But the strongest bond between Gable and Niven had nothing to do with acting or sport. Both men tragically lost their wives in the span of a few years, and relied on each other’s emotional support to get through it.
At the time, Gable was married to actress and comedienne Carole Lombard (shown above). Lombard died in a plane crash in 1942, on her way home from an event in support of the U.S. war effort. Gable, reputedly, was overcome with grief. A few months after his wife’s death, he joined the U.S. Army Air Corps himself, and in 1943 found himself stationed in England, quite close to where Niven — himself an officer in the British Army — was living with his wife, Primula Rollo.
“Primmie found him one evening on an upturned wheelbarrow in the garden,” Niven would later write, “his head in his hands, weeping uncontrollably. She held the huge bear of a man in her arms and comforted him,” relates The Music Hall. Three years later, at a party at Tyrone Powers’ house, Rollo would take a wrong step during a game of “sardines,” or hide-and-seek, tumbling down a staircase and damaging her brain. She died soon after. Gable reportedly stepped up to comfort his friend, as he had been comforted before.
The two widowed friends would quickly remarry, Niven in 1948 and Gable in 1949; neither marriage seemed as happy as the one that preceded it. A golden chapter in their lives had ended.
