Gossip Friday: The Next Mrs?

From November 1948:

One of the hottest rumors around Hollywood has to do with Anita Colby and Clark Gable. Intimates believe if Clark ever marries again it will be to The Face. She is nothing like Carole Lombard, who was one of the town’s great personalities—off screen as a well has on. Carole had a zest for life. She fitted in a duck blind as well as she did in a drawing room. Colby is a business girl, who has made more than average success in executive positions. But the years have changed Gable too. He has grown into middle age and needs a wife about the house perhaps more than he needs a companion on the hunting trails.

Since the war. Clark has not been too happy with his career. Though the magic name of Gable always brings ‘em in at the box office, he has not been satisfied with the quality of his pictures. On the lot, where he is supposed to be King—Clark, like the other actors, takes the stories that are handed him. Fans urge him to return to the red-blooded, he-men roles that made him famous; but that silver in Clark’s hair ain’t talcum powder—and he knows it.

Clark sure stirred up a nest of speculation when he held up the sailing of an ocean liner to bid a fond farewell to Slim Hawks, whom everybody thought was the one and only for Leland Hayward, Margaret Sullavan’s ex.