Films
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85 Years Ago, On the Set of Gone with the Wind…
85 years ago today, the newspapers were reporting what was going on on the the set of the hotly-anticipated Civil War drama. Gone with the Wind Cast Loses Self-Consciousness by Harrison Carroll Hollywood, April 29–Some of the self-consciousness has worn off the “Gone with the Wind: company and they are now having fun just as if they were making an ordinary picture instead of an American classic. This week, they are shooting the scene in the library of the Wilkes plantation, Twelve Oaks, where Scarlett discovers that Rhett Butler had overheard her confession of love to Ashley. In sudden anger, Vivien Leigh tosses a vase at Clark Gable, who is…
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{New Article} 1940: Gable vs. Crawford
This is a new short little article gossiping that Clark Gable and Joan Crawford were not getting along on the set of Strange Cargo. This was actually mentioned in a few Gable biographies. Clark did not want to be in the film as he did not like the script (I can’t say I blame him). Joan’s career was on a downturn and she needed a hit so she was paired with Clark, who was just coming off Gone with the Wind success. Joan was a bit miffed at this, since just nine years earlier, she was the big star and Clark was getting his feet wet playing her love interests…
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Gossip Friday: Dozed Off
From January 1938: Clark Gable is an actor who knows how to relax. In “Test Pilot” there is a sequence in which he is supposed to be asleep while other players carry on action and dialog. For the rehearsal, Gable lay down and really dozed off. Director Victor Fleming woke him up, saying: “I’m afraid you might ruin a take by yawning, or talking in your sleep, or snoring.”
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Gossip Friday: Lombard in Saratoga?
From October 1936: There is a new custom in Hollywood00to get an actor and actress who are having a romance and team them in a picture. The fans want to watch the lovers they read about. Taylor and Barbara Stanwyck together in a picture were great at the box office. Metro is going to team Clark Gable and Carole Lombard in the flicker “Saratoga,” while they’re hot. ___ Not so much. As we all know, Saratoga starred Clark Gable and Jean Harlow. It was, sadly, Jean’s last role.
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Gossip Friday: The Toughest
From 1962: Joan Blondell says Hollywood should give her a “heart of gold” award when she celebrates her fiftieth year in show business. “I’ve given back more men to leading ladies than anybody else in the world,” laughed Joan. “The toughest was handing Clark Gable back to Greer Garson.”
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Gossip Friday: Elastic Man
From June 1958: The most famous male face in pictures is also the most elastic, according to writer-producer-director George Seaton, twice an Academy Award winner and a veteran who should know what he is talking about. Its owner is Clark Gable, of course, and Seaton, who directed Gable in “Teacher’s Pet,” says he learned a lesson from guiding The King through the Paramount comedy release [currently playing]. “Most people don’t realize, and I certainly didn’t, that Mr. Gable can wordlessly run through the gamut of emotions and register, authentically, just about every reaction in the books,” said Seaton. The screenplay has the kind of salty man-to-man and man-to-woman humor that…
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Gossip Friday: No Feud in Cargo
From November 1939: For these many weeks, we’ve been reading items and hearing rumors about Clark Gable and Joan Crawford being so angry at each other the chances are against their ever finishing their current costarring picture. So we dropped by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer today on the theory that maybe we’d see Gable get his face slapped by an outraged Miss Crawford. On stage 26 was Miss Crawford in tatters, as if somebody had gone after her with a pitchfork. There also was Gable, dirty, sweaty, greasy–and snarling at his leading lady. “Don’t tap your heart,” she yelled back at him, “it’ll break your finger.” If ever two movie performers were boiling…
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Gossip Friday: Big Foot
From January 1939: Clark Gable was afflicted today with an ailment that brought no romantically sympathetic telegrams from his feminine fans. His 11-C size feet have swollen half a size, after six weeks of hoofing in patent leathers as a song and dance man for “Idiot’s Delight,” his latest motion picture. All his shoes tweak. Dr. H.A. Jones, a chiropodist, who was called in to see if something could be done to shrink the star’s growing feet, suggested Gable soak them in salt water twice a day.
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Gossip Friday: Over and Under Exposed
From July 1938: As a newsreel cameraman, Clark Gable for a day was convinced he was a flop. For his role as a newsreel cameraman in “Too Hot to Handle,” Gable was called upon to cling to the top of a racing ambulance with his camera equipment while filming Myrna Lot trapped in a crashed burning plane. While Hal Rosson’s cameras were filming Gable and the burning plane on MGM’s Sixty Acres, Gable also was making an actual newsreel of Miss Loy and the blazing plane to be shown on the screen of his boss’ projection room. When Gable returned to the set the next day, he received a regulation…
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Gossip Friday: Good Picture
From September 1947: Clark Gable has finally seen “Gone with the Wind.” He was telling on the “Homecoming” set how he happened to miss it. At the world premiere in Atlanta he was so weary from the civic celebration that he put his feet up on the railing before the front row and slept right through the picture. When it came to the premiere here [in Los Angeles], his wife, the late Carole Lombard, said she didn’t want to sit through the four-hour show again. So they walked through the crowds, down the aisle and right out the back exit. Recently a friend arranged a showing and invited Cark. “Good…
