Gossip
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Gossip Friday: Memories of Clark Gable
From January 1961, (Sara Hamilton, Photoplay magazine’s gossip columnist): Hollywood without Clark Gable will never be the same. There never was and never will be anyone to take his place. With his passing an era is over, never to return. I can still see him standing on the porch of his Encino home, brown tweed jacket over his broad shoulders, looking more the hero of a romantic novel than he ever did on the screen. I remember the evening he said, with mock seriousness, “Now Sara, here’s $30. We’re going to The Dunes, outside Palm Springs, for a little gambling and I expect you to make us both a fortune,”…
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Gossip Friday: Found His Destiny
From March 1943: From the most authentic source, to Movieland [magazine] exclusively, comes some pretty distressing news for Gable fans. The big fellow, whom everyone in Hollywood worshipped, feels he has found his destiny in the Army. He likes being Captain Gable. He wants to keep on being Captain Gable, even after peace is declared. He says that he will never return to the screen. Naturally, if our government asks him to make propaganda shorts or even feature films, he will do that, though he would prefer not to. But as for regular acting in the make-believe stories, that he refuses. Don’t cheer yourself up with the idea that Clark…
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Gossip Friday: Resentful Ex-Mrs. Gable
From June 1939: Josephine Dillon Resents Title of Ex-Mrs. Gable “It has been exactly one week since anyone referred to me as the former Mrs. Clark Gable,” said Josephine Dillon to your reporter a few days ago. She added, “You don’t know what a struggle it has been for me to become a personality in my own name. They never say, ‘Josephine Dillon, period.’–always ‘Josephine Dillon, ex-wife of Clark Gable.’ Why don’t you write a story,” concluded the dramatic coach, “of us poor unfortunates whose apparently sole claim to present attention or fame is a label in the past tense.” As a matter of record, I do not think it…
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Gossip Friday: Wrong Cow
From June 1940: I hate to tell this on Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, nor does it seem possible, but when they built their barn, they bought a cow, which turned out to be a heifer (ingenue to you). Never having had a calf, it couldn’t give milk. Carole learned the truth, exchanged it for a cow. Then they bought everything that goes into first-class commercial dairy, so they would have fresh milk daily.
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Gossip Friday: Lombard in Saratoga?
From October 1936: There is a new custom in Hollywood00to get an actor and actress who are having a romance and team them in a picture. The fans want to watch the lovers they read about. Taylor and Barbara Stanwyck together in a picture were great at the box office. Metro is going to team Clark Gable and Carole Lombard in the flicker “Saratoga,” while they’re hot. ___ Not so much. As we all know, Saratoga starred Clark Gable and Jean Harlow. It was, sadly, Jean’s last role.
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Gossip Friday: The Madam
From August 1936: Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, playing the night spots together, are having a picnic of fun. Of late Clark has called Carole “The Madam.” Dining out, he insists on saying “Will the madam have this?” or “Where would the madam like to go?” A Trocadero waiter stared strangely at Miss Lombard after such an address from Gable the other evening. After he had taken their order and departed, Carole murmured, “Perhaps you had better not call me ‘The Madam’ in front of strangers!”
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Gossip Friday: No Letters
From September 1941: Then there is this amazing explanation of Carole Lombard’s reluctance and downright refusal to write letters: Carole Lombard chews up more letters than she writes. When she sits down to write she chews the edge of the stationary while she is thinking, and by the time the letter is halfway finished, it is so well chewed up that she throws it in the waste basket and goes out to feed the chickens. That’s why you don’t ever get letters from Lombard.
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Gossip Friday: Who’s That Girl
From December 1936: For the last three days, movie gossips have seen Clark Gable lunching with the same girl at the studio restaurant. They were surprised when they learned her name. She is Mary Anita Loos, 20-year-old niece of Anita Loos, humorist who wrote “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.” She recently began a career in pictures.
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Gossip Friday: Strictly Informal
From March 1940: Carole Lombard admitted the other day that her attempt to keep life on a strictly informal basis at the Gable-Lombard ranch has been carried a bit too far. Nowadays when she calls home and asks to speak to Mr. G., the maid cups her hand over the mouthpiece and yodels to the butler, “Hey, tell Paw that Maw’s on the phone!”
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Gossip Friday: Wants Not a Cent
From July 1951: Clark Gable, who plonked out $350,000 to get his freedom from Ria Gable, can relax. Sylvia wants not a cent from him—nor any part of his property. She sent word to me from Honolulu where she had fled after the bitterness of their parting. “Why should I ask for part of his 20-acre ranch in Encino when I own 4,000 acres in Del Mar?” Sylvia asked. Although Clark remains as mum as an oyster, he told a mutual friend that he has never spent as much money in his life as he did during the year-and-a-half he was married to the former Lady Ashley. He says he…
