Gossip Friday: Take It From the Script Girl

From March 1937:

Florence Thomas is the eldest script girl [at MGM]. For eight years she has been W.S. Van Dyke’s secretary and script girl, and she knows her movie stars. Florence can take them apart, and considers some of them not worth the trouble of putting together again. But about Clark Gable she says: “I’d just as soon he were in all our pictures.” 

“And not because he’s the great Gable either, or any bunk like that. It’s for purely selfish reasons. Because he’s no trouble. Because he’s efficient. Because he knows this is his business and treats it like a business, and not like a circus hoop for showing off. He’s ready to work at nine and quit at six, he knows his wardrobe, he knows the sequence he’s in, he keeps his mind on his work. He’s the script clerk’s delight. You never have to worry about any book or pencil that Clark carries. If he uses the right hand in one scene, you know he’ll use it in the follow-up scene without your watching him. If there’s a slip-up, he doesn’t jump to blame it on you, like some of them. ‘We’re paid thousands,’ I heard him say once, ‘and they’re paid pennies. Why should we shunt our work onto them? They’ve got plenty to do without playing nursemaid to us.’

“I’ve never seen him put on an act. In ‘Love on the Run’ Mr. Van Dyke thought it would be cute to have him and Crawford and Tone sing ‘There’s a Long Long Trail’ in one scene. Franchot and Joan have trained voices, and a lot of guys would have whined, ‘I don’t wanna play.’ Not Clark. ‘Sure,’ he said, ‘let’s try it.’ And he sang. 

“He doesn’t know what it means to make a noise like a star. He’s natural to the bone. He treats me the same as he treats his leading lady. And he’s always giving himself the razz. He doesn’t think he’s handsome. And he knows his ears are big. The fellows were kidding him one day. ‘What’s your fatal secret, Clark? How do you get the girls going?’ ‘I rake ’em in with my ears,’ he said.

“Sometimes my girl friends’ll wisecrack, ‘Say, do they pay you for working with Gable? Gal, what a break you’re getting!’ They’re right. I am getting a break. Only not for the reason they think. When a script clerk thinks a fellow’s swell after one picture and then, after four, thinks the same only more so , there’s just one answer. The answer is, he’s a human guy to work with. And take it from me, that’s the best we could ask for.”