Gossip
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Gossip Friday: Tennis Can Get You a Gable!
From October 1936: What’s the most necessary requisite for a young actor or actress coming to Hollywood, we are often asked. And here’s our answer, children. Learn to play a cracking good game of tennis. Tennis has broken more ice in Hollywood than a spring thaw. Tennis has been the means of young people breaking into important friendships. Tennis has been the ladder in which young hopefuls have climbed. Albeit, it hasn’t kept them there. Why, believe it or not, it was Carole Lombard’s ability to smack the ball across the net at a certain prankish party that convinced Clark Gable she was the girl. And if tennis can get…
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{Gossip Friday} Mr. Gable Excites Miss Stanwyck
From September 1940: Movie stars must have their little jokes. When Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Taylor did “Nothing Sacred” on a radio broadcast recently they arranged it so that several lines of dialogue would read thusly: Bob says: “Is there nothing that will excite you?” Barbara answers: “Yes, put me in a room with Clark Gable.” Bob then says: “What’s the matter with Robert Taylor?” To which Barbara replies: “I never heard of him.”
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Gossip Friday: Carole Lombard’s Opinion on Whiskers
From March 1937: When it comes to sheer, downright having-fun-out-of-life, you’ve got to hand it to Carole Lombard and Clark Gable. These two have had more amusement out of their romance than most people get out of a whole lifetime. Both are inveterate practical jokers–and never does either let the oppurtunity pass to “gag” the other. Carole’s latest and biggest chance came with all the fuss over whether or not Clark was to raise a set of whiskers to play the role of Parnell. Hardly had the discussion begun at MGM than Gable began to get the works–first, mysterious men with long whiskers would pop up in the most unexpected…
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{Gossip Friday} If You Had 24 Hours to Live…
From April 1935: What would you do if you only had 24 hours to live? Carole Lombard…wants to gather her friends around her for the last bow. Instead of just a few, she prefers a large gay cocktail gathering in her home. “Because,” she said to me, “I think it would be great to go out with a ring of laughter and music in your ears, don’t you?” Cary Grant: “By cable, telephones, wires and radios I would get in direct communication with the few people I have hurt during my life. With death hovering near, I could explain and ask their forgiveness, a thing that seems too difficult to…
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Gossip Friday: Marilyn Monroe won’t be Clark’s “Lady”
From August 1955: Everybody at 20th Century Fox studio has been unhappy about Marilyn [Monroe], including Clark Gable. She was supposed to be his leading lady in “The Lumberjack and The Lady,” and the king was looking forward to playing opposite the Lady of the Calendars. What combo they’d make! ___ First I’ve heard of this project or even the prospect of Clark starring with Marilyn in 1955. Interesting. They’d have to wait five years…
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Gossip Friday: Life Doesn’t End at Forty, Clark
From May 1937, this is a reader letter in response to this article where Clark claims that life ends at forty: If Clark Gable really believes that “Life Ends at Forty”, let me remind him of a few gents who are over forty and doing very nicely, thank you. Lewis Stone is a fine example of what a man can do after he is forty; Wallace Beery isn’t slipping; Lionel Barrymore is not exactly on the shelf; although Warner Baxter may have a few gray hairs , we don’t stop to count them when we go see one of his pictures. Wake up, Clark! You sound like an old maid…
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Gossip Friday: Lost in Mexico
From May 1940: Getting “lost” in Mexico has been a favorite pastime among Hollywoodites recently. Oh well–it’s good for a headline–and sometimes for a laugh. Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, vacationing south of the border in a station wagon, were mildly surprised to learn that their studios had been worrying about them–all over the country’s newspapers. Eddie Albert, whose publicity department lost track of him while he was sailing off Mexico in his boat, returned to Hollywood with a tale that ties the two Mexican mysteries together neatly. A Mexican deckhand on his boat, Eddie claims, asked him for a big favor. “Please,” begged the Mexican, “when you get back…
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Gossip Friday: Clark and Carole–Oil Magnates?
From January 1940: Clark Gable, Carole Lombard, and other screen celebrities, who are members of Encino’s “Hard Rock Club,” are within weeks of becoming oil magnates. A short time ago, oil was discovered two miles went of the property and hundreds of barrels were produced. Now oil has been discovered on the Club’s land, and before long the club members will be rolling out the barrels. The club started when a group of stars, Valley residents, wanted a weekend lodge for skeet shooting and riding, and purchased 160 acres in the nearby hills for the resort. P.S. The club’s name is derived from the stony nature of the soil.
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Gossip Friday: Clark, Spencer and Al Volunteer
From December 1939: Those who scoffed at the idea of screen stars accepting political offices as mayors of small valley towns are taking it back in large doses these days. And all because Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy and Al Jolson are men who mean business. After a small school girl had been killed on Ventura Boulevard by a speeding motorist, a meeting of citizens was called and right there in the front row sat Clark, Tracy and Jolson. “We’ll need a committee to help curb this speeding,” the chairman announced, and instantly these three men rose to their feet and volunteered. “We have time between pictures while your men are…
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Gossip Friday: Sick and Bored
From May 1937: Notes on how to pass the time while in bed with influenza, as demonstrated by Clark Gable: Bored by reading, he had a mop handle, minus the mop, brought to him. He tied a paintbrush, artists’ size, on the end, drew funny cartoons on the ceiling! Tired of that, he got a rubber band and a sheet of newspaper, and gean shooting spitballs at the flies in the room. After eight misses, he bagged a horsefly “right between the mirror and the window.” And finally, allowed to leave his bed by his doctor, Clark had the driver’s compartment of his station wagon glassed in, installed a heater…