The Profane Angel

I started out wanting to do a post about profanity in the thirties (sorry Lucille Bogan I’ll make a post about your salty lyrics later, I promise). However, I found myself falling down a rabbit hole. In this case, the white rabbit was Carol Lombard.

According to Fred Peters, Carol’s brother, she developed her blue vocabulary working for Pathe Studios in the 1920s. For her, it was a means of leveling the playing field with her male costars. Margaret Tallichet Wyler called it Carol’s ‘work jargon’ claiming she never heard Carol swear in front of her mother.¹

There’s a gag real of My Man Godfrey. It’s great catching a glimpse of her, William Powell, and other stars swearing and goofing around.²

Carol Lombard made 56 feature films.³ She was a keen businesswoman who knew her way around contracts. For a time she was one of the highest paid actresses in Hollywood. She lost her life in 1942 when the plane she was traveling in while selling war bonds crashed into Nevada’s Mt. Polosi.⁴

Carol’s 10 Rules for Living By a ‘Man’s Code’⁵

1. Play Fair
2. Don’t Brag
3. Obey the Boss
4. Take Criticism
5. Love is Private
6. Work–And Like It!
7. Pay Your Share
8. The Cardinal Virtue–Sense of Humor
9. Be Consistent
10. Be Feminine

SOURCES:

1. Robert Matzen. Fireball: Carol Lombard and the Mystery of Flight Three. Pittsburg, Pennsylvania: GoodKnight Books, 2014. ↩︎
2. Watchwinder. “My Man Godfrey Outtakes and Bloopers.” Youtube. 2 January 2008. Accessed: 01 March 2024. ↩︎
3. Pearl, August. “Carol Lombard Filmography.” Internet Movie Database. 02 April 2013. Accessed: 1 March 2024. ↩︎
4. Matzen, Fireball. ↩︎
5. Seymore, Hart. “Carole Lombard Tells ‘How I Live by a Man’s Code’.” Photoplay, 6. Volume 51 (June, 1937): 12-13, 78. Accessed: 01 March 2024. ↩︎