Gossip Friday: We All Make Mistakes

2020

From October 1931:

Mark Hellinger tells a good one. It seems that  a little over a year ago Leslie Howard was authoring and directing a play on Broadway and was muchly in need of a young man to play the love interest. A young man called at the theatre and asked for a job and the producer sent him to talk to Howard. Howard gave him a try-out and then reported to the producer that the young man he had picked up was utterly impossible in the role of the hero whom women adored. he just wasn’t the type. So, said young man was fired. Now it’s so happened that Leslie Howard and the said young man (oh, I won’t keep you in suspense any longer–it’s Clark Gable, none other!) met in Hollywood, and what;s more they were put in the same picture together–“A Free Soul.” Why Leslie Howard had to kill Clark Gable before he could get Norma! Well, we all make mistakes.