Gossip Friday: Boom Town Preview Postscripts
From November 1940:
Boom Town Preview Postscripts:
It required 27 varied location sites and a total of 41 sets to screen this story.
Metro buily a boom town of its own for this picture.
Clark Gable has been suggesting an oil story for himself for about three years; at the age of 18 he worked as a tool dresser in Bigheart, Oklahoma.
Spencer Tracy sets a new record for himself in screen fisticuffs, engaging in five battles; this is the second time he and Gable fight each other in films, although the last time, in “San Francisco,” they wore boxing gloves.
Gable is two inches taller in the picture than he ever has been. Four-inch heels on his boots do the trick.
Gable had more changes of outfits in the film than Miss Colbert and Miss Lamarr combined. He changed clothes 25 times, Claudette, 17; Hedy 7; Tracy had 18 changes.
Hedy Lamarr plays her first siren role. She cut her hair four inches for the part.
Claudette celebrated her tenth year of wearing bangs during this picture.
On the day that Gable and Carole Lombard celebrated their real-life first wedding anniversary, Gable and Colbert celebrated their screen-life first wedding anniversary in the picture.
The picture marks the first reunion of Clark and Claudette since they both won Academy Awards in “It Happened One Night.”
In the Gable-Tracy-Morgan drinking scene, they were each permitted to drink what they preferred. Clark chose cider, Tracy picked soda water, and Frank asked for unsweetened cold tea.
