“Marvelous girl. Crazy as a bedbug.”

That was director Howard Hawks's description of Carole Lombard. Maus and I have watched a handful of her movies over the last few weeks — including that rare Hitchcock comedy Mr. and Mrs. Smith, a surprisingly engaging melodrama called In Name Only, and the outrageous My Man Godfrey (second only to Bringing Up Baby in the screwball comedy genre).

What a woman. Like Myrna Loy and Claudette Colbert, she was one of those vampish, seductive beauties of the silent era whose comedic talents weren't appreciated until the advent of dialogue separated the talent from the pretty-faces (1920s-era photos of Lombard suggest a misplaced emulation of Marlene Dietrich).

After 10 years and nearly 50 pictures—and a brief marriage to William Powell—the career of the real Carole Lombard took off in 1934 with her fireball performance in Hawks's rolling comedy Twentieth Century. Over the next eight years, she would work with (and upstage) all of Hollywood's top leading men: John Barrymore, Frederic March, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, Robert Montgomery, Fred MacMurray, even ex-husband William Powell (whom she described as “the only intelligent actor I've ever met”). In 1939 she married “King of Hollywood” Clark Gable.

Both on and off the set, she was known for her generosity and compassion, as well as her outrageous sense of humor. In 1942, shortly before the release of Ernst Lubitsch's brilliant To Be or Not to Be, Carole was returning to California from a war bonds tour when she was killed in a plane crash at age 33. FDR posthumously awarded her the Medal Of Freedom for her sacrifice. Heartbroken, Clark Gable didn't work for three years, and his film career never fully recovered.

Lombard had a very rare kind of beauty — when still, she had that classical, Garbo-like elegance; in motion, she erupted into an unstoppable, fast-talking, kinetic delight. Her voice was light and captivating, her comic delivery devastating. Her physical attractiveness was concentrated almost entirely into her eyes and her mouth (every time I see her, I can't help but notice the striking physical resemblance to this familiar face).

If you haven't seen Twentieth Century, My Man Godfrey, or To Be or Not to Be, get thee to a video store. Watching Carole Lombard is akin to laughing so hard champagne shoots out your nose.