"1908"

Why were so many of our very best actors born in April? It’s an unanswerable question, of course, but intriguing nonetheless. And in the rarefied world of movie stardom, the concentration of April birthdays is pretty remarkable.

At age 33, Carole Lombard had it all. She was one of the highest paid actresses in Hollywood, and happily married to its biggest male star: Clark Gable. She had proven herself one of the industry’s top comediennes, but her beauty and talent could extend to serious roles too. Only good things lay ahead.

She was born Ruth Elizabeth Davis in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1908, and was, by her own admission, a Yankee.

If you ask a true movie buff to identify the most gifted director in the history of film comedy, believe it or not, you might not hear the names Woody Allen, Rob Reiner, or even Mel Brooks – funny as many of their films may be. Some aficionados might point to Chaplin, Keaton, or Preston Sturges. My own vote goes to Ernst Lubitsch.             His string of classic comedies, extending from the late ‘20s to the early ‘40s, were all characterized by what became known as “The Lubitsch Touch.” The key to his approach lay in trusting his audience’s intelligence, in their ability to infer and appreciate subtle comic nuance. Try to imagine that happening in today’s Hollywood.      Lubitsch relied more on suggestion than demonstration; he counted on his public to fill in the blanks, and of course, they did. He was known for his urbane characters, witty dialogue, and chic, exotic settings - catnip for Depression-era audiences desperate for escape and a heady dose of glamour.

Seemingly more machine than man, Churchill lived to see his 90th birthday, smoking and tippling pretty much the whole way, getting by on the occasional cat nap.