{New Article} World’s No.1 Honeymooners: The Clark Gables!

This article, by Ed Sullivan, appeared in newspapers on October 15,1939. So, here it is exactly 80 years later! It promises that “Sullivan takes you into the Hollywood home of the newlyweds to tell you for the first time the true story of their elopement,” but don’t get too excited because there is no interview with Clark Gable or Carole Lombard here, nor are there really any earth-shattering revelations.

On the road maps it is route 101, the Los Angeles natives refer to it more familiarly as Ventura boulevard, the ribbon of concrete which meanders north to San Francisco thru the hot and fertile valleys and foothills of California.

I have identified Ventura boulevard at some length because if you followed it for ten miles out of Hollywood to the town of Encino and turned left on an informal country lane which goes under the formal name of Petit avenue, and then turned right and passed thru a gateway, you’d find under the trees the house were “Pa” and “Ma” live.

No ordinary farmers are these two, because Pa is Carole Lombard’s name for Clark Gable, and Gable calls his glamour girl Ma.

On this 15^th day of October in the year of our Lord 1939 Pa and Ma are celebrating the 200^th day of their marriage. Today they have been married exactly seventeen days and six full months, because it was on March 29 that they eloped to Kingman, Ariz., for the most discussed marriage of the year.

Well, he tells you exactly how to get to their house! How convenient for stalkers!

No pictures were taken in the house, so let me describe it to you. Keeping in mind the low, homey lines of a Connecticut farmhouse, let us go to the door and ring the bell. It is a white door, and in an upper panel there is a door knocker made out of the brass figure of an American eagle. In response to the metallic rapping a maid regards you thru a square slit in the left upper half of the door—just such a peephole as owners of speakeasies during prohibition. As the maid opened the peephole and surveyed me I was tempted from force of habit to say, “It’s ok—Joe sent me.”

You enter a Connecticut farmhouse that the top squire of the countryside might have owned. A farmhouse streamlined by every modern ingenuity that good taste and money make available. Directly in front of you is the staircase that leads to the two bedrooms on the second floor. To your right and left are the barroom, the office, the den, the living room, and the dining room. Thru the windows you see the charming patio that has been laid out under three giant pepper trees, and to the left and beyond can be seen the stables which Horseman Raoul Walsh constructed when he built the place.

It is a home which impresses you at once with its livable character. The chintz drapes, the kerosene lamps attached to the walls, the hurricanes that guard the candles, the old English prints, the rugs—all contribute to the warmth of a real home in excellent taste. In Gable’s den one wall is covered by a large glass case thru which can be seen his collection of arms. Just for fun I counted them—nine revolvers, eleven guns.

On the wall above Gable’s favorite armchair is a print of the Sayers and Heenan bare-knuckle fight; another print of the “Five Courts.” On the stand, compressed by book ends, were five books—Noel Coward’s “Present Indicative,” “The Citadel,” Absury’s “The French Quarter,” “Cosmopolitans,” and “Absalom, Absalom.” A tiny gold dust scale such as was used in the early days of this state is an interesting museum piece.

The arsenal of guns is not for effect pictorial. Gable is one of the best gunners out in this neck of the woods. He is a duck hunter par excellence, and he is a better than average trap shooter. So is Carole. Gable’s favorite rifle is one that has telescopic sights. He plans to use it some day on an African trip.

That’s pretty much all that he describes inside the house so I don’t know how thrilling that is, even to fans 80 years ago. Nice to know the maid guards the front door for when all the stalker-fans arrived at the front door after receiving directions from Ed himself. The gun case in Clark’s study remained there until fifth wife Kay moved in with her kids in 1955; Clark didn’t like the children being that close to the guns all the time, so they were moved and bookcases were installed instead. Clark didn’t make it to Africa until he filmed Mogambo there in 1952.

The simplicity of the wedding in the tiny church in Kingman, Ariz., has keynoted the conduct of Gable and Carole since then. The twenty-acre farm off Ventura boulevard is an extension of the spirit in which they pledged allegiance in sickness and unto death.

Both of them appreciate the fact that their careers in the movies must come to an end some day in the future. So Pa and Ma found a substitute for glamour back on a farm. Like the characters they so often have impersonated, Clark and Carole intend to live happily ever after.

Unfortunately, not for long.

You can read the article in its entirety in The Article Archive.

(Article #26 posted in 2019)