Gossip
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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…
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Gossip Friday: A Storied Mind
From June 1937: During the preparation for the last three pictures he’s appeared in, Clark Gable has been sitting in on all story conferences. Studio executives feel he is a real help in working out details for baffling situations and more than welcome his presence. In fact, Anita Loos, who has been working on “Saratoga,” insists Clark has one of the best story minds in Hollywood.
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Gossip Friday: Lunch Break
From August 1936: All of a sudden like, the little stenographers in the upstairs executive officers at Warner studios started bringing their lunch. No one could quite understand the sudden love for office routine, until the reason leaked out. Below the windows is a tennis court where the stars sometimes play. temporarily it has been surrounded by canvas. Clark Gable is using it to train for his role of the prize fighter in the next Marion Davies picture. Well, girls, how would you like to sit up in a window for sixty minutes and gaze down upon Clark Gable, wearing little more than a smile?
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Gossip Friday: A Lurid Play By Play
From January 1941: I’ll bet Clark Gable could have walloped that youngster who hung around the “Comrade X” company on location and shinnied up a telephone pole, gathered a crowd below him, and did a play-by-play broadcast of Clark’s hurry-up change of clothes in his outside dressing room. The company was on location at Los Angeles harbor and Clark was dressing in a ceilingless enclosure. The youngster did a thorough job by shouting to his hilarious audience, “He’s takin’ off his left shoe—now he’s takin’ off his right—now he’s putting on his shirt!” he didn’t miss a trick, he even got in a lurid description of Gable’s colored shorts.
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Gossip Friday: The Fans Battle It Out–Gable vs. Novarro
From February 1933: ….I beg to be allowed to take up [the fan battle between Gable and Novarro fans]. In their foolish outbursts, pro and con, they have neglected to use the one effective weapon of all–I refer them to the criterion of the show business-Variety, a magazine that does not deal in conjectures, but cold hard facts and statistics. In the list of ten most popular players, Clark Gable’s name is prominently displayed, while Novarro’s is not included. In the list of then ten greatest movie-making and box office stars, Clark’s name is there again–but where, oh where, is Novarro’s? Variety also lists Clark Gable as “MGM’s greatest male…
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Gossip Friday: A Fan’s Poem
A fan’s poem from 1933: Judgement Day There’s the rush and roar of many feet– Young maids, old maids, sour and sweet. They’re clamoring, they’re yammering, They are glad that they are born, For romance is resurrected When Clark Gable blows his horn. ~Dvoll Semay
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Gossip Friday: Building Clark Gable
From February 1936: At a party we saw Mrs. Clark Gable chatting with the ex-wife of a famous star. “My husband didn’t play fair about alimony,” said the ex-wife. “I gave him the most dignified divorce Hollywood ever saw. I chaperoned him and his girl friend for months to avoid scandal. Now she has him when he’s on top. I worked for him during the building years.” Mrs. Gable nodded quietly. “I know a little about building myself.”