Films
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Gossip Friday: Runaway Race for Rhett?
From February 1937: ...I note that Joan Crawford is gaining strong support for the role of Scarlett O’Hara, that Melvyn Douglas and Franchot Tone are threatening Leslie Howard’s lead in the race for Ashley’s role and that Clark Gable’s runaway race for the part of Rhett Butler is stirring up determined opposition. Those who want Clark can see nobody else in the role–those who don’t wax pretty savage in their counterblasts. As, for instance: “All I can say is ‘Heaven forbid Gable in the role of Rhett!’ and you can tell the horde who had the stupidity to choose him that they had better read the book over again. Such…
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Movie of the Week: Any Number Can Play (1949)
This week, Clark is a gambling house owner and Alexis Smith is his loving wife in Any Number Can Play (1949). Clark is Charley King, the owner of a gambling house in New York. After being diagnosed with a heart problem, he begins to re-evaluate his life: his relationship with his wife (Smith) and teenage son (Darryl Hickman), his business and his associates. Clark learns in the first few minutes of the film (from his doctor who smokes a cigarette and drinks liquor while he tells him) that he has angina pectoris, a heart condition brought on by stress (so the doctor says). Ironically, Clark’s fifth wife, whom he would…
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Movie of the Week: Adventure (1945)
Gable’s Back and Garson’s Got Him in this week’s Movie of the Week, Adventure (1945). After Carole Lombard died in January 1942, the widowed King of Hollywood halfheartedly completed Somewhere I’ll Find You and retreated from public view. Gossip items popped up here and there, announcing he’d star in this film or that film, but none came to fruition. Instead the public saw their haggard-looking King being sworn into the Army Air Corps in August 1942, wearing the same suit he wore to his wife’s funeral. Clark Gable had reigned over Hollywood for eleven years at this point; in the early 1930’s he starred in several films a year. Now…
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Gossip Friday: What a Smash
From February 1937: When they were making “Love on the Run,” Mr. Clark Gable also had lines to learn, walked around the set uneasily, rumpling his hair and glaring at Miss Crawford, who was innocently playing her operas. He suddenly walked over to her, picked up her pile of records, flung them on the floor, smashed them to flinders and said: “There! How do you think anybody can learn lines with all that racket!” He then quietly walked away and Miss Crawford either wept or looked about to. It was one of Gable’s japeries. He had bought a lot of dime records to smash.
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Movie of the Week: Men in White (1934)
This week, Clark Gable is a workaholic intern at a hospital and Myrna Loy is his neglected fiance in Men in White. Clark is George Ferguson, a medical intern at a prestigious New York hospital. He is serious about his profession and works night and day. During this time period, medical interns and nurses even lived at the hospital, having little time for social lives. Myrna Loy is his heiress fiance, Laura, who flits around being frustrated that he has no time for her. (I’m not quite sure how they even found time to date and get engaged when he’s seemingly always working?) She wants him to open up his…
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Movie of the Week: The Misfits (1961)
This week, because Friday is the 58th anniversary of Clark Gable’s death, our movie is, of course, his final film: The Misfits (1961). Clark Gable is Gay Langland, an aging cowboy in Reno who avoids responsibility and anything tying him down. He and his buddy Guido (Eli Wallach) run into Roslyn (Marilyn Monroe), a depressed ex-dancer who is in Reno getting a divorce. She’s been staying with Isabelle (Thelma Ritter) to establish her residency requirement for the divorce, a very common practice. They all have nowhere to be and no one to answer to, so they decide to head out to Guido’s house in the Nevada desert. Although Guido actively…
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Movie of the Week: After Office Hours (1935)
Clark Gable is a fast talking newspaperman and Constance Bennett is the snotty society girl he inexplicably falls for amidst a murder case in After Office Hours. Clark is take-no-prisoners-newspaper editor Jim Branch, who is determined to dig up a juicy story on a corrupt millionaire. He starts sucking up to the newspaper’s music reviewer, wealthy socialite Sharon Norwood (Bennett), when he discovers she is close to the impending story. After the millionaire’s wife turns up dead, Sharon and Jim disagree on the culprit. Jim becomes determined to crack the case and reunite with Sharon, whom he has now fallen in love with. Constance is at the bottom of the…
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Movie of the Week: Honky Tonk (1941)
Clark Gable is a quick witted con man in the Old West and Lana Turner is the prudish judge’s daughter he’s after in Honky Tonk (1941). Gable is fugitive con artist Candy Johnson, who stumbles upon the small town of Yellow Creek while on the run. He quickly takes advantage of the town’s lack of law and order. He also steals the heart of Elizabeth (Turner), a Boston-bred girl with a crooked father (Frank Morgan). Although he insists he can’t be tied down, she manipulates him into marrying her and he becomes the most respected man in Yellow Creek. Her father doesn’t trust him, however, and sets out to destroy…
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{Photos} Carole Lombard Connection: Too Hot to Handle (1938)
Clark Gable and Carole Lombard were very much a steady item when Clark began filming Too Hot to Handle in the summer of 1938. On his first day on the set, Carole sent her beloved a big box. Upon opening it, he found a stack of pornographic magazines, rubber gloves and a note from Carole signed “Too hot to handle!” Oh my. While Clark was filming a night scene, his gorgeous girlfriend decided to stop by for a visit. These candid photos were snapped of them snuggled under a blanket, with Carole wrapped in Clark’s coat. These were apparently taken in June, but it was uncharacteristically cold in Southern California…
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Movie of the Week: Too Hot to Handle (1938)
This week, Clark Gable is a rogue newsreel reporter and Myrna Loy is a determined aviatrix in Too Hot to Handle (1938). This film is an interesting look behind the scenes at the now-extinct-thanks-to-television-and-internet newsreel business. Gable is Chris Hunter, a newsreel cameraman who is always in the middle of the action. Walter Pidgeon is Bill Dennis, a rival newsreel cameraman who is constantly trying to out-scoop Chris. Both of them are bored in Shanghai since they can’t get anywhere near the action of the Chinese-Japanese war. When his boss (Walter Connolly) starts demanding action shots of the war, Chris obliges by making up fake shots using toy airplanes…