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Movie of the Week: Manhattan Melodrama (1934)
This week’s movie is Manhattan Melodrama (1934). Clark Gable is Blackie Gallagher, a gambling, gun-slinging gangster, who remains best friends with his childhood pal, Jim Wade (William Powell), an ambitious lawyer. Blackie’s girl, Eleanor (Myrna Loy) grows tired of the shady side of life and soon falls in love with Jim and marries him. Jim is promoted to district attorney and starts a campaign to become New York’s next governor. When a blackmailer threatens Jim’s campaign, Blackie decides to handle the situation himself and kills the man. On trial, Jim has no choice but to prosecute Blackie and he is sentenced to death. The conviction helps Jim win the election,…
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Gossip Friday: Off the Hinges
From December 1939: Carole Lombard visited the set of the untitled Clark Gable-Joan Crawford picture when some of the early scenes of his escape from a Guinea prison were being filmed. One brief shot showed him running down a corridor and through a door which slammed behind him. But Gable did it so violently that an end section of wall, presumably made of stone, rocked dangerously, and a hinge was torn from the door. Whooped Miss Lombard: “He’s just like that at home!”
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{Photos} Run Silent Run Deep (1958)
Run Silent Run Deep was filmed in cooperation with the United States Navy and aboard the US Redfish submarine. In between takes, Clark Gable apparently spent a great deal of time with the enlisted men onboard, eating meals with them. Burt Lancaster often didn’t join and limited himself to eating with the commanding officers. There are a batch of on the set photos from San Diego: Look at the look this guy is giving Clark:
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Movie of the Week: Run Silent Run Deep (1958)
This week it is Run Silent Run Deep (1958). Much like Somewhere I’ll Find You a few weeks ago, I realized when I sat down to watch this that I hadn’t seen it in a very long time and that I have only seen it twice. Reason being? I don’t much like it. It’s not that it’s bad movie, it’s certainly not. I suppose it is mainly that it is just not my cup of tea; I’ve actually never even formally reviewed it for the website. Clark Gable is Commander Richardson, a steel-willed Navy captain whose submarine is sunk by the Japanese early in World War II. After a year…
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Gossip Friday: Don’t Set Your Watch To It
From November 1933: Studio bound, Clark Gable always sets his watch by a clock on Hollywood Boulevard. And the other day he learned that the clock had been stopped for weeks at 9:30.
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Movie of the Week: Betrayed (1954)
This week’s movie is Betrayed (1954). Clark Gable is Colonel Pieter Deventer of Dutch Intelligence during World War II. He trains Carla Van Oven (Lana Turner) to be the liaison between the British and the local resistance movement, led by a spunky rogue called “The Scarf” (Victor Mature). Before she is put into position Pieter and Carla begin a romance. The team starts to suffer heavy losses after she joins them and Pieter begins to suspect she is a Nazi spy. She suspects the same of “The Scarf” but Pieter doesn’t believe her at first. Clark and (a brunette!) Lana teamed up again, although the romantic scenes in this one…
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Gossip Friday: No Visitors
From February 1937: Dr. Franklyn Thorpe (Mary Astor’s ex-husband) has made an isolation ward of the swanky suite in the Beverly Wilshire Hotel where Clark Gable is nursing a heavy cold. All visitors are barred. Gable growls, however, that he’ll be back at work in a day or two.
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Movie of the Week: A Free Soul (1931)
This week is Clark Gable’s breakout role as a ruthless mongrel in A Free Soul. Clark Gable is Ace Wilfong (perfect bad boy name, I’d say), a gangster on trial for murder who is represented by upper class defense attorney Stephan Ashe (Lionel Barrymore). Stephan, while successful as an attorney, is an alcoholic who is frequently an embarrassment to his family, including his high spirited daughter, Jan (Norma Shearer), who catches Ace’s eye at their first meeting. Stephan gets Ace cleared of the charges and Ace starts pursuing Jan once he is free, much to the chagrin of Jan’s stuffy fiancé, Dwight (Leslie Howard). Jan is quickly swept up…
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Gossip Friday: Please Sign My Cake
From November 1933: An autograph nut hunted up Clark Gable at the auto station in downtown Los Angeles where he and Claudette Colbert are making scenes for Columbia’s “Midnight Bus,” and asked Gable to autograph his birthday cake. the fan brought along an icing-writing device, much To Gable’s amazement and amusement. The mob that hung around the bus depot so complicated work that Director Frank Capra thought up two devices to thin the crowd. He had studio carpenters bring saw horses and planking enough to fit a banquet table for 200, then had the studio put on a free feed for that many. In the meantime, the same carpenters put…
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Movie of the Week: To Please a Lady (1950)
This week’s movie is To Please a Lady (1950). Clark Gable is Mike Brannon, a decorated war hero and a ruthless race car driver who will do anything to win. Stanwyck is feisty Regina “Reggie” Forbes, who writes a no-holds-barred weekly syndicated newspaper column. She sets her sights to rip apart Brannon after he runs another racer off the track into a fatal crash. She confronts him about the crash following a race and is put off by his blasé attitude. Furious by his indifference, she writes a scathing column about how heartless he is. After that, Brannon is suspended from auto racing and can’t find a job racing anywhere;…