Gable and Lombard is a 1976 American biographical film directed by Sidney J. Furie. The screenplay by Barry Sandler is based on the romance and consequent marriage of screen stars Clark Gable and Carole Lombard. The original music score was composed by Michel Legrand.
Contents
Plot
Film stars Clark Gable and Carole Lombard meet at a Hollywood party, where rugged leading man Gable eschews evening wear and screwball comedian Lombard arrives in an ambulance that wrecks his car. After an argument, it is apparent the two clearly dislike each other, and intensely so, but as fate conspires to bring them together again and again, they begin to admire each other and fall in love.
The fly in the ointment is Gable's second wife Ria. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio chief Louis B. Mayer fears any publicity about his affair with Lombard will jeopardize Gable's career, and since he is MGM's most valuable player, Mayer becomes protective of his star. Gable and Lombard fish, play practical jokes on each other, laugh, fight, and have fun making up. His wife finally grants him a divorce, and the two wed. The happily ever after ending is thwarted when Lombard is killed in a plane crash while promoting the purchase of defense bonds during World War II.
Production
Production design was done by Edward C. Carfagno and costume design was provided by Edith Head.
Critical reception
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 0% of 5 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 3.4/10.
In his review in The New York Times, Vincent Canby called the film
a fan-magazine movie with the emotional zap of a long-lost Louella Parsons column ... As written by Barry Sandler and directed by Sidney J. Furie, Gable and Lombard recalls not Gone with the Wind, Honky Tonk, Twentieth Century, Nothing Sacred or To Be or Not to Be, but clichés culled from the worst movies of that period. The actors do not help ... Of the two, Miss Clayburgh comes off better. She appears to be creating a character whenever the fearfully bad screenplay allows it. Mr. Brolin does not act. He gives an impersonation of the sort that makes you wonder if he can also do James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson. Miss Clayburgh could be an interesting actress, but she's not a great one, nor is she a star, and there are always problems when small performers try to portray the kind of giant legends that Gable and Lombard were. Because both Gable and Lombard are still very much alive in their films on television and in repertory theaters, there is difficulty in responding to Mr. Brolin and Miss Clayburgh in any serious way. They are stand-ins.
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times described the film as a "mushy, old-fashioned extravaganza" and added,
there are so many dumb practical jokes and would-be risque innuendoes that any concern for [Gable and Lombard's] real thoughts and feelings is lost. So we don't get a notion of their private lives, and we don't even remotely learn from this movie what made them great stars and personalities.
Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune named Gable and Lombard one of the worst films of 1976, stating in his year-end TV review that “in real life, you can get arrested for playing around with dead bodies. The same should be true for movie-makers who desecrate the memory of great, dead actors.” He also slammed the "overwhelming" audacity of the film:
Think about it: What the folks at Universal Pictures have done ranks somewhere between putting Lenin's waxen body in the Kremlin and Disneyland notorizing the Presidents.