Some people are remembered for their deaths. It is a tribute to Carole Lombard’s personality that her own community nourishes the memory of her life. It seems fair to say that no American performer in any medium was so deeply mourned in this century, or so sorely missed. Yet she has continued to inhabit the film colony during every cycle of its stark change—a happy, irrepressible ghost, still a part of the Hollywood atmosphere where fact and fable commingle.
The Lombard allure is rooted in personality, but the passing of years has yielded a positive revaluation of her artistry. She belongs to a brief but vibrant chapter of film history when the luminous stars were indeed much larger than life, and the popular belief has been that the time made them “big” in a way that stars can never be so big again. But we are also coming to appreciate that the great stars of the Age of the Movies were also better…if only because the system brought the unmistakable cream inevitably to the top.
- Larry Swindell
Rest in Peace Jane Alice Peters aka Carole Lombard | 6 October, 1908 - 16 January, 1942