Real Name: Jane Alice Peters
Birthdate: October 6,1908
Birthplace: Fort Wayne, Indiana
Deathdate: January 16,1942
Deathplace: Nevada, USA
Cause Of Death: Plane Crash
Husbands:
William Powell (1931 - 1933) (divorced)
Clark Gable (29 March 1939 - 16 January 1942) (her death)
Nickname: The Profaine Angel
Hieght:5'2"
During World War II and after her death a Liberty ship was named after Carole Lombard.
A 1926 auto accident badly cut her face. Advanced plastic surgery and adroit use of make-up covered the scars.
Linked romantically to crooner Russ Columbo until his accidental death late in 1934.
Lombard was listed in the credits of Safety in Numbers (1930), her first Paramount release, as Carole (instead of Carol as in her previous billings). They decided that this would now be the official spelling and she went along with it. She legally changed her name to Carole Lombard in 1936. Only in her first film, Perfect Crime, A (1921) did she use her real name, Jane Peters.
Second cousin of director Howard Hawks.
Cousin-in-law of Mary Astor.
A natural tomboy with athletic prowess and spirit far exceeding her size (Jane Alice Peters was a petite child who achieved a towering 5' 2", with shoes) the future screen star frequently joined her brothers in roughhousing.
Carole Lombard was posthumously awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, as the first woman killed in the line of duty in WWII. (She was a true patriot whom Roosevelt greatly admired for her public displays of patriotism, and died on her way home to Clark Gable from a War Bond-selling engagement.)
