Gossip Friday: Gable in the Midwest

From June 5, 1947, Decatur, Illinois:

Bradley’s cabins parking lot and office swarmed with crowds of celebrity seekers last night as word got around that Clark Gable was staying there. But the night clerk and A.E. Bradley, operator, claimed to know nothing of the film star’s presence.

A man named Al Menasco, a stranger in Decatur, reserved a cabin at Bradley’s and visited cordially with the clerk. But no one at Bradley’s knew that the famous Clark Gable was Mr. Menasco’s traveling companion, Mr. Bradley insisted today.

But the crowd knew.

Several persons had seen the two men eating dinner at the Hotel Orlando’s Commodore room last night and many soon began to hear the story of how Gable had failed to get rooms at the hotel.

When Menasco asked for accommodations at the Orlando earlier in the evening he was told there were no rooms available. So the two men went to Bradley’s cabins south of Decatur where Menasco obtained a cabin.

As soon as the hotel management learned that Clark Gable was Mr. Menasco’s traveling companion, a room was immediately procured, but Gable refused to change quarters.

However, they did have dinner at the Commodore room.

Gable and Menasco also tried to get accommodations at Kistler cabins west of Decatur, it was reported today, but no cabins were available.

Bradley’s was beseiged with phone calls and telegrams until 3 am and it started all over again this morning with perhaps a hundred phone calls today, Mr. Bradley said.

Only Clinton Keller, son-in-law of Mr. Bradley, saw the celebrity as he and Menasco left at 6:30am today.

The men drove south from Bradley’s in a new, black Ford convertible with a tan top. They did not disclose their immediate destination.

The Phi Beta Phi sorority at Millikin university invited Gable to breakfast his morning. But, the Pi Phi’s reported, Gable did not accept the telegram by which the invitation was sent.

An invitation to a chicken dinner at the Gables in Boody was phoned to Bradley’s this morning, but it arrived after the film star had left.

Gable and Menasco are on a motor trip from New York to California.

Gable, who termed himself “just another ex-G.I. seeing the country,” called the Midwest one of the most beautiful parts of the country he has seen.

This was Gable’s first trip to Decatur and he admitted that he didn’t know much about the city except that he believed this was “the place where they made syrup.”

Menasco did better. He named the A.E. Staley Manufacturing Co.