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    From Glamour Girl to Mud Lover

    Clark often gets blamed for changing Carole to his liking. After all, before they got serious, she was a lounge lizard, a party animal, the go-to girl for a good time in Hollywood. After falling for Clark, she started hunting, fishing, skeet shooting, gardening and farming with the best of them. She always said, “Whatever makes my Pappy happy!” I don’t see Clark forcing her to do these things—really, do you think Carole was the type that could be forced to do anything?!–I think she wanted to be the ideal woman for Clark and she really wanted him to be happy. And every once in a while he did put…

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    Scandalously Unmarried!

      If you’ve read any biography of Clark or Carole, you’ll come across a mention of a certain Photoplay Magazine article titled “Hollywood’s Unmarried Husbands and Wives”. This seemingly innocent article caused quite an earthquake among the studios. It lists Hollywood couples who conduct themselves as if they are married—but they aren’t!  The article scolds: And that, it seems, would point a lesson to the unique coterie of Hollywood’s unwed couples—Bob Taylor and Barbara Stanwyck, who could get married if they really wanted to; George Raft and Virginia Pine, Carole Lombard and Clark Gable and the other steady company couples who might swing it if they tried a little harder. You…

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    The Sincerest Form of Flattery…

    In this month’s Vanity Fair, in a feature called “Ain’t We Got Style?” , they posed stars of this summer’s movies as stars in “Depression-era classics”. Featured are  It Happened One Night, 42nd Street, Letty Lynton, My Man Godfrey, The Grapes of Wrath and two movies set in the 1930’s: They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? and Paper Moon.  James Marsden and Rose Byrne are posed as Clark and Claudette Colbert in It Happened One Night: Runaway heiress, love triangle, gruff but adorable journalist–Frank Capra’s 1934 classic has everything a screwball on-the-road comedy should to take the mind off foreclosures and bank closures. The most iconic scene (apart from the one where…