Gossip Friday: Mudslide

From March 1941:

The weather has been the topic of almost every conversation out here recently. The rain has caused floods, landslides and inconveniences for almost every one, and each land owner has his own problem to discuss.

[Clark] Gable’s worry is his driveway. “You see,” he told me, “we have a good many horses on the place, and we can’t have any paved driveways. When cement gets wet, it is slippery, and the horses may fall. So I have crushed granite all over the place, and it does the trick as far as the animals are concerned. But it washes very badly, and each time we have a heavy rain, I find my driveway in a heap down on Ventura Boulevard.”

The state of his roads may been the reason why Gable had come to work that morning in a truck instead of his roadster or the family station wagon. No sense in messing up either of his swanky cars with muck and flying mud. Gable had simply stepped into the ranch truck and driven into town. He doesn’t do things like that in order to be sensational, but because he knows it’s more practical.