Gossip Friday: Memories of Clark Gable

From January 1961, (Sara Hamilton, Photoplay magazine’s gossip columnist):

Hollywood without Clark Gable will never be the same. There never was and never will be anyone to take his place. With his passing an era is over, never to return.

I can still see him standing on the porch of his Encino home, brown tweed jacket over his broad shoulders, looking more the hero of a romantic novel than he ever did on the screen.

I remember the evening he said, with mock seriousness, “Now Sara, here’s $30. We’re going to The Dunes, outside Palm Springs, for a little gambling and I expect you to make us both a fortune,” and his absolute hysterics when I lost it all.

I remember, too, the time he said to me, jokingly, “You know, Sara, half the time that I’m supposed to be out fishing our hunting in the rugged wilds, I’m really under the wagon having a nap.”

I shall try to remember Clark as I saw him last, lunching at Romanoffs across from my table. When he first saw me, he bowed and smiled in my direction, and then turned back to his companion. But when he rose to leave, he walked over to my table, bent down and kissed me tenderly on the cheek.

“How’s my girl?” he asked.

I didn’t have to answer. I know very well he felt the glow in my heart.

There’s one memory of him that is painful to think of–that of his white, tortured face at the funeral of his wife, Carole Lombard. And now I think of Kay’s tear-stained face as she sobbed at Clark’s funeral. I’m heartsick for her, especially now as she waits for the birth of their baby in March. All my sympathy–and the sympathy of all who knew and loved Clark on the screen and off–is with Kay at this time.