Gossip Friday: No Strange Cats on Strange Cargo

From March 1940:

Disappointment smacked down all the let’s-be-there-when-it-happens gang, who under one pretext or another managed to clutter up the sound stage on the first day of shooting for MGM’s Strange Cargo.

That’s the picture in which, you know, Joan Crawford and Clark Gable share top billing. And for weeks, the rumor has hottened Hollywood, that Joan and Clark were about as friendly as a couple of strange cats, and that when they got together, the temperamental fur would fly all over the set.

So what happened? So Joan smiled at Clark, and Clark smiled at Joan, and it remained for Joan’s famous dachshund “Puppchen” to provide the only warfare. The dog took one look at Gable, growled a bit, and then tried to bite off one of the Gable ankles.