Gossip
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Gossip Friday: Summer Entertaining with Clark and Carole
From August 1941: Informality’s the role on the Gable farm. Clark and Carole love to have company drift in around dinner time and stay for a feed-providing they help prepare it themselves. And if it’s a July night, hot and breathless, you’ll find the Gables out beneath the stars. Supper is served picnic style on the porch. The makings are spread out colorfully, lavsihly. From then on each guest is his own chef with no food combinations barred. Count on Clark to set the mood with a superman three-decker: alternate layers of sliced tomatoes mixed with thin crisp bacon, sliced breast of chicken and slices of roast beef–mounted on toasted…
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Gossip Friday: What’s Myrna Knitting?
Since this week (August 2) marked the 105th birthday of one of Clark’s costars, friends and an all-around classy lady, Miss Myrna Loy, here’s some gossip about her. From February 1937: With Joan Crawford set for the lead in “Parnell” opposite Clark Gable, she was suddenly switched to “The Last of Mrs. Cheyney” which Myrna Loy was to do, and Miss Loy was given the Crawford part in “Parnell”. There are those who say Joan preferred the “Last of Mrs. Cheyney” role, and there are those who say director John Stahl preferred not having La Crawford in “Parnell.” First day on the “Last of Mrs. Cheyney” set, before she switched…
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Gossip Friday: Seeing Red
Date unknown: Clark Gable told us red is his favorite color. He likes to achieve, to take life by the horns. He enjoys competition and relentless hard work. Lovers of red thrive on action. They like dramatic effects, surprising, spectacular ways of doing things; they are not too patient and can take it on the chin. They are courageous, fearless and independent. They believe in themselves because they know that to believe in one’s self is the first law of successful doing. Clark had no relatives in the theater, no pull, no magic carpet to climb upon. He succeeded because he had the ability to work and had confidence in…
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Gossip Friday: Signed by Carole
From November 1937: Bank clerks used to have fifty million fits trying to figure out whether or not Carole Lombard’s checks were forgeries or the real thing. Carole, it seems, never writes her name twice in the same manner, and you can readily see how it might be a trifle confusing to the boys in the cages. But Fieldsie, her secretary manager, finally came to their rescue and devised a plan whereby every Lombard check must have a special notation on it before a bank clerk is to honor it. New this week: Hundreds of new pictures in the gallery, including new Clark and Carole candids and interior pictures of…
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Gossip Friday: Pampered Husband
From November 1935: …Clark Gable, who has all the girls going pitter patter, really has a very even disposition about everything, but he does like to be the one to open the morning paper first. He wants the sports section to be just where the sports section should be and not way over there in the society section. He’s very nice about it to first offenders, but sooner or later you get the idea in the Gable household that the head of the house is to be the one to remove the rubber band. And no matter how much Mrs. Gable wants to know what Cholly Angeleno had to say…
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Gossip Friday: Harlow’s Fans
Here’s some gossip on one of Clark’s favorite leading ladies, the legendary Jean Harlow, from May 1935: It was a shock to discover, through the accurate records of Mrs. Ethel Webb, Jean Harlow’s efficient secretary, that in 1933 twenty-five percent of all Miss Harlow’s fan mail came from men, while the other seventy-five percent was dashed off by feminine hands. In 1934 the ratio was twenty percent to eighty. Having labored under the conviction that the Harlow appeal was, of all the stars in Hollywood, most evidently for males, the only explanation I could offer for the feminine pre-ponderance of interest was that most men are inept correspondents. But Mrs.…
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Gossip Friday: Serving Carole
Since Sunday is the 71st anniversary of Clark and Carole’s marriage, here’s some gossip on her from 1940: When the “They Knew What They Wanted” company had to go to Napa, California, for a two weeks’ location trip, most of the company lived in tents. But Carole Lombard decided that tenting was not to her liking and in as much as there wasn’t a hotel in Napa she stayed at a ranch nearby. Every night when she came back to the ranch for dinner after a day on location she noticed she was waited on by a different servant. On the fourth night, when she noticed the fourth change in…
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Gossip Friday: Miss Rutherford’s collection
Here’s one about Ann Rutherford, who played Carreen O’Hara in Gone with the Wind, from September 1940: Cute little Ann Rutherford has something new in charm necklaces. The necklace is made of miniature car license numbers of her favorite actors. Among them are Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Jimmy Stewart and Mickey Rooney.
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Gossip Friday: Praise from a Barrymore
Since the Oscars were Sunday…”Look Lionel, what I’ve got!” From October 1940: These Barrymores are picturesque mimes. A question to Jack will bring you any intimate detail about his personal life that you may want. Ask Lionel and he will devote his comment to boosting someone else. I asked Lionel what he thought of the 1940 films as compared to the silent pictures of 1909 and 1910 when he started performing before the cameras. And he turned the whole reply into a eulogy of Clark Gable. Here it is: “I am often asked whether or not the motion picture has improved. There is only one answer to that. Nothing stands still.…
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Gossip Friday: Clark’s Rival
From September 1937: Clark Gable and Carole Lombard told us this one. They were coming away from the fights the other night when a newsboy–age ten–gave Carole a paper. Clark fished for a coin, but the boy stopped him. Giving the burly Gable–ordinarily a great favorite of youngsters his age–a dirty look, he said: “Keep your pennies, you big ham! I’m GIVING this paper to Miss Lombard–see?” New this week: Pictures in the gallery A rare article from 1932 in the Article Archive TV Listings have been updated through May