Gossip Friday: Easy to Handle

From January 1936:

Clark Gable is easy to handle, Lionel Barrymore is difficult and Norma Shearer is “sweet and stoical about pain.”

That is how Peggy Coleman, who sees the stars when they are suffering, sizes up stellar response to the first-aid treatment she administers in her capacity as studio nurse.

For 11 years Peggy Coleman has ministered to common colds, minor ailments, injuries and sometimes serious accident cases that befall the workers on her lot. If an actor has a headache on the set, they send for Peggy. If an actress fears her cold will show in her eyes, Peggy hastens over to give treatment. She may be dressing a prop boy’s bleeding finger one hour and the next it may be Gable who needs quick repairs.

Clark Gable is not only “easy to handle” but among the men one of the easiest. Miss Coleman, who was a first lieutenant army nurse overseas during the war, has treated Gable for everything from an injured leg to ordinary colds. “He does what he’s asked to do and realizes it for his own good,” she says.

But Lionel Barrymore!

“He resents having any one think anything’s the matter with him. Once he fractured bones in his hand, pounding a table in a scene. It was one of our hardest jobs to make him consent to treatment. John, too, resents being thought ill. Ethel is the easiest of the Barrymores to handle. She was always very sweet.

“So is Norma Shearer–and stoical about pain. May Robson doesn’t want to be mollycoddled and objects to taking her medicine. William Powell likes to joke and belittle anything that may be the matter with him. Joan Crawford doesn’t like to take medicine and would rather ‘wear out’ a headache. We have to use persuasion.”