Gossip
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Gossip Friday: One Take, Please
From August 1951: Uncertain though their future plans may be, to watch [Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner] together is to fully realize their deep devotion for each other. Following lunch, we sat on the “Lone Star” set and watched Frankie boy’s best beautiful girl being made love to by—Clark Gable! “Any suggestions?” called out the King to the crooner. “Just do it in ONE take!” was the kidding answer.
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Gossip Friday: Buoyant Blondell
From May 1945: While several MGM actresses literally drooled to play the gal who tries to lure Clark Gable away from Greer Garson in “The Strange Adventure,” Joan Blondell was quietly signed for the role. Funny part is Joan is so well liked and so admired by her cinema sisters, they couldn’t say a word. But brother, what they were thinking was really something. Only the buoyant Blondell could get away with it.
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Gossip Friday: Wrapped Them Himself
From November 1944 (Louella Parsons): It’s been a month of parties, parties, parties! The little Queen of the Ice, Sonja Henie, certainly looked the part at the big affair she gave at her house….I had the time of my life doing rumba after rumba with Clark Gable! Between numbers–Clark and I sat at one of the bright little tables and had a long talk. Gable has been going to all the parties–perhaps because he wants to forget all that he saw overseas. It is certainly something new for him because he isn’t a party man and enjoys far more being with a crowd of his pals and hunting and fishing.…
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Gossip Friday: Quite a Hazard
From November 1960: The hazards of choosing magazine cover subjects! The cover of the December issue of Cosmopolitan magazine just out, pictures a smiling Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable as exponents of the issue’s theme, “the pursuit of happiness.” Since the magazine went to press, Miss Monroe announced her plans to divorce Arthur Miller, and Clark Gable was the victim of a fatal heart attack.
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Gossip Friday: All Eyes on Them
From March 1945: What follows remains to be seen. However, all eyes were on civilian Clark Gable and Ann Dvorak at the David Selznick’s Sunday afternoon tennis party. Clark hardly left her side all afternoon. Interesting news that Ann, who once walked out on a Warner contract to sail around the world with husband Leslie Fenton (now separated), is being paged to resume her acting at this same studio. At the time, they said she’d never darken their door again.
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Gossip Friday: Most Kissed Man
From May 1947: By the time he finishes “The Hucksters,” Clark Gable will be the most-kissed man in Hollywood. His first scene called for him to kiss Connie Gilchrist, who plays a telephone operator; three times. Later the same day, he kissed Deborah Kerr, Ava Gardner and five-year-old Diane Perrine! Clark has dropped 20 pounds since he made “Adventure”–and not from all that kissing, either. He didn’t like the way he looked on the screen with all that weight and went to work exercising it off. Here’s a little tip that may interest you. After seeing Gable and Ava Gardner in action, MGM is thinking about remaking some of the…
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Gossip Friday: She Knows a Flop When She Sees It
From May 1938: It was Carole Lombard who first tipped me off to the movie star’s definition of a flop. Carole didn’t go to the recent preview of “Fools for Scandal” in which she co-starred with Fernand Gravet. The picture has just been released at this writing and there are no figures yet from Kansas and the Bronx, much less from Afghanistan and Latvia, but Carole has a pretty good hunch that the picture is a “flop.” It seems that the day following the preview in Hollywood her friends called her up, as is the custom after a preview. “Darling, you looked simply divine last night! I have never seen…
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Gossip Friday: A Startling Chapeau
From August 1936: While we’re in the startling chapeau department, it might be well to record the fact that Clark Gable arrived at the preview of “The Princess Comes Across” with Carole Lombard and a beret. He took a terrific razzing from a gang of youngsters on the sidewalk and went in to view the picture, which contains a funny sequence about a he-man type of guy wearing a beret. On the way out the beret was stuffed in the Gable pocket.
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Gossip Friday: She’ll Manage
From 1938: How’ll Carole Lombard manage minus her hitherto indispensable pal Fieldsie? Why, quite all right because Fieldsie may be a bride but she is still handling Carole’s business matters. For years this friendship has been a Hollywood legend. When Carole became a big shot she remembered the good-natured efficient Madeleine Fields. They’d been Mack Sennett comedy girls together. Fieldsie was installed in the Lombard home as a buffer, personal secretary. and companion. Where Carole went her shadow showed, too. During the course of their double dates, Fieldsie and famed director Fritz Lang discovered one another. Now Fieldsie has returned from New York trousseau-shopping, with her new husband in tow.…
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Gossip Friday: Not a Citrus Scholar
From July 1938: [H]ere’s where Carole Lombard was smart. The back to farm movement hit her right between the eyes, too, and there as nothing to do until her next picture script was completed and Clark Gable gone hunting in Mexico, so Carole drove out to the San Fernando Valley and bought herself ten acres of land. But unlike her confreres she just didn’t throw a bevy of cows, horses, chickens and seeds at it and expect miracles–not Carole. With all that merry madness, that priceless insanity that’s as exhilarating as a double martini, Missy Lombard is at times a very sensible young lady. “What do I know about agriculture?”…
