And the Rest Is History (18 page)

Four years later Lombard (then divorced) organized the Mayfair Ball in Beverly Hills; for its theme she requested that the women dress in white gowns and the men in white tie and tails. When Norma Shearer entered, clad in crimson, Lombard wanted to demand her expulsion, but columnist Louella Parsons was able to dissuade her.

William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies brought along Gable (then estranged from Ria), and when he saw Carole, clad in a complimentary white gown, he approached her with words from
No Man of Her Own
: “I go for you, Ma.” She responded, “I go for you too, Pa.” They began to dance, during which Gable held Carole so tightly he realized she was wearing nothing under her clinging silk dress. When Carole noticed his arousal she began to laugh, causing Gable to turn red. Lombard suggested they have a drink so he could calm down, but Gable proposed an alternative: a ride in his new $16,000 Duesenberg convertible. After his third circling of the Beverly Wilt-shire Hotel, he asked if she'd like to see his room. Lombard, with her trademark sarcasm, responded, “Who do you think you are—Clark Gable?” It spoiled the moment and they returned to the ball.

Upon their arrival, actor Lyle Talbot made a comment about their absence, and Lombard had to restrain Gable from punching him. Then, spying the lady in red, Carole wanted to ask a waiter to dump a tray of dirty dishes on her. Clark had to restrain her. This led to an argument and his angry departure.

The next morning Gable awoke to a white dove perched on his chest and another on the chandelier. When he caught one, tied to its leg was the message, “How about it? Carole.” She had bribed a hotel employee to plant the birdcage in his room while he slept. Later he received a note that a present would be arriving at nine p.m., which he assumed was from Carole. However, when he opened his door, standing at the other side in a long mink coat, carrying two bottles of champagne, was actress Merle Oberon. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth (especially when the horse looked like Oberon), Gable embarked on an affair with her.

In February Oberon and Gable attended a party at J. H. Whitney's mansion to celebrate a friend's release from a psychiatric hospital. The festivity came to an abrupt halt when an ambulance pulled up and medics carried in a stretcher bearing Lombard. With a horrified crowd surrounding her, she suddenly sat up and began to laugh. Clark's face registered his disapproval of her gag, to which she muttered, “I always knew Gable was a stuffed shit—I mean shirt.” Clark was about to storm off when she stood up, revealing her figure sheathed in a white gown. He informed her that she needed a psychiatrist, and she countered that he had lost his sense of humor married to a woman old enough to be his mother.

After the party, when Gable arrived at MGM he found Carole's belated Valentine Day mea culpa: an old white Model T with painted large red hearts. A note was attached to its steering wheel: “You're driving me crazy.” In response, he invited her to dinner at the Café Trocadero. Though Carole may have anticipated Gable pulling up in the Duesenberg, the pair chugged along at ten miles an hour in the Valentine car.

During this time the actress became engrossed in the novel
Gone with the Wind
and envisioned Clark and herself playing Rhett and Scarlett. She sent it to Clark with the inscription, “Let's do it!” He immediately took it as a sexual invitation and phoned her that evening.

Carole had worried about succumbing to Clark's Casanova charms (when Gable left his hand and foot imprints on the Grauman's Chinese Theater forecourt, Lombard quipped that he should have imprinted his “cockprint” as well). However, realizing that his feelings for her were genuine, she allowed herself to lower her romantic resistances. And amazingly enough, the love that resulted was that Hollywood rarity: the real thing. Although Lombard didn't become Scarlett, when Clark's divorce came through, she ended up getting an equally coveted role: that of his wife.

Lombard was dreading a wedding that would resemble a “fucking circus,” and during a few days' break on
Gone with the Wind
, they drove to a town hall in Arizona. On June 26, 1931, the clerk on duty stared in disbelief at the Hollywood legends; during the ceremony the bride cried nonstop. When they returned to their Bel Air estate, news of the nuptials between Hollywood's king and queen had leaked, and six MGM guards surrounded their estate. Carole told the press, “I'll let Pa be the star, and I'll stay home, darn the socks, and look after the kids.”

Preferring life away from their glittering court, they purchased a ranch in Encino, whose gabled roof led to its moniker “the House of the Two Gables.” Gable brought with them a host of pets, including the offspring of the two doves from the post-Mayfair Ball morning. Clark said of his wife, “You can trust that little screwball with your life or your hopes or your weaknesses, and she wouldn't even know how to think about letting you down.” There they lovingly referred to each other as Ma and Pa; the only blight on their happiness was their lack of a baby.

In 1942, Clark received a request from Indiana for a star to promote war bonds, and he naturally offered the services of his Hoosier-born wife. He wanted to accompany her but could not because of his work on
Somewhere I'll Find You
, so Carole took her mother. Before she left, she gave her secretary sealed envelopes to be given to Clark each day of her absence. In their bed she placed a naked blond dummy with a tag tied around its neck: “So you won't be lonely.” To even the score he obtained a male dummy, replete with a huge erect phallus, as a surprise gift for his wife's arrival home. Lombard was to return by train; however, eager to be reunited with Gable as soon as possible, she insisted on a plane, something her superstitious mother was against. They ended the impasse with a toss of a coin; Carole won.

In anticipation of “Ma's” return, Clark decorated their ranch with red, white, and blue balloons; however, he soon received the devastating news that Carole's plane had crashed near Las Vegas. Gable flew to the scene and had to be forcibly restrained from climbing the mountainside in an effort to rescue her. There were no survivors.

Distraught, Gable felt that as his wife had given her life for her country, he should do the same and he enlisted in the army. When he returned to the now-ironically named home, the House of the Two Gables, it echoed his loneliness, bereft of his profane angel.

21

1940

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I
n the 1950s, a favorite escape from the twin threats of communism and McCarthyism was to tune in to the antics of the country's zaniest housewife. However, while America loved Lucy, the person behind the
I
of the show's name was the staff, support, and soul mate of the iconic redhead.

The man who was to break television's color barrier, Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Acha III, was born in Santiago, Cuba, the scion of prestige. His maternal grandfather was a founder of Bacardi Rum; his paternal grandfather was the doctor assigned to Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders after their ride up San Juan Hill. But the privileged life of his ancestors was not destined to be his. Desiderio's life was derailed with Batista's revolution, and the family fled to Florida. To save money, the family lived in a warehouse and subsisted on cans of pork and beans; baseball bats warded off the rats.

Despite his fall down the social strata, Desiderio was a survivor who quickly learned English and made American friends, including his best buddy, Al Capone Jr. While still in high school, armed with a pawnshop guitar, Desiderio (known as “Desi”) auditioned for a band with his piece “Babalu.” He had practice with the instrument from serenading señoritas back in Cuba and was hired. Desi began his career for $39 a week at the Roney Plaza Hotel. In 1937 he started his own band in Miami Beach and helped launch the conga craze that swept over America. As acclaim spread, he was offered a role in
Too Many Girls
as the Latin lover.

The woman who became famous for making millions laugh was born into a Baptist family in Jamestown, New York. The great tragedy of Lucille's childhood was the death of her father when his wife was four months pregnant with their second child, Fred. Her grandfather, similarly named Fred, stepped in as her male role model, and as such took her to vaudeville shows and fostered her innate love of theater. When Lucille fell for the bad boy, a gangster's son, Johnny DeVita, her mother agreed to send the sixteen-year-old to the John Murray Anderson American Academy of Dramatic Art in Manhattan. Unlike Bette Davis, who was the school's shining star, Lucille left after a few weeks when her drama coaches informed her she “had no future at all as a performer.” However, the word
no
was not part of Lucille's lexicon, and she eventually obtained work as a Goldwyn Girl in Hollywood. Her destiny would have remained that of a minor starlet except for an encounter that would make her one half of America's most beloved couple.

The first time Desi met Lucille was at RKO, one of the five big studios from Hollywood's Golden Age. She was dressed for a scene involving a catfight with Maureen O'Hara, which led to Desi's remark that she looked “like a two-dollar whore who had been badly beaten by her pimp.” Later that afternoon Lucille happened to stroll by, sans costume, and Desi's first words to her were “Would you like me to teach you how to rumba? It may come in handy for your part in the picture.” She accepted his invitation to join him at a Mexican restaurant, where they had dinner, danced, and drank. Lucille later recalled of their meeting, “It wasn't love at first sight. It took a full five minutes.”

The following Sunday Desi and a date attended a Malibu party, where he decided to take a solitary stroll, on which he saw Lucille sitting alone on the beach. Desi later recalled, “I did not go back to the Hollywood Roosevelt. I went to Lucille's apartment, and that was our first night together.” Six months later Desi and Lucy eloped to Connecticut, where they married on November 30, 1940. Lucy said of her nuptials, “My friends gave the marriage six months. I gave it six weeks.” Because of the haste, they had to settle with a wedding ring purchased at the last minute from Woolworths; she wore it all through her marriage. The new wife did not change only her surname. In his autobiography, Arnaz explained, “I didn't like the name ‘Lucille.' That name had been used by other men. ‘Lucy' was mine alone.”