Gossip Friday: Earn Respect

From May 1954:

“I saw Clark Gable the other night in New York. Now there’ a really great guy. They don’t call him “The King” for nothing. I used to hang around the caddy shack at the club when I was a kid hoping for a chance to pack his bag. Sometimes I got it. If I didn’t, I followed him around. He was always swell to me, always my idol. Still is. So when I saw him in Twenty-One I went right up. He’d been in Europe for a long time but I might have seen him yesterday. He said some pretty nice things about me, said he was proud of me–stuff like that. I should have felt my feet leaving the ground. But I didn’t. I just felt embarrassed–like a peanut–and scared. Why? Oh, I don’t know, all this swoon guy stuff and everything…[Gable went through it]..and so did Bob Taylor, Ty Power, Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant. They all did. But they managed to keep people’s respect–and now look at them. That’s what I’ve got to do. Earn respect.” ~Robert Wagner