{New Article} 1946: Are You The Girl For Clark Gable?

This article is run-of-the-mill for the period. After Carole Lombard died and Clark was home from the war, every article was about who would be the next Mrs. Gable and what kind of women he likes.

Hey but this one included a quiz! (and yes, it’s quite sexist)

Take this test to see if you’re the girl for Gable.

1. Are you mature in your manner?
2. Do you have a quick mind?
3. Do you possess a quality or knowledge which would make you interesting to Clark?
4. Are you honest, frank, direct?
5. Do you have a sense of humor?
6. Are you good at gay small talk?
7. Can you intelligently discuss engines, hunting, sports?
8. Are you adaptable?
9. Are you feminine?
10. Is your conversation filled with references to the opera, the classics, and so on?
11. Are you possessive?
12. Are you too marriage conscious?
13. Are you emotionally unstable, given to frequent tantrums or tears?
14. Do you possess a spirit of adventure?
15. Do you dress smartly?
16. Can you carry a conversation, answer questions interestingly?
17. Do you have poise?
18. Do you like newspaper people?
19. Would you keep Clark guessing for months about how you felt about him?

If you are Clark Gable’s dream girl, your answers would be:

1. Yes
2. Yes
3. Yes
4. Yes
5. Yes
6. Yes
7. Yes
8. Yes
9. Yes
10. No
11. No
12. No
13. N
14. Yes
15. Yes
16. Yes
17. Yes
18. Yes
19. No

Anybody pass?

Before it dives into how you can trap Clark for yourself, the article of course regurgitates the studio-polished, tired old version of Clark’s previous marriages:

…his next girl was a woman many years his senior, a drama coach, Miss Josephine Dillon. She wasn’t the most beautiful woman in the world but if you think this romance was a one-sided affair with Miss Dillon swooning at Clark’s feet, you are distinctly wrong. When she left Portland for Los Angeles, Clark raced madly after her. A few months after they met, they were married, at Clark’s vehement insistence. She was an actress. She taught him many things he did not know: stage presence, how to make an entrance, how to modulate his voice, and so on.

His next marriage was to fashionable Rhea Langham. She shared his most fabulous success; the period wherein he skyrocketed to fame, and became one of the first ten at the box office, a position he has consistently held except for the years he spent in the Air Force. Rhea was a brilliant hostess. Her mind was sharp, aware, intelligent. Her social background was fabulous. She may not have been the ideal mate for a man who had come up from the oil fields, but she was definitely someone from whom he could learn something. She, also, was older than he by a number of years. A difference in age has never mattered to Clark. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t until his marriage to Carole Lombard that he ever married or fell in love with a younger woman.

Josephine was not a love match on any level and it was indeed one-sided. Just a marriage of convenience. Ria (not Rhea) wasn’t either. Started out as a courtship but ended in her blackmailing him into marrying her. And the last sentence is the most laughable, as Clark was having heated affairs with Joan Crawford, Elizabeth Allan, and Loretta Young, all while married to Ria, and all were younger than him.

Right now Gable’s ideal girl is one who is not thinking too seriously of marriage. Gable likes his bachelor’s life, and he isn’t particularly keen to give it up. He’ll never settle for any love less terrific than the one that ended so tragically in a crash on a Nevada mountainside. He’s tasted cake, and bread will not do.

One thing about Gable’s dream girl is stunningly clear: the hold-over from his youthful interest in older women reveals a positive fact. He likes his women to be mature. No bubbling, giggling, unbalanced, emotionally unstable girl would ever hold his interest for long.

As to height and weight, that seems to vary. Dolly O’Brien was petite, Anita Colby, more on the statuesque side. Carole was in-between. But, despite the beauty of most of the lovelies he dates, the bystander has the feeling that Gable—for all his brashness—looks below the surface. In the parlance of his last picture, “Adventure,” he is looking for something in a woman’s eyes; a spirit of adventure, comradeship, warmth and depth.

Gable has a terrific sense of humor. Being with him is fun. To be Clark Gable’s dream girl, you’d have to be able to appreciate the intonations of a word. He laughs a lot, for life amuses him. He has his serious side, to, but it’s never evident on a date. He likes to talk about you, which you’d find flattering. The old conventional trick of asking questions wouldn’t be your smartest move if you were Gable’s girl. Instead, he’d fire questions at you. Not just to be polite, not to make conversation, but because he’d be genuinely interested in your answers.

If you were Clark Gable’s dream girl, you’d at least have a reading acquaintance with certain masculine things that interested him most: automobiles, hunting, deep-sea fishing, or ranch life as compared to city life. You’d be interested in prize fights, all types of sports, football. You’d be able to speak his language. He’s no great shakes as a dancer, but an evening at the Mocambo with Clark Gable would be an event. Everyone in the place, it might seem, would stop at your table. He’d appreciate it if you didn’t sit there like a bump on a log when these people came by to say hello. You could tactfully let him do the greeting and talking, but when conversation languished, he’d glow if you kept his guests amused and gay until they went back to their tables.

If you were Gable’s girl, you’d have to possess real poise. Because wherever he goes, a hush follows. People stare. Even at the most celebrated nightspots—like Ciro’s or the Mocambo or the Trocadero—heads turn. You couldn’t be flustered by this intense scrutiny. You’d have to take it all in your stride.

If you were Gable’s dream girl and wanted to go out with him more than once, you would not report your evening’s fun to the local newspaper columnists. Many Gable romances have died a cool death when he picked up the next morning’s papers and read of the night-before activities. You see, Gable is human. He doesn’t like to be used for your personal publicity.

As silly and sexist as this article is, it’s not entirely fictional. A lot of this is true. Clark expected women to be feminine and have poise and grace. He wasn’t very tolerant of those who were boring, pretentious or lacked wit. And there is a list of women who leaked to the newspapers about their romance with Clark and then suddenly found themselves without him. Suzanne Dadolle being one, Kay Williams in 1943 being another (though she learned from her mistakes when she hooked him again in 1954),

You can read the article in its entirety here and find out if you and Clark were indeed meant to be.