Articles
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{New Article} 1952: Gable’s Divorce Problem
Well, in a quick turnaround from the article I posted a few days ago, What’s Wrong with the Clark Gables?, it turns out a lot was wrong with the Clark Gables because here they are less than a year later, battling it out in divorce court. On October 4th, Clark Gable filed a divorce complaint against Sylvia Gable in Nevada, charging that, “the defendant has treated the plaintiff with extreme cruelty and has caused him great grievous mental suffering and pain without cause or provocation, and plaintiff’s health was and is thereby and therefrom impaired.” When Lady Sylvia was served with a copy of the complaint she was enraged.…
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{New Article} 1951: What’s Wrong with the Clark Gables?
This 1951 article is all about how there is indeed nothing wrong with Clark Gable and Sylvia Ashley’s marriage. Okay, sure. Clark and Sylvia had been married just a little over a year and were at this point spending more and more time apart. That Clark is trying to make this marriage his last is very obvious. I nearly fainted when I saw him all dressed up with Sylvia the first night of the Sadler’s Wells Ballet. Clark doesn’t know one end of a ballet shoe from the other. He went to please Sylvia, of course. And the fashion shows! It’s fascinating to see Clark at Sylvia’s side, hob-nobbing with…
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{New Article} 1940: Mrs. Goldilocks and The Bears
Here is one of these articles that I had in a pile for years and I swore I had already typed and posted it, but turns out I didn’t. So here it is. It’s about Clark Gable and Carole Lombard and their friends in Encino–Andy Devine, Phil Harris and Lum and Abner. It all started months ago when Andy Devine, Lum and Abner, Clark and Carole, and Phil Harris kind of struck up a close friendship over hunting and fishing. Sunday mornings, or whenever they had a free dawn, they’d get up at the crack of it, and rig up duck blinds in a marsh some forty miles from town.…
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{New Article} World’s No.1 Honeymooners: The Clark Gables!
This article, by Ed Sullivan, appeared in newspapers on October 15,1939. So, here it is exactly 80 years later! It promises that “Sullivan takes you into the Hollywood home of the newlyweds to tell you for the first time the true story of their elopement,” but don’t get too excited because there is no interview with Clark Gable or Carole Lombard here, nor are there really any earth-shattering revelations. On the road maps it is route 101, the Los Angeles natives refer to it more familiarly as Ventura boulevard, the ribbon of concrete which meanders north to San Francisco thru the hot and fertile valleys and foothills of California. I…
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{New Article} 1939: What’s the Matter with Lombard?
This article, published a few months after Carole Lombard married Clark Gable, wonders what is the matter with her, in the same vein as other articles after she became involved with Clark, such as Why is Carole Lombard Hiding Out From Hollywood? and What’s Become of the Good Scout? There are persons in Hollywood who are sore at Lombard. She doesn’t care, however, because she probably doesn’t know of her misfortune. If she did, she would doubtless do something about it, because Carole is too good a business woman to willfully make anyone sore at her and too warm-hearted to deliberately give offense to anyone. It never pays to make…
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{New Article} 1951: The Girl Who Won Gable Back
This article is a follow-up to the one I posted a few weeks ago, Clark Gable’s Secret Romance. That 1949 article was all about the sweet, secret romance between Clark Gable and Virginia Grey. Well, by the end of that year Clark had married his fourth wife, Sylvia, and left Virginia in the dust, despite Modern Screen magazine’s insistence that Virginia would be the next Mrs. Gable. By the time this article was published in November 1951, Sylvia had moved out and Clark was back on the market. The night she heard of Clark Gable’s marriage to Sylvia Ashley, she cried her eyes out. Later, her sister came by, took…
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{New Article} 1949: Clark Gable’s Secret Romance
Out of the many, many ladies that Clark escorted around after the death of Carole Lombard, the one with the most staying power was Virginia Grey. Attractive blonde Virginia was never an A-list star but had small roles in Clark’s films Idiot’s Delight and Test Pilot and was great as Joan Crawford’s wisecrackin’ co-worker in The Women, among other roles. Clark and Virginia were spotted together sporadically from 1943 until 1949. This article is from March 1949 and laments the end of their relationship. When Clark Gable left California for his European jaunt last summer he spent his last afternoon visiting a girl who lives not far from his house in…
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{New Article} 1931: Danger in His Eyes
So here is a little piece from 1931, when Clark Gable first burst on the scene and made a big splash as this big brute of a man that every woman wanted to throw them around. The following data about Clark Gable are not to be regarded as the delirium of a woman who is only human after all. These are cold facts, almost statistical, the result of sober and dispassionate observation. You needn’t hesitate to believe every word. Since Clark Gable came to Hollywood, there has been a great unrest at the Metro studio. It is noticeable in every department, affecting all women—from stars to secretaries. Girls sigh and…
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{New Article} 1934: Gable Gets a New Deal
“Clark Gable Gets a New Deal” is this writer’s way of saying that he is no longer second fiddle to MGM’s stable of female stars and can charge ahead on his own. He’s got an “optimistic grip of his career” now, it seems. After playing subordinate roles for two years, working four without a vacation, and being seriously ill for months, Clark gets a new deal, a new kind of role, a new contract! And a vacation in New York with a fresh, optimistic lease on life, as well as a firmer grip on his career. Everyone is pleased about it, if one is to judge by the proud but…
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{New Article} 1933: Lost–The Gable Wallop
This is one of those early 1930’s “interviews” with Clark Gable that seems utterly pointless but kept the Gable-crazed fans satiated, I suppose. We know we’re in for a real fluff piece when it starts out with: Clark sits up through the night and thinks about himself. Has too much introspection robbed him of his force and punch? Oh boy. “The other night when I came home from a party, I went to bed but I couldn’t sleep. I got up and pulled on a dressing gown and went out on the porch. It was about two o’clock in the morning, and there was no traffic on the road in…
