Gossip Friday: Take a Hint

From December 1938, Walter Winchell’s column:

Mrs. Clark Gable speaks up: “I am still the wife of Clark Gable, the question of a divorce has never even been broached to me!” Gable hasn’t lived under the same roof with you for years–can’t you take a hint?

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That’s hilarious, nobody puts it quite  Winchell! Despite what a lot of bad biographies and terrible films will have you believe, the movie-going public and the press wasn’t scandalized by Clark Gable and Carole Lombard’s romance and sympathizing with poor Ria Gable. Quite the opposite–they found Ria to be an old battle ax and wanted nothing more than her out of the way so Clark and Carole could live happily ever after. Studio-driven sad stories about the “devastating” demise of Clark and Ria’s marriage came to halt after Miss Lombard appeared on his arm.