William Powell Weds Carole Lombard (1931) 🇺🇸

Famous Man of The World Tires of Bachelor’s Freedom — Bill and Bride Plan Quiet Life — Happy Couple Honeymooning In Hawaii

by Joan Standish

So Bill Powell’s married...!” It is with a mixed feeling of best wishes and still a bit of it’s-hard-to-believe that Hollywood is making the above observation on that ex-bachelor of bachelors, William Powell.

In spite of his former marriage, Bill has always been more than a bachelor to the home-town natives; he has been a stag — a Lone Wolf. Not that Bill hasn’t liked the ladies at various times and in various moods, but they have been little more than passing fancies, mere ripples on the surface of his self-sufficiency. A dainty glove, carelessly left in Bill’s bachelor apartment, only added spice to his bachelordom, like the bookshelves of erotic literature and the French prints of charmingly unrepressed ladies in the hide-away apartment where he was known as “Mr. Thorne.”

Well, the pictures are all packed away now. So are the books. The key to the hide-away has been thrown away. Make no mistake about it, it is no hang-over from “Mr. Thorne” who married the beautiful Carole Lombard. Bill has packed his man-of-the-worldliness away for good.

I talked to him a couple of days before he and Carole were planning to be married.

Suave? He was about as suave as Charlie Ray. Billy Bakewell, getting married to Mary Brian, couldn’t have been more naive than polished Powell.

“Carole and I spent our lunch hour to-day figuring out where we wanted to live when we get back from our honeymoon in Hawaii. We thrashed out the benefits of a furnished versus an unfurnished apartment — and a furnished house versus an unfurnished one. Frankly, I have a leaning toward a house. I’ve lived in apartments a long time. Somehow, marriage always seems more ‘settled’ with home of your own — or have I been reading too many of those ‘You furnish the girl — We furnish the house’ advertisements?

“Do I hate to give up my freedom? Good Lord, no! Freedom is one of the great disillusions of the world. We think we want it above all things, and when we get it, what in the world can we do with it? What’s the fun of going places and seeing things if there isn’t someone important to share the thrill of traveling? What’s the fun of accomplishing things if there isn’t someone who means a lot to applaud and tell you what a remarkable fellow you are? I’ve had a great many years of the ‘coveted freedom.’ I’ve found that I can be the loneliest in the most crowded places when all I have to celebrate with is — freedom.

“I think I’m getting the most wonderful girl in the world. Freedom? I’d trade every bit of it just for a few hours with Carole. We’ve opened secret doors in one another’s personalities. We’ve found that we are new people — to each other.

“Carole is supposed to be the sophisticated type. I’m supposed to be suave and polished — I’m supposed to drip with polish and slide with suavity. Well, it isn’t true. We are both the shyest, most sensitive people you’ll ever know. Carole’s supposed sophistication is just a mask he has used to get over the hard bumps of life. Nobody knows where I got my reputation for ‘suaveness.’

“The other night we braved the crowds to attend the opening of Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. in his stage play, ‘The Man In Possession.’ Carole and I were asked to speak over the radio. I started trembling with nervousness. Suddenly I felt Carole’s hand in mine. She was shaking, too. ‘This is awful, darling.’ she whispered in my ear. ‘This is the last one of these we’ll ever attend.’

“After our honeymoon, we’re going to settle down in the old-fashioned idea of a calm and very unexciting life — as exciting lives are judged in Hollywood. We have a few close friends who mean much to us. We’re going to play tennis, and quietly attend theaters — other than opening nights, and take drives to the beaches, and get our own meals on the cook’s day out, and go places and do things — always together. I’ve found a pal, a sweetheart, a friend, a wife — let those who will keep their freedom!”

So Bill Powell’s married...

And may we add — and how!

Hollywood sees romantic irony in the fact

that the girl who changed Bill was the same girl who helped him look like the not-a-husband type in “Man of the World.””

The movie colony also is amused at the way Bill and Carole went through the ceremony. Here probably, was the biggest chance for publicity either of them had ever had — and they dodged reporters

When they appeared to take out the license, reporters spied them and garnered the facts that the groom was thirty-eight and the bride twenty-two. But not a single newshawk knew of the simple wedding at the home of the bride — until it was all over.

Mr. and Mrs. at last, William Powell and Carole Lombard escape from reporters and sail for Hawaii for their honeymoon.

William Powell has been converted to “the calm and unexciting life” of a husband. Wonder what he’ll do with the top-hat?

It took Carole Lombard to make Bill Powell realise he was lonely. She’s “a pal, a sweetheart, a friend and a wife,” says Bill.

Source: Movie Classics, September 1931