Want to know the best Carole Lombard movies? How about the worst Carole Lombard movies? Curious about Carole Lombard box office grosses or which Carole Lombard movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Carole Lombard movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences and which ones got the worst reviews? Well you have come to the right place…. because we have all of that information and much more.
Carole Lombard (1908-1942) was an American actress, who the American Film Institute ranked as one of the Top 50 Screen Legends of all time. Lombard is ranked as the 23rd best actress, right behind #22 Jean Harlow and right before #24 Mary Pickford. One of our goals is to do a movie page on all 50 Screen Legends. After completing this page we have now written movie pages on 46 (or 92%) of those performers……leaving only 3 actresses and 1 actor that still need movie pages.
Her IMDb page shows 80 acting credits from 1921-1942. This page will rank 39 Carole Lombard movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Her silent movies, her shorts and her first three “talkies” are not included. Every Lombard movie from 1930 to 1942 is included in the rankings.
Carole Lombard Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table
The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.
- Sort Carole Lombard movies by co-stars of her movies
- Sort Carole Lombard movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Carole Lombard movies by yearly domestic box office rank
- Sort Carole Lombard movies by how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
- Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and Oscar® wins each Carole Lombard movie received.
- Sort Carole Lombard movies by Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score. UMR puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
- Use the sort and search buttons to make this table very interactive. For example…if you type in “Cary Grant” in the search box….the 3 Grant/Lombard movies will pop right up.
- Blue Link in Co-Star column will take you to that star’s UMR movie page
Stats and Possibly Interesting Things From The Above Carole Lombard Table
- Nine Carole Lombard movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark. That is a percentage of 23.08% of her movies listed. My Man Godfrey (1936) was her biggest box office hit.
- An average Carole Lombard movie grosses $77.90 million in adjusted box office gross.
- Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter. 26 of Carole Lombard’s movies are rated as good movies…or 66.66% of her movies. To Be or Not to Be (1942) was her highest rated movie while From Hell To Heaven (1933) was her lowest rated movie.
- Three Carole Lombard movies received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 7.69% of her movies.
- Zero Carole Lombard movies won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 0.00% of her movies.
- An average Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score is 40.00. 21 Carole Lombard movies scored higher that average….or 53.84% of her movies. My Man Godfrey (1936) got the the highest UMR Movie Score while From Hell To Heaven (1933) got the lowest UMR Movie Score.
Possibly Interesting Facts About Carole Lombard
1. Carole Lombard was born Jane Alice Peters in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
2. How Jane Alice Peters became Carole Lombard. After his first screen test….the name “Jane” was considered to “dull”…so her name was changed to Carol. “Lombard” was borrowed from her mother’s close friend Harry Lombard. On the cast credits for 1930’s Safety In Numbers, Paramount Pictures accidentally spelled Carol’s name with a “finale e” and it was decided this this would be the officially spelling of her screen name.
3. Carole Lombard had many nicknames. The Profane Angel. The Hoosier Tornado and The Queen of Screwball Comedy were the most famous. Seems every famous actor or actress had nicknames back then…wonder why current stars do not.
4. Carole Lombard was married to actor William Powell from 1931 to 1933. They fell in love while filming 1931’s Ladies’ Man and 1931’s Man of the World. After their divorce they remained friendly. Powell recommended Lombard for her role opposite him in 1936’s My Man Godfrey. My Man Godfrey would be Lombard’s biggest box office hit and earned her a Best Actress Oscar® nomination (her only nomination).
5. Carole Lombard was married to actor Clark Gable from 1939 to her death in 1942. They first met each other when they were both extras in 1925’s Ben-Hur. Seven years later they starred together in 1932’s No Man Of Her Own…..but their off screen Hollywood romance did not take off until a few years later. Gable and Lombard are entombed together at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.
6. Despite being married to the popular actors William Powell and Clark Gable….Carole Lombard considered Russ Columbo the love of her life. Columbo was a famous singer and violinist who died of an accidentally gun wound in 1934.
7. Carole Lombard is considered by many to be the prototype for the icy blondes in Alfred Hitchcock’s films. Lombard and Hitchcock made one movie together…..1941’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith.
8. On January 15, 1942, Lombard sold $2.50 million in war bonds. Her parting words to the crowd were…”Before I say goodbye to you all….come on…..and join me in a big cheer…V for Victory. Those would be her final public words.
9. On January 16, 1942, Lombard headed back to California. She debated on taking a plane or a train. Lombard flipped a coin to decide. At 7:30 PM her plane crashed into Table Rock Mountain. Carole She was posthumously awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as the first woman killed in the line of duty in World War II. FDR greatly admired her work for the war effort.
10. Lucille Ball said she finally decided to go ahead with I Love Lucy when Carole Lombard, 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. This was almost 10 years after Lombard’s death.
Check out Carole Lombard’s movie career compared to current and classic stars on our Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time page.
America Film Institutes’ Top 25 Screen Legend Actress and UMR’s Links That Rank All Of Their Movies.
Academy Award® and Oscar® are the registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences. Golden Globes® are the registered trademark and service mark of the Hollywood Foreign Press.
When I saw this earlier I thought it was an old movie page. Maybe I was thinking of Jean Harlow?
Harlow and Lombard both died so young, so tragic. Gable was devastated.
Flora wins again. Shocked to find I’ve only seen 5 of Lombard’s films, maybe more in my youth but I can’t remember. The 5 are – Mr and Mrs Smith, My Man Godfrey, Nothing Sacred, To Be or Not To Be and Twentieth Century. My favorite from that group is probably Nothing Sacred, which is one of the great screwball comedies, nearly 80 years old and in full color too!
“The Profane Angel” Nice. I need to check out more of her films and your Lombard page will come in useful Bruce. Cheers amigo.
Voted Up.
Hey Steve…Harlow and Lombard had lots in common…both died young….both were in relationships with William Powell, both are on AFI’s Screen Legend list and both were blondes. Yep Flora easily takes us down…even combined she destroyed us. I have seen 4 of the 5 you have seen….my list includes In Name Only…and loses Nothing Sacred. I will have to check out Nothing Sacred. Thanks for stopping by.
Didn’t even know Cooper, Temple and Carole made a movie together!
Hey Therezinha….yep they did…Now and Forever was Lombard’s 2nd biggest box office hit. She made one other movie with Cooper but only one movie with Temple. Thanks for checking out my Carole Lombard movie page.
Aside from her best known films, I really love The Gay Bride. A very funny, but underrated gem. Sad too see you ranked it so low.
Hey OU812….sorry The Gay Bride did not rank higher….if you sort it critic and audience rating…it moves up to 9th. It scored low in the final rankings because it did so poorly at the box office and did not get any award love. Thanks for stopping by and commenting.
Hi, Bruce.
I adore Carole Lombard comedies. She made some dramas as well occasionally such as Vigil in the Night and Made for Each Other, both of which I saw for the first time within the last couple of months. She was one of Fred MacMurray’s favourite leading ladies.
Mr. and Mrs. Smith is a screwball comedy, the only one Hitchcock made.. He did it because he wanted to work with Lombard. He wanted to do a suspense with her, but she died before this could happen. Don’t confuse this title with the recent film of the same name. Lombard and Montgomery’s Hitch film is a comedy about a married couple who find out that legally they aren’t married.
After she died, Gable joined the air force. Hitler wanted to shoot him down. Instead, Gable’s GWTW co-star was shot down instead…Ashley Wilkes portrayer Leslie Howard.
The highest ranked movie I have seen is My Man Godfrey at number 1, which I never tire of watching.
The lowest ranked movie I have seen is Fools For Scandal at number 36.
The highest ranked movie I have not seen is Now and Forever which has Shirley Temple down as Templer…
Swing High Swing Low and others I have recorded on PVR. My seen Lombard list went up a lot due to the current TCM Star of the Month FM. I cannot remember how many others are ready to see by PVR but SHSL is the only one I know for sure is waiting for me.
Views By Ranking:
I have seen 3 of the top 5 films.
I have seen 6 of the top 10 films.
I have seen 9 of her top 20 films.
I have seen 15 of her top 30 films.
I have seen 17 of her listed films.
I have seen 19 of her films overall.
My top 5 favourite Carole Lombard films are:
Twentieth Century
My Man Godfrey
Mr. and Mrs. Smith
No Man of Her Own
In Name Only
Cheers,
Flora
Hey Flora.
1. Excluding the all-time ticket selling movie page….this was the 4th straight actress to get a page…that streak of 18 straight actors is now anciet history.
2. I read that she really helped out MacMurray when he was first starting out. I have not seen any of their 4 movies….going to have to check out at least one of their movies.
3. I almost included a statement on Mr. and Mrs. Smith from Hitch….he said that it did not understand the characters in the movie…so he just filmed the scenes in the script without really doing much else as a director….I think that shows when you look at all of his other American films.
4. I am sure some Angelina Jolie/Brad Pitt fans get confused when they see 1941’s Mr. And Mrs. Smith show up on tv.
5. Yep they say Gable never recovered from her death. Strange that Lombard was Gable’s love his life and Columbo was Lombard’s love of her life.
6. Hope you enjoy Swing High Swing Low….whenever you get around to watching it.
7. % 60%, 60% 45% and then 50%….actually a little low for you when compared to other classic pages.
8. So you are at 19…I am at….counting…I am at 5….thinking you will end up beating both Steve and my combined total….congrats.
9. Weird….your Top 5 are the 5 that I have seen….so our Top 5s match. I would say In Name Only is my favorite….Kay Francis, Grant and Lombard are very good in that one….the only part I do not like is Grant almost dying from sitting in front of a window…never made sense to me.
Thanks for stopping by and sharing your Lombard thoughts.
Yes, you have done several women in a row. Being that the Top Ticket Sales page was a theme page rather than an individual artist page, the streak isn’t broken.
I see that you and Steve do have the same total.
My percentage of Lombard movies is lower than others due to availability. She and Claudette Colbert are actresses I have always enjoyed but the titles I have seen I see so often that I think I’ve seen more titles than I have.
I watched Swing High Swing Low last night. It’s a musical that has both comedy and drama in it. It is a good look at how show business is a bad business. Coming from a family of musicians I feel qualified to say that the only musicians that have a solid paycheck and healthy habits and relationships are those who earn a living by *teaching* music lessons.
One of the reasons I have requested Kay Francis is that TCM has a huge number of her movies. I had never even heard of her until TCM became available in Canada. She was a huge star and I am now quite familiar with her.
Lombard movies I have seen for the first time in the last two months number 5 of them.
Oh, and you still have Shirley Temple listed as Shirley Templer
Flora
Hey Flora….that streak is coming to an end tomorrow….as Ben Stiller is just about ready. The good news is Claudette Colbert is coming right behind him. After searching for Colbert and Lombard….I reached a point where I just want to be done with them. Even better news is I fell a lot more confident in the Colbert box office grosses than I did on this Lombard page.
Thanks for the mini-review on Swing High Swing Low….so you are up to 20….to Steve and my combined total of 10.
I actually found a great source on 35 of Kay Francis’ movies….got domestic and worldwide box office and lots of her movies already…..that is almost 70% of the work on her career.
I will fix that error…..thanks for the catch. And thanks for the coming back and commenting again.
It’s sad that such a great talent was killed at such a young age. My three favorites are: Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Hands Across the Table and To Be Or Not To Be. I like the sort button very interesting. Had fun playing around with it. Will have to check out more of your pages. Nice find.
Hey Shirley. I agree very sad indeed about early death. I have two of your three favorite movies. Hands Across The Table is one I want to check out. Glad you discovered the sort button. Got lots more classic pages for you to check out…and we do requests if you see anybody not on our website. Thanks for stopping by.