1934: Gable-Crazy!

By James M. Fidler

Screenland, June 1934

Clark tells his amazing experiences on his personal appearance tour

For the third time since the dawn of the motion picture era, a screen star of the masculine sex—with emphasis on sex!—has barn-stormed the States with startling effect upon the females of the land.

The first such astounding tour was made by the late Rudolph Valentino, about ten years ago. Hundreds of thousands of frantic females literally shed their dignity and honor to get close enough to Valentino to see him, to touch him, to kiss him, to cling to him.

The second such occasion was more recent; last year, in fact, when George Raft made a personal appearance excursion through the South, East, and Central States, Raft-crazed women threw discretion to the winds. They schemed amazing tricks designed to gain them entry to George’s dressing rooms at the theatres, to his hotel living rooms during daylight hours, to his hotel bedrooms after daylight hours.

Clark Gable has just concluded a briefer but none-the-less exciting tour that included stops in a few cities of the East coast, as well as inland cities in the route from New York to Hollywood.

Just as the previous tours of Valentino and Raft were marked by unbelievable feminine indiscretions everywhere, so were Gable’s travels colored by exciting, and at times, dangerous experiences with women overcome with his appeal. Oh, there were men and boys among the tremendous mobs that greeted Clark wherever he went, but—poor males—they were pushed and shoved and trampled by overwhelming numbers of the oft-called weaker sex, whose historic weakness became strength through sheer madness.

A toll of Gable’s losses on his short trip includes the following articles:

27 silk handkerchiefs

33 buttons torn from his clothes

1 complete sleeve of a dress shirt

1 lapel from the coat of a business suit

1 pair of bedroom slippers

1 top half of a pair of silk pajamas

1 wrist watch

Gable cares little for any losses except the watch. He believes that it may have been taken by a souvenir-hunter who did not understand the watch’s real value. As a matter of record, Clark would like someone to return the watch to him. This is his reason, in Gable’s own words:

“The watch was a gift from my wife, therefore it has much sentimental value to me. If the finder, or taker, will return it to me, I will be happy not only to send that person a duplicate of the watch, but I will also pay a cash reward of fifty dollars, and ask no questions.”

The watch is white-gold, and attaches to the wrist by means of a white-gold link-chain. On its back are the two initials: C.G. Do you know who has the watch? If you do, please be sure and explain Clark’s reward offer.

Many and strange were the efforts of girls and women to see Gable alone. In Baltimore, a girl rented the hotel room adjoining the suite occupied by Clark, Mrs. Gable, and a constant guard who rarely left the actor’s side. Beginning early one evening, this girl knocked at the door of the Gable rooms. She was answered by the guard, who politely but firmly informed her that Clark was not in. At intervals of about one hour, the girl continued to knock, but each time she was greeted by the vigilant guard.

Perhaps the girl though the guard would eventually go to be elsewhere in the hotel, because she kept calling and knocking. Finally, about two o’clock in the morning, the guard informed her: “Beg pardon, miss, but I remain in these quarters all the time. No need for you to knock on the door; I’ll always answer you.” Whereupon the girl thrust out her tongue and uttered the rasping noise known as “the bird.”

The following morning, as Gable stepped alone into the elevator to go downstairs for breakfast this same girl stepped in behind him. Barely were the doors of the elevator closed before she threw her arms around Clark and began to rain kisses upon his cheek and neck. When he attempted to turn away from her, the excited girl rudely (such, such manners!) proceeded to nip one of the Gable ears with her teeth.

In the midst of this latter display, the elevator reached the lobby and the doors were opened. A crowded lobby of people were treated to a show that caused Gable to break away from the girl roughly, and dash for the front doorway. As for the brash young lady, she only grinned—and pocked a button from her idol’s coat. Gable never returned to that hotel.

It was during Clark’s stay in New York that he received a most amazing letter from a girl. The letter was penned on expensive stationary which bore a crest. The writer introduced herself as a cultured member of a fine family. She had seen Gable on the stage, she said, and she frankly admitted a certain type of love for him.

Calmly and apparently without shame, the girl went on to say that she had read that Gable was the father of no children. She had discussed this with her own parents and they had agreed that if she could have a child with Gable as its father, they would offer no objection!

She insisted that any such affair between them would be purely platonic, with no obligation on Clark. Her family was wealthy and she was well able to care for her own baby. She even requested that he talk the situation over fully with Mrs. Gable.

“I am sure your wife, being a woman, will understand,” the girl pleaded, “I want this baby more than anything else in life.”

Amazing? Unbelievable?

“I did turn the letter over to my wife,” Clark tells, with that boyish grin that endears him instantly, “but she wasn’t favorable to the idea!”

One daring girl managed to sneak backstage at the theatre in Baltimore. She made her way unseen into Clark’s dressing room. When Gable completed his turn behind the footlights, he found the girl awaiting his return. He had closed the door behind him when he saw her for the first time. He stopped short and demanded: “What are you doing here?”

The girl choked before she could speak, then asked stammeringly: “Will—will you autograph something for me, please, Mr. Gable?”

“Gladly,” Clark answered, believing this the easiest way to dismiss her without any fuss.

With that, there was a quick, tearing noise—and the girl brought into view the brassiere she had been wearing. “Autograph this!” she cried.

Stern-lipped, Gable threw open the door that opened from his dressing room out on the backstage runway. That was for protection. Then he seized a sheet of writing paper from his make-up case, scribbled a hasty autograph, and gave it to the girl. Before she quite realized how she got there, the girl was outside the theater—but clamped in one hand was her autograph; in the other hand, the brassiere without the Gable signature.

A chambermaid in another hotel owes the fact that she still holds her job to the good sportsmanship of both Clark and his wife. To designate the hotel, or even the city, might lead to the maid’s identification, therefore such information must be withheld.

At any rate, the Gable suite usually consisted of a living room and two bedrooms, one of which was occupied by Mrs. Gable and the other by Clark. This arrangement was of necessity, because often Mrs. Gable would go to the hotels and retire early. Clark, returning later from theatres, would occupy the other bedroom, rather than awaken his wife with the noise of his homecoming.

Perhaps the chambermaid did not understand this arrangement. At any rate, the first morning of Clark’s stay at this particular hotel, the maid entered the rooms–and went almost at once into the bedroom where Gable was sleeping. The actor was awakened with a start, and discovered the woman standing beside the bed. She had been stroking Clark’s cheek, while smiling tenderly down at him.

Perhaps more roughly than he should have spoken, he snapped, “What’s the idea?”

And with that, the maid fairly burst into tears. She confessed that she had long been in love with Gable on the screen. When she had learned that she was to clean his rooms, her heart had overflowed. She wanted only to touch him, to be close to him. That was what she had dreamed of ever since seeing his first picture.

At that moment, Mrs. Gable came to the door. Thanks to her sense of humor, she laughed heartily at the sight of her husband, sitting bolt upright in bed with the covers drawn close around him, while the husky chambermaid poured out her tale of love for him!

The maid was terrified. She opened her mouth to beg for forgiveness, but before she could speak, Mrs. Gable interrupted. With the sense of humor that is typical of the woman Clark married, she told the maid to “go about her duties, but next time be sure and pick a man whose wife is not so close by.”

“This public admiration is astounding, but of course it is not Clark Gable, the man, that the fans pursue,” Gable said to me, soon after his return to Hollywood. “I believe that the motion picture magazines are responsible for fan idolization, because their writers have exaggerated screen characters, and have made demi-gods of really ordinary people, like myself.

“Our country is famous for its hero-worship. I think the public is partially hypnotized by its very willingness to idolize. Even when fans see the stars in person, and have that opportunity to discover that we are just human beings like themselves, they continue right on with their unbelievable worship.”