Gossip
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Gossip Friday: Visitor in a Station Wagon
From December 1939: It was a great thrill for the tiny coast town of Pismo beach to have a big movie location move right into their midst. The entire town was agog because Joan Crawford was reported really to have arrived in her limousine, in true movie star fashion. Every youngster in the village was out for an autograph. The Crawford name was magic until the youngsters found out that the guy driving an old station wagon looked like Clark Gable. When they found out it was Gable, and he fixed up an immediate game of softball to entertain the mob, because the weather got too foggy to work, glamour…
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Gossip Friday: Avoiding the Former Mrs.
From November 1953: The former Mrs. Douglas Fairbanks Sr., Lady Ashley, etcetera, used the name Mrs. Clark Gable for her London social engagements and created no end of embarrassment for her ex-husband when he arrived in London en route to Hollywood and accepted party invitations. The “Mogambo” star had to send his regrets to several titled households when he cancelled out at the last minute because Sylvia Gable was to be among those present.
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Gossip Friday: You’d Never Guess
From November 1937: Just before he left on his extended bear-hunting expedition, Clark Gable had a short wave radio set installed in his car. You’d never guess whom he wants to keep in touch with during his trip, would you?
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Gossip Friday: Party of One
From December 1949: You can believe this or not—but we actually saw Clark Gable lunching alone in the MGM commissary—and all around him pretty gals who would have been delighted to keep him company. There was quite a glamour gang scattered around at the various tables—the three Taylors, Elizabeth, Bob and Don, handsome Barry Sullivan, Mark Stevens, Peter Lawford, Marilyn Maxwell, Bob Walker—looking fit as a fiddle—and the most beautiful girl in the room, Arlene Dahl, all excited about getting the lead in the Western “Outriders.” ____ This one made me sad. Like his heyday was over and there he is all alone while the new crop of stars takes…
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Gossip Friday: Compounded Salary
From September 1936: Everyone thought Clark Gable was clowning when he remarked that he would like to sign a contract for twenty-eight days, starting with two cents a day. Each day’s salary to be multiplied by itself. In other words, the first day he would make two cents. The second day four cents. Believe it or not, by the end of twenty-eight days, it runs up in the millions. If you don’t believe Clark, get out your paper and pencil and start figuring.
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Gossip Friday: A Familiar Looking Couple
From November 1939: One cold, fall night not long ago, an auto court manager in a small California mountain town rented a bearded man and his wife a cabin for one night. The manager didn’t pay much attention to the man, or the beard, because every male in town was growing one for the annual Fiesta. But he couldn’t he over how pretty the blonde girl was, and he was almost sure he had seen her before. The next morning word was buzzed about the town that Clark Gable and Carole Lombard had spent the night there, and left behind a hunting coat with Clark’s name in it. There were immediate suggestions that the coat be…
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Gossip Friday: No Brooding Lancelot
From September 1951: Clark Gable will be too busy to brood, even if he were inclined to, over the divorce from Sylvia. He’ll do his first costume picture since “Gone with the Wind,” called “King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table,” in which he’ll portray Lancelot, and talk is that the King will also star in a series of rough and romantic adventure dramas this fall. ____ Well, that film didn’t come to fruition at all! And I think at 50 Clark was a bit old to be Lancelot anyway…
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Gossip Friday: A Commissary Visitor
From July 1937: The whole MGM commissary was agog the other noon when the luscious Carole Lombard dropped over for lunch with Clark Gable. And we understand that it was none other than little Missy Lombard who’s responsible for those twenty pounds Clark dropped after completing work on “Parnell.” Seems the studio had been after him to lose weight for months, but it took the iron-hand of Carole to get him to be serious about the situation. And as Gracie Allen would say, he certainly looks beautiful!
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Gossip Friday: Five Million Tag Alongs
From November 1937: The lowdown on the Clark Gable disappearing act he pulled on his recent vacation was because Clark couldn’t even complete his bear hunt he started out to do without five million people tagging along. So he upped and turned his car the other way and vanished into thin air because he really needed a rest and even the studio didn’t know his whereabouts.
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Gossip Friday: No Tea For This He-Man
From December 1940: Clark Gable is so afraid of even having it suggested that he is a softie that every day on the set of “Comrade X” when tea time rolled around and he was offered tiny cakes and tea he bellowed, “Gimme some food fit for a man to eat!” However, he was kidded out of being too disdainful of tea. The day I visited the set his director arranged a gag. As a total surprised a “sandwich” arrived for Clark at tea time. It was made of a loaf of bread cut in half with a two-inch steak between, and a quart of coffee as a chaser. The…