Gossip Friday: Not Taking Credit

From January 1940:

Miss Josephine Dillon, first wife of Clark Gable, is newly appointed dramatics instructor at Christian College, Columbia, Mo. 

[She says] Clark had a number of faults when she began coaching him. For two things, there were his ears, as someone suggested to her. His voice was too high. “All athletic men, Dempsey, Weismueller and others, have high voices,” she observed. “Then, too, the greatest fault was Clark had a big body and he didn’t know how to handle it. He also had the accent of that part of Ohio from which he came.”

Miss Dillon fixed up everything except the ears, but she refused to take credit for making Gable an actor. “All we can do is prepare the outside shell for the camera and microphone,” she said. “But the determination to be an actor, the ability to take the gaff during that agonizing period of marking time–that is what makes an actor.”