Gossip Friday: Screenwriter’s Problem

From November 1956:

Joe Mankiewicz saw a preview of Clark Gable’s “King and Four Queens” and mentioned the screenwriter’s problem in writing a Gable film. Mankiewicz once was assigned to write a movie starring Gable and Joan Crawford. He said: “If Joan Crawford started from 59th St. to Times Square on New Year’s Eve, and Clark Gable from 34th St. to Times Square–with a million people between them–the audience would know from the start that they would fall in love. The only thing for the writer to do is show how and where they are to meet.”