Gossip
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Gossip Friday: Keeping Miss Lombard Waiting
From May 1941: Chief among the 1941 Academy Award winners whose name does not appear on the official honors list is your present correspondent, who won an Oscar for perpetrating the outstanding bonehead play of the year. In the interests of her millions of fans he arranged to interview Miss Carole Lombard. A rendezvous was promised in a quiet sitting room on a side street in Beverly Hills for a certain Thursday. The hour, the date and the place were as clear as a blueprint in his mind. He thought. The momentous day arrived. Your correspondent, methodical as ever, leaped into his motor car well ahead of schedule and went…
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Gossip Friday: Dachshund Wanted
From November 1935: Carole [Lombard] is playing in “Hands Across the Table,” with Fred MacMurray and Ralph Bellamy. We drop in with the F.S. Reinhardts from Minneapolis for a chat, to find her trundling Ralph in a wheelchair, for a scene in the flicker. Enter Fieldsie, Carole’s secretary: “Carole, I give up. I can’t find a black, male dachshund anywhere.” Carole: “But we’ve got to!” Ralph Bellamy: “Try Frank Morgan–he knows all about dachshunds.” We: “What’s this all about?” Carole: “Well, the nephew of a friend of mine lost his dachshund, and he is broken-hearted. I’ve got to locate one just like it before the boy discovers his pet is…
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Gossip Friday: Date Night for the Gables
From September 1941: Carole Lombard was calling for Clark Gable at the close of the day out at MGM. “We’re having an evening out,” Clark said. And what do you suppose they did? They went to dinner at the Beverly Hills Brown Derby, then slipped back to the studio, where Ann Sothern’s new picture “Lady Be Good” was run off in a projection room for the two of them. That’s the way they see all their movies. If they attempt to go to a regular theater—they’d be mobbed!
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Gossip Friday: Gable and Taylor, Quite a Pair
From August 1937: A Damon and Phythias pair these days are none other than Clark Gable and Robert Taylor. For a couple of years the two have been polite toward one another, but seemed to have no desire to become old pals. But the Screen Actors’ Guild has brought them together, for Clark is an ardent member of the organization, and when Bob broke down and joined forces the other day, he suddenly became Taylor’s most ardent fan.
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Gossip Friday: Gable is as Gable Does
From January 1938: Being in the business world of Hollywood and meeting stars every day, I can give you this impression of Clark Gable, not as fiction, but as a true fact from everyday life. He called at our place of business one morning dressed in sport clothes. Very businesslike, this Gable. He wandered about the store missing nothing, with our employees giving him little attention. (He prefers that.) A little girl seated in a toy automobile glanced about, and suddenly seeing Mr. Gable, called her father’s attention to him. She wanted his autograph. The father spoke to Mr. Gable, and, smiling graciously, Clark walked over to the car and…
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Gossip Friday: Hang On, Carole!
From November 1941: Clark Gable’s convertible coupe, with a canvas covered steel top as a precaution in case he turns turtle, is the fastest thing on wheels in Hollywood. And Gable has a habit of driving at terrific speed. I noticed on the right side of the car’s dashboard a heavy bar with leather finger grips and asked him about it. He grinned. “Oh, that,” he said. “Well–sometimes I turn a corner kinda fast, and Carole has to hang on.”
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Gossip Friday: Quite a Pipe
From October 1939: Clark Gable related one “something for practically nothing” incident which leads me to believe that the old, time-honored proverb “Never look a gift horse in the mouth” isn’t always sound advice. A few weeks ago, Gable received a strange, old pipe. Accompanying the gift was a note, “This is nothing more valuable than the bearer of good wishes from a fan upon your marriage.” The pipe was so unusual looking that Clark, out of curiousity, took it to an authority on such things. That gentleman placed the probable orgin of the pipe at about the time peg-legged Peter Stuyvesant came to New Amsterdam. Naturally it would be…
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Gossip Friday: Clark Gable–Forgotten Man
From April 1939: …take the [Clark] Gable burial and its ramifications. This was in Too Hot to Handle. The scene had been shot a half a dozen times, but still it wasn’t right, in the opinion of Director Jack Conway. “We’ll shoot it again,” he decreed. Clark looked pained. “Hey, what is this?” he protested. “I suppose you think I LIKE being buried alive!” Myrna Loy, cool and comfortable in her easy chair, soothed him from the sidelines. “It’s for the sake of your art,” she said. At six o’clock, they were still at it and still Conway wasn’t satisfied. Clark was dirty, dishevelled, cranky. Walter Pidgeon remonstrated with him.…
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Gossip Friday: Two Rodeo Clowns
From January 1940: Funniest sight of the month–Watching Clark Gable and Andy Devine playing cowboy at Andy’s San Fernando ranch. Any day, now, when these two screen worthies aren’t working before the cameras you can see them astride a pair of giddyapps, running here, there and about everywhere, across the broad acres of the Devine rancho vainly trying to rope a bunch of fleet-footed white-face calves. the last private rodeo ended in a startling manner when Clark tossed his lariat around Andy’s shoulders by mistake and jerked the rotund owner of Rancho Pauncho to the ground. At least Clark says it was a mistake. He hasn’t convinced Andy, however, who…
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Gossip Friday: Happy Birthday, Myrna Loy! From Kingfish
Today marks the 108th birthday of one of Clark Gable’s dear friends and frequent co-stars, Myrna Loy. Their friendship was sweet and yes, platonic. At their first meeting at a party in 1933, they danced to “Dancing in the Dark.” She said later in her life that every time she heard that song she thought of him. He made a pass on her that night when he walked her to her front door. She was flabbergasted that he would try anything when his wife (Ria) was in the car at the curb a few feet away and so she pushed him off the porch into the bushes. Clark turned out to…