In the post-war, post-Carole years, Clark Gable had a full dance card—dating actresses, script girls and socialites. And one former Gone with the Wind hopeful: the spirited Paulette Goddard.
Paulette, blessed with a gorgeous face, was probably best known for comedies, such as the Charlie Chaplin classics Modern Times and The Great Dictator, as well as sparky Miriam in The Women. She had been around Hollywood since the early 1930’s, first as a blonde Goldwyn girl. She proved herself a dramatic force in films such as Kitty and her Academy Award nominated performance in the war drama So Proudly We Hail!. But she could also dance and sing, as she did with Fred Astaire in Second Chorus and Jimmy Stewart in Pot o’Gold.
Late in the casting process, Paulette was a front-runner for Scarlett in Gone with the Wind but producer David Selznick hesitated on signing her because she couldn’t produce a marriage license to prove she was married to her longtime housemate, Charlie Chaplin. He wanted his Scarlett to be “pure.” In swept Vivien Leigh from England and Paulette’s hopes were shattered (In an effort to keep the married Vivien “pure,” he kept her from her married lover, Laurence Olivier, during filming) . It’s been said that after hearing Vivien had been signed that Paulette stayed in bed crying for days. If you watch her audition tapes, she’s really not bad. And her looks fit the part—much, much better than others who were considered, such as Bette Davis, Lana Turner or Lucille Ball!
By 1949, married or not, the relationship with Chaplin was over and so was her subsequent marriage to Burgess Meredith. Clark was back on the dating scene as well and they had known each other for years and decided to give romance a go. Paulette was very much a brunette, against Clark’s apparent taste for blondes. But she did have that frisky spirit he seemed to enjoy. She seemed to be a lot of fun, which was something Clark needed at this time.
A 1949 article tellingly titled “If She Wants Him, She’ll Get Him!” describes the beginning of their affair:
Cagey hints at inside information by the columnists would have you believe that Goddard and Gable met last summer at a Hollywood party, and that long warm glances passes across cocktail glasses saying eloquently, “Why haven’t we two met before?” These speculations are off by several years. Clark and Paulette met for the first time ten years ago, in 1939, when Paulette was working at MGM in The Women. They became friends, but nothing more because both had other commitments at the time. They met again a few years ago, at a party it is true, but under rather dramatic circumstances.
It was a foggy night. Gable was driving through Bentwood on his way home when another car came charging toward him on the wrong side of the road. Clark hit the ditch, skidded across a wide lawn and came to a halt with his front bumper well up on the porch of a large house. A party was in progress, but in thirty seconds the guests were all on the lawn to see what happened. Paulette was one of the guests, and Clark became one immediately. After all, how often does Clark Gable run into the front of your house when you have friends in? Paulette and Clark had a grand time that night, and even though circumstances kept them separated until this summer, they never forgot it.
Then came the Hollywood party the columnists tell you about. It was one of those large affairs that everyone who is anyone in Hollywood attends. Across the cocktail glasses, Gable saw Goddard and Goddard saw Gable. For the first time in ten years there was nothing to stand in the way of their getting together. So they got together. It was as simple as that. Then came the secrecy for which Paulette is so famous. Although rumors of a wild passion filled the town, the only glimpses of the lovers together were occasional and quick flashes of them driving down a quiet road, and that highly publicized picture taken at the airport when Gable saw her off to Mexico. (picture above)
They did frequent restaurants and night clubs, often discreetly. He also cooked for her at the ranch on several occaisons and she praised his culinary talents! They were dubbed “Hollywood’s atomic couple” during their brief romance because they seemed to always be fighting. Clark couldn’t have had much patience for this as he wasn’t the type who liked to hang his dirty laundry in public. At a resort together one time it is reported that they had a big public quarrel by the pool and ended up falling in fully clothed!
The fan magazines were all aflutter at this romance, but I sincerely doubt that either of them considered a marriage; the differences were too great. Paulette was known to be kind of a diva, uppity and rather demanding on set. Ray Milland, her co-star in four films, described her as the most difficult actress he had ever worked with. Clark was the exact opposite, a professional always on set and never puffed himself up as being “the star.” Paulette was known for her secrecy but she also sometimes liked publicity and wasn’t against giving the gossip columnists nuggets here and there, something Clark despised. They got in a fight after he took her to the airport to meet her plane to Mexico because she wanted him to give her a kiss for the photographers and he refused.
Money was also a big dealbreaker. Paulette had it and liked to spend it. She especially adored jewelry and had several million dollars worth from past lovers and husbands. Clark was notoriously a spendthrift and was not known to buy his women expensive jewelry (five wives and none had engagement rings!). The beginning of the end was Clark’s gift to Paulette: a gold St. Christopher medallion that made her skin turn black when she wore it–signaling that it wasn’t real gold. She kidded him about it and told everyone how cheap he was. That was the final straw for Clark.
The break-up was not friendly, apparently, with Paulette snickering about Clark’s penny-pinching. Paulette went on to marry German writer Erich Remarque in 1958 and eventually retired to Switzerland, where she died in 1970.
Interesting fact: Around the same time Clark was dating Paulette, she was also seeing his buddy, director John Huston. Huston was married at the time to Evelyn Keyes, who played Suellen in Gone with the Wind.
From October 1936:
What’s the most necessary requisite for a young actor or actress coming to Hollywood, we are often asked. And here’s our answer, children. Learn to play a cracking good game of tennis.
Tennis has broken more ice in Hollywood than a spring thaw. Tennis has been the means of young people breaking into important friendships. Tennis has been the ladder in which young hopefuls have climbed. Albeit, it hasn’t kept them there.
Why, believe it or not, it was Carole Lombard’s ability to smack the ball across the net at a certain prankish party that convinced Clark Gable she was the girl. And if tennis can get you Gable, it must be a good game in Hollywood.
This article is from the Gone with the Wind-publicity period and is supposedly unique because it tells a woman’s perspective on Clark. I don’t know how unique this article is but it is rather gushy.
This fellow is unimpressed by all he has acquired; with his importance as a star. Luck, he insists, was with him: “Anyone who has ears and can speak and understand words of one syllable can do it,” he shrugs. “It might have been any other guy; it just happened to me.”
Even his bosses are set back on their heels at unexpected moments by his passion for facing facts. In Atlanta, at the super-swank premiere of “Gone with the Wind,” he bumped into his Uncle Charlie Gable, a down-to-earth character of 72 years. Arrangements were being made for the old gent to be photographed with his famous nephew when a cautious studio super-numerary tried to halt the proceedings.
“We can’t do that!” he hissed in horror. “Look at the old man’s EARS!” Uncle Charlie’s ears, it was observed, were twice the size of Clark’s well-publicized aural appendages. Taboo. It might make Clark look ridiculous. Clark thought not.
“Why not?” he demanded in a clear voice. “Mine haven’t done so badly for me!” The picture was shot.
The screen Gable dominated by his appearance and competency as an actor. Women see him as a Great lover—a notion aided by his trapping, six-foot-one physique; his steady blue-gray eyes; his heavy thatch of dark brown hair graying at the temples; his generous nose and full mouth, and his deep voice with its slightly harsh overtones. He suggest to them a dashing fellow who has the world by his tail, someone who would take what he wanted, where and when he wanted it. He is a romantic shot in the arm.
The Uncle Charlie story has been told several times, but I don’t know how true it is that the publicist didn’t want them to have their picture together because of the ears. What, nobody noticed before now that Clark has big ears? And Clark was photographed with his father on numerous occaisons, who shared the same affliction!
Off-screen, Gable dominates by the sheer force of his personality; here his good looks are secondary. He has an unlabored, natural charm, born of his complete sincerity as a man. Fame and wealth have brought him no arrogance; he dresses better now and has more possessions, but in essence he is the same modest person who said “Yes ma’am” and “No ma’am” to his first interviewers!
Unexpected shyness shows itself when he is forced to talk about himself. Or when his wife suddenly jumps in his lap and affectionately embraces him in front of friends at home. He loves it, but his cheeks flush with embarrassment and he glances quickly around the room to make sure that no one has paid any attention. He hates the spotlight. He goes to unusual lengths to avoid it in any gathering.
There is a “champ” quality about him, not unlike that in Dempsey. You sense in him the determination and ability to be first in whatever he does. Six years ago, for instance, he couldn’t hit the wide side of a barn with a rifle. Today he can pick the leaf you choose off a tree with a .22 at 150 yards. None too proficient at present in the use of sidearms, he undoubtedly will be a crack pistol shot in another year; he practices weekly on the police range under the tutelage of the detective lieutenant who was the nation’s Number One shot last year. It is the same with whatever he does; he gives his concentrated interest or none at all.
I for one love the image of Carole jumping into a blushing Clark’s lap and only wish there were pictures of it!
He is a man of very few words, and he makes every word count. On a locket gave Carole he had inscribed simply, “I love you, Ma.” She took the tip and had “So do I, Pa.” engraved on the other side. When they don’t address each other as Ma and Pa, it’s simply “Mr G.” and “Mrs. G.”
This may be an apocryphal story, but it paints Clark Gable as he is today. Carole is said to have telephoned him at home from downtown. Bessie, the maid, answered. Apparently she neglected to cover the mouthpiece, for Carole clearly heard her yell:
“Hey Pa! Ma is on the phone!”
This passage is particularly funny because not too long ago, an article I posted here mentioned how this very story is hogwash:
Hollywood, which despite all of its smartness is still a bit naïve and a country town dressed in its Sunday best, has made a great deal over the fact that the Gables are supposed to call each other Ma and Pa. Some folks think that “Ma” and “Pa” sound democratic. Perhaps Mr. Gable calls Mrs. Gable “Ma” and she calls him “Pa” for the benefit of publicity. But I never heard it. They might call each other Ma and Pa in kidding, but the Ma-and-Pa legend really is just that and nothing more.
One story goes that Mrs. Gable recently telephones her husband a servant answered. The servant is reported to have shouted to the master of the manor, “Hey, Pa, Ma is on the wire.”
I don’t believe it. The Gables would not allow their servants to be so familiar. Most persons in Hollywood, even strangers, call Mr. Gable, Clark, and Mrs. Gable, Carole. Seldom do they call her Mrs. Gable.
They did call each other Ma and Pa, but I don’t think their servants referred to them that way! You can read the article in its entirety in The Article Archive.
From September 1940:
Movie stars must have their little jokes. When Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Taylor did “Nothing Sacred” on a radio broadcast recently they arranged it so that several lines of dialogue would read thusly:
Bob says: “Is there nothing that will excite you?”
Barbara answers: “Yes, put me in a room with Clark Gable.”
Bob then says: “What’s the matter with Robert Taylor?”
To which Barbara replies: “I never heard of him.”
“Gable’s Back and Garson’s Got Him!”
You couldn’t tread many places without hearing MGM’s infectious tagline for Adventure. The return of Clark Gable after a three year absence from the screen was heralded high and low. Clark, now a decorated war hero and a widower, was a bit thicker around the middle, a bit grayer around the temples, a bit sadder in the eyes…but was back in the saddle.
While Clark had been overseas, British import Greer Garson had become the #1 leading lady at MGM, after such hits as Mrs. Miniver and Random Harvest.
In the beginning this film has a lot in common with Teacher’s Pet, which would follow 13 years later. In both, Clark starts out as a crusty, stubborn, ignorant man’s man, denouncing formal education and spitting in its face. Falling in love with an educated woman changes his viewpoint.
Uh oh, he's pretty mad...
In fact, I find Clark’s character downright dislikable in the beginning of this film. So arrogant and cocky, making fun of libraries and educated people, mocking religion and anything anyone else believes in.
Delightful in this film is Joan Blondell, as Greer’s roommate. More of a good-time girl than stoic Greer, Clark is attracted to her at first and they dance and cuddle and kiss.
But then she seems to be perfectly fine when Clark and Greer, after having a big fight, drive off to Reno and get married, leaving her in the lurch. She’s instantly happy for them, despite the fact that she had her claws firmly in Clark first.
And she’s the first to turn on him when, upon returning from their honeymoon, it is apparent he will not make an ideal husband.
I’m still not quite sure how Harry changes from not believing in marriage to running off with a woman he was yelling at just moments earlier. He claims he just did it because that is what she wanted. So…in that day and age, it seems he just married her to get her into bed? Seems that way.
Eventually it is evident we are supposed to “like” Clark as he realizes the errors of his ways, but he is such a jerk by that time, who can forgive him? He is awfully cruel to Maria (Lina Romay), a Spanish girl who is madly in love with him and waits patiently for his visits. He mocks and pushes around Mudgin (Gone with the Wind’s Thomas Mitchell) and is only sorry when he dies.
This film is one of only a handful in which we get to see Clark play father, if only for a few minutes. The scenes where he is begging his baby to live are a bit melodramatic, but it is really touching and sweet. Although it has always bothered me a bit that after the baby begins to finally breathe, he doesn’t grab him up and hold him!
I can’t help but wince at Clark calling Greer his “screwball” a few times throughout the film. Considering he was recently widowed by “the Queen of Screwball,” you can’t tell me he never made the connection.
Greer was one of the few leading ladies that Clark did not get along with. She was a bit too formal, too prim for his tastes–taking afternoon breaks for tea and demanding a closed set during romatic scenes.
Greer later recalled, “Adventure was not a good experience. Clark was very taciturn and withdrawn and, I think, somewhat embarrassed at having to deal with things like wardrobe fittings and makeup after the war years. Despite his reputation, he was not really a ladies’ man. I think he was most relaxed when he was out hanging with men.”
This film is often described as being an enormous flop, but that isn’t at all true. Crowds flocked to see the return of the King of Hollywood, and Greer was immensely popular. The film had a grand premeire at Radio City Music Hall and had a healthy gross of over $3,800,000. It was however, critically panned for its mis-matched stars, meandering plot and syrupy melodrama.
Fun fact: In addition to Thomas Mitchell in the cast, Harry Davenport, who played Dr. Meade in Gone with the Wind, shows up as Dr. Ashlon.
Read more about the film here and see 212 pictures from the film in the gallery.
Adventure is new to DVD from the Warner Brothers Archive Collection.
From March 1937:
When it comes to sheer, downright having-fun-out-of-life, you’ve got to hand it to Carole Lombard and Clark Gable. These two have had more amusement out of their romance than most people get out of a whole lifetime. Both are inveterate practical jokers–and never does either let the oppurtunity pass to “gag” the other.
Carole’s latest and biggest chance came with all the fuss over whether or not Clark was to raise a set of whiskers to play the role of Parnell. Hardly had the discussion begun at MGM than Gable began to get the works–first, mysterious men with long whiskers would pop up in the most unexpected places and peer at Gable. He learned, finally, that “someone” had hired some bearded extras to dog his footsteps. They followed him in the street, sat next to him in restaurants, paraded before his hotel, even stopped him to ask for matches or the time.When that wore out, he was suddenly inindated with a flood of packages, by mail, express and special messenger. All of them contained false beards, moustache wax and like gags.
But the payoff came when, right on the MGM lot, a bearded sandwich man suddenly appeared and picketed Gable’s dressing room door. And the legend on his sandwich board read: WHISKERS ARE UNSANITARY!
When I heard a bio on Myrna Loy was being released, I was very excited. Myrna’s autobiography,Being and Becoming
Well. I can’t say this bio is overflowing with new information. I can’t say at all that I understand Myrna better as a person after reading it. I CAN say that I did after reading her autobio. And apparently author Emily Leider knows this as well, since Myrna’s autobio is quoted on nearly every page.
By halfway through the book I began to get irritated by the writing. Several pages are devoted to The Thin Man BEFORE Manhattan Melodrama is analyzed, which seems rather ridiculous considering the fact that Myrna and William Powell first starred together in Melodrama and met on the set. 1937’s Double Wedding is reviewed and discussed BEFORE Libeled Lady, which is even more ridiculous since Jean Harlow (their Lady co-star) died while Myrna & Bill were filming Double Wedding and production was temporarily halted.
And Carole Lombard is certainly cheering from heaven to hear that she did indeed win the Oscar in 1937. According to Leider, “[Carole] too would be nominated and chosen Best Actress for her standout zany turn in My Man Godfrey.” Yikes.
Myrna wrote very lovingly about Clark in her book and of their special friendship. A few of the anecdotes are repeated here but overall their films together are apparently not very noteworthy. In my own research, I have seen praises high and low for Test Pilot. Leider does not care for the film, calling the script ”sappy” and ”cringe-worthy” and sites one bad comment from a film critic. She even comments that despite how bad it is that it was nominated for Best Picture. Well, apparently that is just your opinion then, isn’t it? When Clark is mentioned, there is usually a comment about him trying too hard to be masculine or something of that sort. When describing Bill Powell and Jean Harlow attending the Oscars in 1937 with Clark and Carole, the fact that Clark was still married to Ria is thrown in as a judgmental comment. True, but an odd place to make such an observation. And similar judgement isn’t made by her when describing the married Spencer Tracy’s relationship with Katharine Hepburn. Well certainly nobody can accuse Leider of being a Gable fan, not with unneccessarily snippy sentences like, “Mainly this movie [Too Hot to Handle] serves as just another excuse for more spine-tingling aviation thrills and more sigh-worthy shots of swaggering Gable in goggles and leather, his (false) white teeth gleaming, his dimple dimpling.” Really needed to point out that his teeth are false there?
I found the writing very hard to follow, like a person who starts one story and then delves into another –then forgetting what the original story was supposed to be. A co-star of Myrna’s will be mentioned as part of an anecdote and suddenly there is a paragraph about what they did with their lives for the next 20 years. Also when discussing Myrna’s life in the 60′s-80′s, the events tended to swing back and forth, which I found very confusing. I was very disappointed that there wasn’t much insight into Myrna’s final years and death. Obviously, Myrna’s autobiography offered nothing on that, since she was still alive. I have always just read that she died during surgery and thought surely a bio would have more detail. Nope. No detail of her final day–not even her final week. I still don’t know what she was having surgery for. Leider lists the various illnesses she had over the last few years, such as two masectomies, and gives no detail. I felt cheated. I remember the recent bio of Hedy Lamarr I read in which the author detailed her last day and it was so eloquent and sad. In this book, we just get that she died during surgery. No detail beyond that.
Some information I found interesting that wasn’t in Myrna’s autobio was of her realtionship with first husband Arthur Hornblow Jr. Myrna glazed over several details of the marriage but Leider uncovered that in their relationship, Myrna was madly in love but Arthur was just along for the ride. She tried hard to be the perfect wife for him but, ultimately, she wasn’t enough for him (imagine that, “The Perfect Wife” of all moviedom not being enough for her real-life husband). Her subsequent marriages were all mistakes and she always thought wistfully about Arthur. Very sad. Arthur’s widow apparently liked to “stick it” to Myrna often and is quoted as saying that maybe Arthur was the love of Myrna’s life, but she certainly wasn’t the love of his, showing off a bracelet Arthur had given her, inscribed, “The beloved bearer is the true and only Mrs. Arthur Hornblow Jr.” Leider also confirms that a back alley abortion led to Myrna being infertile, a detail Myrna purposely left out, although she lamented over not having children.
It’s not a horrible book by any means and Myrna’s life was so colorful and interesting. But if you want to really know Myrna Loy, pick up Being and Becoming
From April 1935:
What would you do if you only had 24 hours to live?
Carole Lombard…wants to gather her friends around her for the last bow. Instead of just a few, she prefers a large gay cocktail gathering in her home.
“Because,” she said to me, “I think it would be great to go out with a ring of laughter and music in your ears, don’t you?”
Cary Grant:
“By cable, telephones, wires and radios I would get in direct communication with the few people I have hurt during my life. With death hovering near, I could explain and ask their forgiveness, a thing that seems too difficult to do in the midst of life and loving. I would make my peace with them, and then I would go to some out of the way church and make peace with God.”
Claudette Colbert:
“First, I hope I could arrange for those precious twenty-four hours to take place in New York City, and I’d like the day to be a Wednesday or a Saturday. I would want it this way so I could attend a matinee and another performance in the evening. You see, I would like to witness two whopping good plays on my last day on earth. And, somehow, I think I would like to find death in the same place where I first found life, in the theater.”
Gary Cooper:
“I’d charter a plane and fly up to the family’s ranch in Wyoming. The trip should take five hours, leaving nineteen for a swim and some fishing in the waterfall pool near the ranch house, a short ride into the mountains and one campfire meal. I can’t think of anything else more satisfying for my final day.”
Bette Davis:
“I can forget every worry, fear and irritation in the High Sierras. I am sure I could even forget impending death there. I would want Ham, my husband with me, and, if possible, our two dogs. We have a special camping place in the northeastern corner of Kern County, California, that few people know about. I’d like to pitch camp there, catch one rainbow trout, cook it over an open fire, eat it, and then watch one of those impossibly beautiful mountain sunsets.”
For Clark Gable there would be no heroics or dramatics. He would dispense with farewells, last talks with friends and loved ones, and would live his one short day as it were just another casual date on his calendar. “I’d like to go to work at the studio as usual, see familiar faces, do familiar things, eat familiar foods, that’s all.” And then after a full minute’s hesitation he added: “Oh, yes, just one more thing, I’d like to see a sunrise.”
This article is from August 1955 and is all about how Carole Lombard haunts his love life and pretty much dooms all his relationships. It tells what Kay Spreckels must do if she wants to overcome the ghost of Carole and settle down with Clark. By the time this magazine hit newstands, Kay was already Mrs. Gable.
Far from doing anything to push Carole from his thoughts, Gable has tenderly preserved every vestige of her influence and presence. Just as one would not violate sacred religious objects, Gable has not tampered with any of the things or people in that household that were part of his life with Carole.
The rooms of his ranch still are inhabited by the early American and antique furniture with which he and Carole happily filled them when they bought the home from Raoul Walsh. He still lovingly feeds the doves which, in a sense, are the only living issue of his great love with Carole Lombard. He still has, as his trusted secretary and business manager, Jean Garceau, who was Carole’s secretary when they married, and who doubled in secretarial brass for both of them after the wedding. Martin, the butler, the same devoted man who saw to his wants when he carried Carole over the threshold, still is his venerable man Friday.
It was into this almost sanctified atmosphere that Lady Sylvia Ashley walked and faltered. It is into this atmosphere that a fifth Mrs. Clark Gable would have to walk—and in which she would have to keep her wits about her.
Who can tell what memories surge up within Gable as he feeds those doves? There are about 35 of the lovely white birds now. They have been loved and cherished throughout the years. Gable treats them with almost poignant solicitude. They have no sense of confinement, for he jeeps them in a vast cage with a 50-foot runway, with a tree growing right up the center, so that they feel as free as if they flew unfettered in the forest.
The full meaning of this ritual can be appreciated only against the knowledge that these doves all are descendants of the doves Carole sent to Clark when they were courting.
And if the doves are living reminders haunting Gable’s Encino ranch, certainly no less so is gay, friendly Jean Garceau, who perhaps spends more time inside that house than Gable himself. Mrs. Garceau, no less than the doves, is the embodiment of many memories of Gable’s life with Carole. She knew and understood both of them, and both were fond of her. Upon Carole’s tragic death in a Nevada plane crash, the bond between Jean and Clark—a bond that connected the two to Carole—deepened.
Mrs. Garceau was a link with the last in which Gable was happiest, and intimates are convinced that is why Lady Ashley felt threatened in her presence, and why her insecurity impelled her to invite Gable’s displeasure by insisting that Jean leave the hose to which she had been welcomed by Carole, at about the same time Sylvia made the other mistake of insisting on redecorating the valley shrine furnished by Carole.
It would seem that any woman who hoped to get along with Gable would have to make up her mind to get along with his doves and with Mrs. Garceau.
Clark’s relationship with Mrs. Garceau is utterly beyond reproach, has never been anything but platonic—but devoid of personal feeling though it is, it is warm and rich. It would take a woman who was a sure of Gable and of herself as Carole Lombard, a woman of Carole’s wit and grace to abide Jean Garceau in her home without resentment.
It’s interesting that the doves are mentioned; I hadn’t heard much about what happened to them after Carole’s death. As it turns out the article is pretty wrong about Jean Garceau. Not about her and Clark’s close relationship–that is completely true. I don’t know the whole story but Jean Garceau was out the door pretty soon after Kay was in. So Kay didn’t have to “abide Jean Garceau in her home without resentment.”
If a woman loved Gable enough, she would have to learn, as Carole did, to share his fondness for hunting and fishing, and she would have to avoid at all costs the fatal error of Lady Ashley in trying to substitute her world for his. To this extent, at the very least, Clark Gable’s future is haunted by Carole Lombard.
It is against this background that Kay Spreckels’ chances for happiness with Clark Gable are measured by those who know him best. Pals of Gable have been convinced for years that at least subconsciously he has been looking for another Carole Lombard. They believe that whether he realizes it or not, he has sought in other women the qualities he loved in Carole, and that when he found them wanting by these standards he rejected them—usually before marriage.
Nor do they ascribe to Gable a morbid preoccupation with the memory of his third wife. Their view is that his attitude is healthy and honest. He liked what Carole was and what she stood for. He still admires and seeks out those qualities. He can’t forget her, and he sees no reason to forget her.
This is all very true. Carole adapted to Clark’s way of life, Sylvia did not and their marriage failed. Kay adapted as well and that is why they were able to be happy together.
I am sure that Clark didn’t appreciate articles like this, forever cementing him as a lonely widower looking for another Carole. But as much as he denied it, it was obvious he was indeed looking for another Carole. Kay grew quite irritated with the constant comparisons to Carole (can’t say I blame her) but they were part of the territory. At least she was smart enough not to publicly fight them. It must be pretty hard to be married to a man and still be his #2. It’s hard to compete with a ghost.
You can read the article in its entirety in The Article Archive.
From August 1955:
Everybody at 20th Century Fox studio has been unhappy about Marilyn [Monroe], including Clark Gable. She was supposed to be his leading lady in “The Lumberjack and The Lady,” and the king was looking forward to playing opposite the Lady of the Calendars. What combo they’d make!
___
First I’ve heard of this project or even the prospect of Clark starring with Marilyn in 1955. Interesting. They’d have to wait five years…
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