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Gossip Friday: Not Taking Credit
From January 1940: Miss Josephine Dillon, first wife of Clark Gable, is newly appointed dramatics instructor at Christian College, Columbia, Mo. [She says] Clark had a number of faults when she began coaching him. For two things, there were his ears, as someone suggested to her. His voice was too high. “All athletic men, Dempsey, Weismueller and others, have high voices,” she observed. “Then, too, the greatest fault was Clark had a big body and he didn’t know how to handle it. He also had the accent of that part of Ohio from which he came.” Miss Dillon fixed up everything except the ears, but she refused to take credit…
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Gossip Friday: His Biggest Fan
From September 1940: It takes more than bombs to keep a Gable fan down. The star has just received from a girl in Lancashire, England, a cigarette case inscribed: “To Clark Gable–from his most ardent English fans.” While blitzkrieg impended, she went on to explain she has 10,000 photos of him, 172 magazine articles, 1,434 press clippings, 62 biographies and two authentic signatures of Gable. ___ No, that was not me. I promise I was not alive in 1940!
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Gossip Friday: Why the Sudden Crush?
From June 1943: Clark Gable says that Mickey haunted him for two weeks once. He followed Gable all over the lot. When Gable looked up from his bowl of special chicken soup in the studio commissary, Mickey’s eyes were bored into Gable’s face. Clark couldn’t figure it out. Why the sudden crush? The mystery was solved when Rooney did a devastating impersonation of Clark on the screen. “I had to look away a couple of times when I saw it,” Gable said. “He was more like me than I am like myself. I recognized mannerisms that I did not know I had.” Incidentally, it got Clark over these same mannerisms.
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Gossip Friday: Mighty Pleased
From February 1949: We hear that Clark Gable would be mighty pleased if Marilyn Maxwell would say yes to a request for a date. Seems Clark tried but failed to get a date with the blonde singer. Whatever happened to Marilyn’s planned marriage to Mike North? ______ Marilyn Maxwell had a small role in Key to the City with Clark. And they did date for a little bit!
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{New Article} 1954: Please Don’t Talk About Me
Here’s another one of these early 1950’s articles debating whom Clark will or will not marry. The subject of this one is the elusive model Suzanne Dadolle. I discussed Suzanne a few years ago in this post. Suzanne, like many before her, made the fatal mistake of talking to the press about her relationship with Clark. And with that, Suzanne was swiftly cut off, and rather stunned at the abruptness of it all. In Paris, on October 12, Suzanne, after returning to work at Schiaparelli’s, announced that she and Gable had been engaged, “but informally,” for several months, the implication being that never in a million years would she have…
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Gossip Friday: A Strange Difficulty
From August 1934: Gable Shuns Crowds Clark Gable shuns crowds because he has, more than once, found a fist thrust under his nose and, “Come on and fight you big so-and-so,” bawled at him. And not by drunks either. The roles Clark Gable plays waken the animosity at punch devotees. The actor has a horror of coming out of a crowd with a black eye, a swollen nose, or of being forced to fight his way out of the situation. When he is making a picture, Gable never goes out in public because of this strange difficulty.
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{New Article} 1954: Gable and His Girls
This 1954 article was written by everybody in Hollywood’s favorite “frenemy,” the infamous Louella Parsons. Most of the articles of this period, between Clark’s ill-fated marriage to Sylvia Ashley and his subsequent union with Kay Williams, focus on all of Clark’s girlfriends and who will be the next Mrs. Gable. The King laughed when I persisted in asking about beautiful blonde Grace Kelly (the new Hollywood sensation) with whom Clark was supposed to have been very much in love with they were making ‘Mogambo,’ and of Suzanne Dadolle, the French charmer of the odd name, with whom his name was later linked all over Europe. Grace is supposed to have…
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Gossip Friday: Not Iris
From June 1948 (Louella Parsons): I do NOT think Iris Bynum will be the next Mrs. Clark Gable, though heaven knows, no one ever knows what will happen in this town. Iris, like Linda Christian, is a flaming redhead. Several years ago, she was a great beauty knocking them for a loop when she showed up at night clubs on the arm of Tony Martin or Turhan Bey (that boy must have every telephone number in town). Iris is still attractive, but more subdued in her clothes and coiffures. She has played supporting roles in MGM, Paramount and Warner Brothers movies but her career was never one-two-three with her dates.…
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{New Article} 1956: The Great Gable
This 1956 article, written by Joe Hyams, was serialized over several weeks in newspapers around the country. It rehashes a lot of the same stuff any Gable fan has heard over and over, but there are some good nuggets, as it seems Joe did actually interview Clark, so it isn’t just a puff piece. During the years he was at MGM Gable was considered inaccessible. The studio built a wall around him. Would-be interviewers were told, “He’s impossible” or “Even if he does talk to you it will be about hunting and fishing and you can’t print that.” For this series Gable agreed to open up. He said, “It’s time…
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Gossip Friday: Advice from the Expert
From July 1959: In a scene for “But Not For Me,” Clark Gable had to show Barry Coe how to kiss Carroll Baker, according to script. So when Barry had a love scene in “Affair” with Christine Carere, he got a still photo of the clinch, sent it to Gable with a note, “Is this okay?”
