Carole Lombard
American actress (1908-1942)
Carole Lombard (born Jane Alice Peters; October 6, 1908 – January 16, 1942) was an American actress, particularly noted for her energetic, often off-beat roles in screwball comedies. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Lombard 23rd on its list of the greatest female stars of Classic Hollywood Cinema.
Lombard was born into a wealthy family in Fort Wayne, Indiana, but was raised in Los Angeles by her single mother. At 12, she was recruited by director Allan Dwan and made her screen debut in A Perfect Crime (1921). She signed a contract with the Fox Film Corporation at age 16, but mainly played bit parts and was dropped after a year. Her career came close to ending shortly before her 19th birthday when a shattered windshield from a car accident left a scar on her face, but she overcame this challenge and appeared in 15 short comedies for Mack Sennett from 1927 to 1929, and then began appearing in feature films such as High Voltage (1929) and The Racketeer (1929). After a successful appearance in The Arizona Kid (1930), she was signed to a contract by Paramount Pictures.
Paramount quickly began casting Lombard as a leading lady, primarily in drama films. Her profile increased when she married William Powell in 1931, but the couple divorced amicably after two years. A turning point in Lombard's career came when she starred in Howard Hawks's pioneering screwball comedy Twentieth Century (1934).
The public source identifies “Carole Lombard” as american actress (1908-1942). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Carole, Lombard and American.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q207739. VIAF identifies the subject as 34643748. The Library of Congress control number is n50039478. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1908, 1942, 1999 and 1921.
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This entry incorporates text from “Carole Lombard” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.