Gossip Friday: “One Honey of an Actor”

From February 1940:

….we beat it for the “Strange Cargo” [set], which [includes] not only Gable and Crawford, but also Paul Lukas, Ian Hunter, J. Edward Bromberg, Peter Lorre, Albert Dekker, Eduardo Ciannellu, and John Arledge.

They are all on the set as we mosey in and a worse looking crew you never lamped. They are escaping from the jungle. They have one small boat and Crawford between them. The idea is that the men are escaping convicts. Crawford is a babe from the streets whom Gable has picked up and dragged along, and love is beginning to gnaw them. You practically can’t see What-a-Man Gable behind the three days’ growth of beard he’s sporting. His clothes, like all the men’s, are in tatters. So are Joan’s, which lets us see quite a lot of Joan and very nice, too. Crawford is really giving this role the business. She’s doing it without make-up and with bedraggled hair. It will be interesting to see what that means for her. The big thought behind the plot is that the whole lot of them get religion, but Gable gets Crawford, too, the lucky stiff.

We watch just one scene. Albert Dekker and Gable are fighting over a knife Gable has. When the scene is finished, Gable strolls by. “I may get the knife but Dekker will get the picture,” says Clark. “That’s one honey of an actor, my friend.”