Carole Lombard: the screwball queen, born on Rockhill Street

Born 6 October 1908, Fort Wayne — died 16 January 1942

The tie: Carole Lombard was born Jane Alice Peters on October 6, 1908, at 704 Rockhill Street in Fort Wayne. The family left Indiana in her childhood and she was raised in Los Angeles, so the Fort Wayne claim on her is a birth claim, stated at that strength; her full profile is carried in the People and Film section of this history and cross-referenced here. What belongs to this section is her standing in comedy, which is the largest any Fort Wayne-born performer has held in any branch of the art.

The craft record: Lombard came up through Mack Sennett's silent comedies in the 1920s, the era's great comedy factory, and her breakthrough was Twentieth Century (1934), directed by Howard Hawks, which stands in the standard histories as the prototypical screwball comedy and the film that established her in the form. There followed the run that defines the genre: My Man Godfrey (1936), for which she received an Academy Award nomination — the only one of her career; Nothing Sacred (1937); and To Be or Not to Be (1942), released after her death. Life magazine anointed her "America's Screwball Queen," and by the late 1930s she stood among Hollywood's highest-paid actresses. The American Film Institute ranked her twenty-third on its 1999 list of the female screen legends of classic American cinema. Her comic manner — rapid delivery, physical ease, and a willingness to play the fool that her dramatic contemporaries avoided — is the quality the reference accounts return to, and it is the form's textbook example.

The end: Lombard died on January 16, 1942, aged thirty-three, in the crash of TWA Flight 3 near Las Vegas, returning from a war-bond rally in Indianapolis — the first American woman of celebrity to die in the war effort's service, and the Indiana Historical Society's account records that she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously. Fort Wayne's commemoration of her is carried in the People record; this section's entry is her comic standing, which needs no local boosterism: the defining comedienne of screwball was born here, and the record of the genre is partly hers wherever it is written.

Sources:

1. Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Carole Lombard" — the Sennett years, Twentieth Century (1934) as the screwball breakthrough, My Man Godfrey and the Academy Award nomination, Nothing Sacred, To Be or Not to Be, and the 1942 crash.
2. Ray Boomhower, Indiana Historical Society — the birth as Jane Alice Peters at 704 Rockhill Street, Fort Wayne, on October 6, 1908; the war-bond return and the crash of January 16, 1942; the posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom.
3. American Film Institute, "AFI's 100 Years… 100 Stars" (1999) — Lombard at twenty-third among the female screen legends; Life magazine's "America's Screwball Queen," as quoted in the standard biographical accounts.
4. People and Film section of this history — Lombard's Fort Wayne profile and commemoration, carried there in full and cross-referenced here by agreement.