Gossip
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Gossip Friday: Silent Scarlett
Since TCM has selected Vivien Leigh as their Star of the Month this month (set your DVRs!), here’s some gossip on her from September 1940: …of all Hollywood’s femmes fatales, we call your attention first to Vivien Leigh. If you lived in Hollywood this wouldn’t be necessary. You’d be aware of her–with reason! It looks as if there’d be no liomit to Vivien’s conquests when–a little less enthralled by her Romeo, Laurence Olivier–she becomes aware that other men walk the earth, too. For those men who’ve managed to impress themselves on the Leigh consciousness, usually through working with her, are quick to admit her natural attraction. “There’s always something more…
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Gossip Friday: Anniversary with Joan Crawford
From November 1936: With the first day of production of “Love on the Run”, Joan Crawford and Clark Gable celebrated the fifth anniversary of their first co-starring picture: “Possessed”. Neither Joan nor Clark could recall off-hand how many pictures they have co-starred in during the last five years. Director Van Dyke staged the party as a surprise to his two stars and provided a cake appropriately decorated with two little figures in wedding costumes. During the party the victrola played over and over again “You Are My Lucky Star.” ______ I would think that would be quite the awkward party considering that Clark and Joan were at one time romantically…
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Gossip Friday: Boom Town Pranks
From August 1940: You may have read about Clark Gable getting a split lip in a fight scene for “Boom Town” and how the studio had to give him a few days to let it heal. Here’s the sequel to the story, which contains a typical Hollywood chuckle. Gable was called on for the closeups after the fight some time later, and after a fake blow at close quarters, when the scene was in the can, he grinned and carelessly spit out a tooth! Everyone saw the blank space in his front row of teeth and consternation reigned. When Clark had enjoyed his joke, he revealed that he had painted…
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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…