{In The News} 1941: Anything for a Laugh

Here’s a little newspaper piece that was too long to be considered a “Gossip Friday” but not quite long enough to be considered a full article really. It goes on for a while at first talking about a man named Vince Barnett, who was “the undisputed top ribber of the movie industry. He has made a career out of being a professional insulter.”

From December 1941:

The only time Barnett ever got socked was at a party Douglas Fairbanks Jr. gave, with Clark Gable in mind as the victim. Gable was just too quick for them.

Barnett was there, this time in the guise of a French film producer. He was talking with several well-known stars when Gable came in and moved toward the little group. Then, observing how intent they were upon the conversation, he turned and walked away.

Barnett saw him out of the corner of his eye and said to one of his group, but loudly enough for Gable to hear: “So, the great Gable is too good to talk to us. Very well, I’m a big producer in my own country, and I will know what to do when he comes to France to make a picture.”

Nonplussed by this, Clark walked over to the pseudo-producer and opened his mouth to reply. But before he could say anything, Barnett said, sternly: “Churl, do not interrupt me. Even the great Gable cannot do that to me.”

Bewildered, and getting angrier every second, Gable retorted: “I don’t care if you are a big producer, there’s no need for you to give me that ‘great Gable’ stuff.”

“Oh, so you are what we call temperamental, too?”

Grabbing his tormentor by the coat lapels, Gable ordered: “Lay off, understand?”

Barnett brushed Gable’s hands off, sneered, and was about to make another crack, when Clark let go with his right. As the champion insulter tells it: “That blow started from the floor, and if I hadn’t ducked, it would have knocked me cold for a week. Even so, I was clipped a bit on the ear. At this point Doug came between us and told Clark it was all a rib and said that he was disappointed that he had resorted to fisticuffs so soon.  He had expected several hours of this torture before Clark finally boiled over. He and I shook hands, and we’ve been good friends ever since.”

To be sure, the stars do not always use professional ribbers to pull off their pranks. As a matter of fact, there is no more enthusiastic prankster in Hollywood than Carole Lombard. Her prize gag was sending Gable a valentine in the form of a boiled ham on which his picture, and a good likeness it was, too, had been drawn in confectioner’s sugar.

And she herself was the victim of a rib. It seems that the publicity department wanted her to cooperate on a publicity stunt, but she didn’t feel like it at the moment. The more they begged her to be a good sport the more she stubbornly refused to have anything to do with it. So, when her birthday came around a few days later the publicity department sent her, with love and kisses, a meaningful gift which was the symbol of stubbornness on the hoof–a live donkey.

Carole gave Clark the ham on the set of No Man of Her Own in 1932, before they were even a couple, so it was not a Valentine’s gift, rather a gag gift at the end of shooting. And his face was not drawn on it in confectioner’s sugar, it was had a photo of him pasted on it.

I’ve heard a few different versions of who gave Carole that donkey for her birthday. She named her Scarlett and she lived at the ranch!