sacred , Lombard lit up the screen with her vivacious energy and brilliant comic timing (it’s no surprise that Lombard, who was married first to William Powell, then Clark Gable, was an inveterate prankster offscreen, with a famously foul mouth). Though her tragic death in a plane crash at age thirty-three—just after the completion of her final film, Ernst Lubitsch’s audacious anti-Nazi satire To Be or Not Be —robbed Hollywood of one of its brightest stars, Lombard endures thanks to her rare combination of chic elegance and infectious irreverence. Added on 1 June 2021