{New Article} 1934: Gable-Crazy!

This article from June 1934 details some of the outlandish experiences Clark Gable had with crazy fans on his public appearance tour to the east coast.

It’s not easy being a film star, folks:

A toll of Gable’s losses on his short trip includes the following articles:

27 silk handkerchiefs

33 buttons torn from his clothes

1 complete sleeve of a dress shirt

1 lapel from the coat of a business suit

1 pair of bedroom slippers

1 top half of a pair of silk pajamas

1 wrist watch

Anybody find that their grandmother or great-grandmother had one of Clark Gable’s buttons or shirt sleeves?

Many and strange were the efforts of girls and women to see Gable alone. In Baltimore, a girl rented the hotel room adjoining the suite occupied by Clark, Mrs. Gable, and a constant guard who rarely left the actor’s side. Beginning early one evening, this girl knocked at the door of the Gable rooms. She was answered by the guard, who politely but firmly informed her that Clark was not in. At intervals of about one hour, the girl continued to knock, but each time she was greeted by the vigilant guard.

Perhaps the girl though the guard would eventually go to be elsewhere in the hotel, because she kept calling and knocking. Finally, about two o’clock in the morning, the guard informed her: “Beg pardon, miss, but I remain in these quarters all the time. No need for you to knock on the door; I’ll always answer you.” Whereupon the girl thrust out her tongue and uttered the rasping noise known as “the bird.”

The following morning, as Gable stepped alone into the elevator to go downstairs for breakfast this same girl stepped in behind him. Barely were the doors of the elevator closed before she threw her arms around Clark and began to rain kisses upon his cheek and neck. When he attempted to turn away from her, the excited girl rudely (such, such manners!) proceeded to nip one of the Gable ears with her teeth.

Not sure what she expected to accomplish by these antics, but I guess it made a great tale to tell for the rest of her life. Nowadays he would of course be ambushed by fans demanding selfies.

This gal’s my favorite:

It was during Clark’s stay in New York that he received a most amazing letter from a girl. The letter was penned on expensive stationary which bore a crest. The writer introduced herself as a cultured member of a fine family. She had seen Gable on the stage, she said, and she frankly admitted a certain type of love for him.

Calmly and apparently without shame, the girl went on to say that she had read that Gable was the father of no children. She had discussed this with her own parents and they had agreed that if she could have a child with Gable as its father, they would offer no objection!

She insisted that any such affair between them would be purely platonic, with no obligation on Clark. Her family was wealthy and she was well able to care for her own baby. She even requested that he talk the situation over fully with Mrs. Gable.

“I am sure your wife, being a woman, will understand,” the girl pleaded, “I want this baby more than anything else in life.”

Amazing? Unbelievable?

“I did turn the letter over to my wife,” Clark tells, with that boyish grin that endears him instantly, “but she wasn’t favorable to the idea!”

I imagine that she wasn’t. What wife, being a woman, wouldn’t understand her husband having a baby with another woman?

You can read more about these Gable fanatics in The Article Archive.