{New Article} 1931: Do Women Love Cave Men?

Newcomer Clark Gable had burst onto the screen in 1931, tossing around the likes of Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford and Barbara Stanwyck, sending feminine hearts aflutter. But does this mean that women love cavemen??? WE MUST KNOW.

Ivan Lebedeff says: “A woman loves the man she loves, whatever he is. Love to a woman is something, the reason for which can never be explained. The most beautiful women often give themselves to ugly and sometimes even invalid men. And women of fine intellectual and spiritual development sometimes give themselves to absolute dumbbells.

“But there’s a physical side to all women. They are all thrilled or attracted more or less by cave-men or he-men. Not so much on account of their obvious brutality and roughness, but because of something primitive and unconquerable, suggestive of a fine animal inside.  Such men, even though they win the woman in a mild-enough manner, after they have conquered her physical self, display a peculiar mixture of indifference and ownership. This type of man is always popular with females. The best example of a strong, virile male, who has been able to remain very close to the nature of a cave-man without becoming affected with a complicated psychological twist is Clark Gable. I would commend him to anyone as a sweetheart or comrade, although I have never met him personally.

“A more refined specimen of the same group was Valentino. Unfortunately, he loved women with his mind and soul also. Which made him weaker from the standpoint of a lover than Clark Gable is.”

Who the heck is Ivan Lebedeff and why do we care about his take on the subject? He was apparently a Russian film actor. Not sure why he was asked to weigh in on this topic. This theme of Clark being the next Valentino and ushering in a new kind of leading man is very common in 1931-1932. The pea-brained author of this article apparently stalked Clark all over California  to ask him about women liking cavemen and just so happened upon him at the Brown Derby.

And then it happened. Out of a blue sky. Rather in the Brown Derby. I went inside for a sandwich and a cup of coffee. I was wearing an Empress Eugenie hat pulled low over my right eye and I would never have seen him if he hadn’t called to me. At the sound of his voice I whirled around and there he sat, inviting me to lunch with him. Just like that. And that is when I got all jittery, but can you blame me? It was upsetting enough to be lunching with Clark Gable, but twice so when you consider how I had been running all over the country trying to find him.

I was all primed for an interview and I wasted no time.

“Tell me, doesn’t it set you up to know that all the women in the world are hot and bothered about you?”  I demanded.

“This must be a case of mistaken identity,” he countered. “You know me. Just a Hollywood ham, trying to get along.”

I allowed him to struggle over his steak for a moment.

“Do women love cave-men?” I interrupted at last.

“They do and they don’t,” he elucidated. “A cave-man may be nice to have around where he has his own jungle cave and run-way. That is the ideal condition, of course. He might be a great lover under those circumstances and get away with it.”

“Is there an if to your answer?” I demanded.

“Sherlockian, aren’t you?” he taunted.

I got all jittery again when he looked that way at me, and I busied myself with my salad to hide my confusion.

“Here’s the point I was trying to make,” he explained. “A cave-man may be all right in his natural habitat. He may be satisfactory and thrilling and exactly right for every woman given the right conditions. But take him under ordinary conditions. Does a woman love a man who occasionally takes chunks out of the grand piano to wreck the buffet with? I doubt it. A cave-man is about as useful and necessary to the modern woman as a bull in a china shop.”

I acknowledged that I hadn’t thought of that. Then, I saw the twinkle in his eye, and knew that he was deliberately and with malice aforethought getting my goat.

“But seriously, what is the status of the cave-man as a lover?” I persisted.

“Brutes always have been loved,” he amended. “You can see this by the popularity of such pictures as Bancroft’s and the philandering Sergeant played by Eddie Lowe in ‘What Price Glory.’ This characterization built Lowe into a box-office power because the brute in it appealed to the women fans. Women have everything so absolutely their own way that they crave being bullied now more than ever because of the novelty of the situation. This is a women’s world, run for, by and of women. They have advanced more in the last ten years than they have in the last thousand. And this very thing has caused them to yearn for the man who can dominate them, force them to do his bidding.”

He suppressed a chuckle.

“Out with it,” I ordered.

“I was about to say, let a man try and do it and see what happens.”

“What happens?” I persisted.

“Plenty.” There were volumes in the word.

This whole article is rather sexist. What one woman finds sexy another one doesn’t. It doesn’t have anything to do with women having more freedom than ever and so then wanting to be controlled in the bedroom. So says this woman in 2019. I guess I can’t speculate on the mindset of a woman in 1931.

You can read the rest of this article in The Article Archive.

(#6 Article posted in 2019)