Gossip Friday: Please Sign My Cake

From November 1933:

An autograph nut hunted up Clark Gable at the auto station in downtown Los Angeles where he and Claudette Colbert are making scenes for Columbia’s “Midnight Bus,” and asked Gable to autograph his birthday cake. the fan brought along an icing-writing device, much To Gable’s amazement and amusement.

The mob that hung around the bus depot so complicated work that Director Frank Capra thought up two devices to thin the crowd. He had studio carpenters bring saw horses and planking enough to fit a banquet table for 200, then had the studio put on a free feed for that many.

In the meantime, the same carpenters put up a little wooden house in the middle of the bus station, where Gable and Miss Colbert hid themselves except for the moments when they were needed for actual shots. All the rest of the time Gable and Claudette were impersonated by their stand-ins, who took a lot of jostling goo-humor-edly.