Gone With the Wind

CLARK GABLE & CAROLE LOMBARD: During the "golden age" of the Hollywood studio system, no stars shined brighter than Clark Gable and Carole Lombard. The Oscar-winning actor was at the peak of his critical and box office appeal when he married Lombard (with whom he had conducted a... more discreet affair for several years) in 1939, the same year that Gable starred in "Gone With the Wind." He claimed his marriage to the beautiful comedienne was a personal high point, and the couple settled into an unpretentious home life on a San Fernando Valley ranch where they called each other "Pa" and "Ma." But their idyll was tragically cut short when Lombard, returning from a war bond rally in the early weeks of World War II, was killed in a plane crash near Las Vegas and cited as the first female casualty of the war by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. A devastated Gable joined the Army Air Corps to fly combat missions, and while he would remarry twice, the rugged actor would consider Lombard the love of his life, stipulating that he be buried alongside her grave in Glendale, Calif.

(Hollywood Press Syndicate/Camera Press/Retna Ltd.)