Lucille Ball said she finally decided to go ahead with "I Love Lucy" (1951) when Carole, who had been a close friend, came to her in a dream and recommended she take a chance on the risky idea of entering television.
Carol Lynley (born as Carole Jones a month after the actress' death) was named after Lombard.
A 1926 auto accident badly cut her face. Advanced plastic surgery and adroit use of make-up covered the scars. However, at the time the belief was that use of anesthetic during the operation would leave worse scars, so she endured the reconstructive surgery without an anesthetic.
A natural tomboy with athletic prowess and spirit far exceeding her size (she was a petite child who stood 5' 2", with shoes) the future screen star frequently joined her brothers in roughhousing.
According to Garson Kanin, she never had a dressing room when shooting a movie. Instead, she preferred to socialize with the cast and crew members during her breaks.
After her death, the Van Nuys News ran an unusual front page tribute: "Down deep in their hearts, those who had chatted with her over the back fence or across a garden row knew that Carole Lombard wanted more than anything else to be a model housewife and a good neighbor. And she was just that. She was a loveable person, just as much at home in blue denims and ginghams as she was in furs and jewels.".
Attended Fairfax High School in Los Angeles. Was elected "May Queen" in 1924. Quit soon thereafter to pursue acting full time. Graduated in 1927.
Attended Virgil Junior High School on Virgil Avenue in Los Angeles in the early 1920s. The school exists as Virgil Middle School on Vermont Avenue, one block from the original school today.
Both of her marriages were childless.
Carole Lombard had a little dachshund named Commissioner that ignored Clark Gable completely. After her death in 1942, the dog would not leave Gable's side.
Carole Lombard was intensely patriotic and started a war-bond-selling tour in January 1942 to support the war effort. Two weeks after she started the tour (and after already raising over $2 million dollars in defense bonds), she was unfortunately killed in a TWA DC-3 plane crash outside of Las Vegas. Clark Gable (her husband) was devasted and subsequently joined the Army Air Corps.
Considered by many to be the prototype for the icy blondes in Alfred Hitchcock's films.
During World War II, after her death, a Liberty ship was named after her.
Gable and Lombard first met in late 1924 while working as extras on the set of Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925). They would make three films together as extras, Ben-Hur, The Johnstown Flood (1926) and The Plastic Age (1925) and star together in No Man of Her Own (1932), but not become romantically attached until 1936.
Her film To Be or Not to Be (1942) was in post-production when she died in a plane crash, and the producers decided to leave out a part that had her character ironically saying, "What can happen in a plane?"
Her performance as Maria Tura in To Be or Not to Be (1942) is ranked #38 on Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Performances of All Time (2006).
Interred at Forest Lawn, Glendale, California, USA, in the Great Mausoleum, Sanctuary of Trust, on the left hand side, next to Clark Gable.
Interred next to Clark Gable at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Hollywood, California.
Just before her relationship with Clark Gable began in earnest, Carole read and loved the book "Gone With the Wind". Excited, she sent a copy of the book to Gable, with a note attached reading "Let's do it!". Gable wrongly assumed she was making a sexual advance to him, and called Carole to organize a date. When he found out Carole wanted to make a film of the book with him as Rhett Butler and herself as Scarlett, he refused, and kept the copy of the book she had given him thereafter in his toilet.