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Gossip Friday: Claudette and Bing
Since this week (9/13) is Claudette Colbert’s 107th birthday, here’s some gossip about her from Septmeber 1937: Claudette Colbert was playing some of her favorite Bing Crosby records in her dressing room the other day, when her telephone rang. The star herself answered. An irate voise yelled, “Listen! If you must make all that noise, which disturbs me in my dressing room, for heaven’s sake play something better than those Crosby records. That’s guy’s crooning gives me a pain!” “I don’t know who you are,” cried Claudette angrily, “but you can’t make cracks to me about my friend Bing Crosby and his singing! If you had any musical sense you’d know…
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Irving Thalberg
Norma Shearer, Irving, Ria and Clark, 1932. MGM producer Irving Thalberg died 74 years ago today. If it wasn’t for Irving, many classic stars would have never made the marquee–Clark included. As MGM’s “boy wonder” head of production, Irving oversaw many of Clark’s pictures, including The Secret Six, A Free Soul, Possessed, Strange Interlude, Mutiny on the Bounty and China Seas. He was never listed as a producer in the credits of any of the pictures he produced, stating that “credit you give yourself isn’t worth having.” Following his death, the Academy created the Irving Thalberg Memorial Award in his honor. It is presented to “creative producers whose bodies of work reflect…
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Gossip Friday: A Plain Nurse, Please
From April 1940: There never has been such a contagion of hospitalization among the celbrities of Hollywood as there has been recently. Envious eyes are turned toward the nurses who care of these famous bruised and injured. “It’s all in a day’s work,” one pretty nurse told [us], “but movie people (especially the men) are harder to nurse than other patients because the never relax from their work and worries for one minute. Joe E. Brown’s nurse had almost to hold him in bed during a big football game. Joe wanted to get out of bed to lead cheers.” “Director Leo McCarey is the worst of all. He starts at…
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Movie of the Month: Teacher’s Pet
************************ Note: The gallery is currently not working. I am hard at work on it and I hope it will be back up soon! Sorry for the inconvienence! ************************* School’s back in, so what better time to select Teacher’s Pet as the Movie of the Month! Teacher’s Pet, made in 1958, was one of the best of Clark’s final years on screen. Unlike some of his previous films, he seems at ease, at peace and, dare we say it, actually having fun with is role (should we thank Kay Gable for all of that? I think so..) Clark is Jim Gannon, a hard-nosed editor of a New York newspaper. When he receives…
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Rest in Peace, Bonnie Blue
Cammie King Conlon, who played Rhett and Scarlett’s daughter Bonnie Blue in “Gone with the Wind”, has died. Whenever I think of her, I see a little girl in ringlets–“Let me, let me, Daddy! Let me, let me!” From the Associated Press: FORT BRAGG, Calif. (AP) — Cammie King Conlon, the former child actress who portrayed the doomed daughter of Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara in “Gone With the Wind,” has died at the age of 76.lung cancer Wednesday morning at her Fort Bragg home on California‘s north coast, said friend Bruce Lewis. Her son, Matthew Ned Conlon, was by her side. Conlon was picked to play the small, but…
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Gossip Friday: Silent Scarlett
Since TCM has selected Vivien Leigh as their Star of the Month this month (set your DVRs!), here’s some gossip on her from September 1940: …of all Hollywood’s femmes fatales, we call your attention first to Vivien Leigh. If you lived in Hollywood this wouldn’t be necessary. You’d be aware of her–with reason! It looks as if there’d be no liomit to Vivien’s conquests when–a little less enthralled by her Romeo, Laurence Olivier–she becomes aware that other men walk the earth, too. For those men who’ve managed to impress themselves on the Leigh consciousness, usually through working with her, are quick to admit her natural attraction. “There’s always something more…
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Gossip Friday: Anniversary with Joan Crawford
From November 1936: With the first day of production of “Love on the Run”, Joan Crawford and Clark Gable celebrated the fifth anniversary of their first co-starring picture: “Possessed”. Neither Joan nor Clark could recall off-hand how many pictures they have co-starred in during the last five years. Director Van Dyke staged the party as a surprise to his two stars and provided a cake appropriately decorated with two little figures in wedding costumes. During the party the victrola played over and over again “You Are My Lucky Star.” ______ I would think that would be quite the awkward party considering that Clark and Joan were at one time romantically…
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Gossip Friday: Boom Town Pranks
From August 1940: You may have read about Clark Gable getting a split lip in a fight scene for “Boom Town” and how the studio had to give him a few days to let it heal. Here’s the sequel to the story, which contains a typical Hollywood chuckle. Gable was called on for the closeups after the fight some time later, and after a fake blow at close quarters, when the scene was in the can, he grinned and carelessly spit out a tooth! Everyone saw the blank space in his front row of teeth and consternation reigned. When Clark had enjoyed his joke, he revealed that he had painted…
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Gossip Friday: Summer Entertaining with Clark and Carole
From August 1941: Informality’s the role on the Gable farm. Clark and Carole love to have company drift in around dinner time and stay for a feed-providing they help prepare it themselves. And if it’s a July night, hot and breathless, you’ll find the Gables out beneath the stars. Supper is served picnic style on the porch. The makings are spread out colorfully, lavsihly. From then on each guest is his own chef with no food combinations barred. Count on Clark to set the mood with a superman three-decker: alternate layers of sliced tomatoes mixed with thin crisp bacon, sliced breast of chicken and slices of roast beef–mounted on toasted…
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Movie of the Month: Never Let Me Go
This month, we’re skipping ahead to 1953… Never Let Me Go pairs aging Gable with one of the top stars of the late 1940’s/early 1950’s, Gene Tierney. A simple, rather old-hat storyline: Gable is an American newsman stationed in Russia. He pursues and falls in love with Marya (Tierney), a Russian ballerina. American/Russian relations being what they were in those days, their marriage is frowned upon. Even more frowned upon? Gable’s idea of taking Marya home to the U.S. Efforts to get her passport are stalled and then altogether stopped. Gable is tricked into getting on a plane without her and is refused admission back into Russia. Back in the States, he…