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Gossip Friday: Clark loses his poise
From September 1940, an article entitled “Would You Have Lost Your Poise, Too?” ...Clark Gable has done some nature facing, too, and has had a lot of years of trooping. But nothing had prepared him for the situation which arose when a piece of scenery fell on him and he heard that awful ripping sound and found himself without his trousers in front of five hundred delighted extras. To say nothing of a raucous cast and crew. Not only that. Unsympathetic blokes began cracking wise at once about the Gable knees. What does a seasoned trooper do under these circumstances? Smile? Toss it off with an airy gesture? Not this…
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Happy Birthday, Mr. Gable
Today is Clark’s 109th birthday! To celebrate, this month will be chock full of new stuff–pictures, radio shows, video clips, articles and sections. To begin with, there are a lot of new pictures in the gallery. The film pages have been given a facelift, featuring new pictures and many now have clips and trailers. Film pages have been added for Laughing Sinners, Hell Divers, Chained, Cain and Mabel and Comrade X. I’m also adding my own review of each picture. I’d like to add reviews from Gable fans as well. If you would like to submit a review for a Gable film (brief, and also rate it 1 to 5 stars), email it to me…
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Gossip Friday: Lunch at RKO
From September 1940: None of this light lunch on a card table in the dressing room for Clark Gable. He eats a hearty lunch in the Metro commissary every day when he is working, and his presence rarely causes a flutter, except when there are tourists lunching there. But the other day he went over to the RKO studio to have lunch with Carole and there was so much excitement in the commissary that things didn’t get normal for hours. The waitresses became completely confused and people got soup who never ordered soup, and the poor RKO stars, who aren’t appreciated on their home lot, got shoved around something awful.…
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Gossip Friday: On the set of Boom Town
From September 1940: Here’s mud in your eye! Being a movie star does have its unpleasant moments, too. For example, in “Boom Town”, Spencer Tracy and Clark Gable do a sequence in which they meet in a wooden plank stretched over a mud-hole. Each tries to make the other get out of the way. In the course of this scuffling, someone starts shooting down the street and both, for safety’s sake, dive headlong into the mud. Coming up first, Clark good naturedly tries to shake hands with Spencer, who says, “Aw nuts!” and walks away. Mud-holes are nothing new to Clark. He did a nosedive into one in “Too Hot…
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Gossip Friday: Flying Lessons
From June 1940: Clark Gable and Carole Lombard have decided to buy a plane and learn to fly. Paul Mantz, who has a fat business flying elopers to Nevada, is set to give them instructions. This is particularly eerie. As far as I know these lessons never happened and they never bought a plane. But what if they had? Would that have changed Carole’s fate? Interesting to ponder with the 68th anniversary of her death being tomorrow. I’ve often wondered too if Clark had accompanied Carole on the trip to Indiana, would they have taken the train together? Or would they have decided to take the plane back…
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Gossip Friday: Missing Sylvia
From September 1950: Clark Gable kept the trans-Atlanic phone purring with his constant calls to London where wife, Sylvia, was called on business regarding her holdings in Britain. Clark couldn’t accompany her since he was smack in the middle of a film, but he certainly made his presence felt via calls and cables. New this week: Film page for Across the Wide Missouri New article from Screen Album in the Article Archive New pictures in the gallery
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Cartoon Clark
Clark “appeared” on the new episode of “The Simpsons” last night. Of course with exaggerated ears and I wouldn’t call the voice a spot-on imitation, but hey, any exposure Clark can get nowadays is great! Here is the clip: The Simpsons He also appears briefly at the end of the episode as a ghost and pays Grandpa Simpson for the shoe shine but I couldn’t find a clip of that. Also, if you subscribe to this blog, you probably got a bunch of “Gossip Friday” emails over the weekend. My blog went kind of haywire with the year change and I’m not sure why, but decided to send out a bunch…
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Gossip Friday: New Ranch
From December 1937: We don’t know just how near Mrs. Ria Gable is to suing her famous husband for divorce, but to all appearances Clark and Carole Lombard are preparing for the eventuality. Carole has bought fifty acres in San Fernando Valley; fifteen of the acres are under cultivation and the rest will be left for Clark’s horses to wander over. It’s our understanding that when and if he is ever free to marry Carole, they’ll put up a ranch house there. Interesting that this was December 1937. This is the earliest I have heard of Carole buying the ranch. That would mean she owned it 15 months before they…
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Gossip Friday: Holiday Greetings
This is a magazine ad from 1931 wishing the stars a happy holiday. It reads: There are 769 motion picture players in Hollywood to whom we send Christmas greetings. We particularly wish for: Greta Garbo More seculsion for our solitary star. Against our selfish inclinations, we would wish that solitude so dear to your heart. May the brightest star continue to gleam in splendor. Skoal! Clark Gable A pleasant year on the heights so recently won. May the parts pack a wallop and give play to the “love and menace” method that you have found and and revealed to us. Ann Harding Happy landings on ten thousand screens. May your golden…
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Gossip Friday: The Fourth Mrs. Gable
Since December 20 marks the 60th anniversary of Clark’s marriage to his fourth wife, Lady Sylvia Ashley (for more on her, read here), we’ll devote this week’s Gossip Friday to her and her previous marriage to another man of Hollywood royalty: Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. (Anyone else find it a bit twisted that before she married Clark Sylvia was married to the father of Douglas Fairbanks Jr., who was married to Joan Crawford when Joan was having an affair with Clark? That’s a sick little circle…) From June 1935: An eye witness to the arrival of Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. , Lady Ashley and party at Miami Beach, reports that Doug had more…