Gossip Friday: The Honeymoon is Over

From May 1939:

That the honeymoon is over when the bride goes back to work is the reputed observation of some evidently petty-minded anti-domestic philosopher. Only last week, for instance, a young bride went back to work in high glee after a weekend honeymoon with the statement that for her, the honeymoon would last forever.

She was Mrs. Clark Gable, nee Carole Lombard, and she went back to cinema work at RKO Rdio Studio to star with Cary Grant and Kay Francis in “Memory of Love,” a story of a man married to a woman who doesn’t love him, who is determined to hold him even against his insistent demands for divorce.

And her husband, Clark Gable, was back at work, too, at Selznick International Studio, as Rhett Butler, suh, in “Gone with the Wind.” The bride, and the bridegroom, too, you see, had gone back to work. Yet America’s No.1 Mr. and Mrs. were very, very happy about it all.

They will take a real honeymoon, your correspondent learned from Mrs. Gable, when the lady completes “Memory of Love” and Clark finishes battling the wind.

Their honeymoon trip will be a little ocean excursion to Alaska. After this real honeymoon trip, Carole will again to return to work at RKO Radio to star in A.J. Cronin’s new novel “Vigil in the Night.” Mr. Gable, too, will go back to work. He’ll be busy at MGM starring with Myrna Loy in a picturization of Robert Sherwood’s “Road to Rome.”

Thoroughly reticent about her domestic life is Mrs. Gable. She will tell you, as she sits on the set at RKO Radio waiting for Director John Cromwell’s call, that she and Clark have moved into Clark’s San Fernando Valley ranch home, are remodeling it. She will tell you, too, in her electric fashion, that she is going to install a first class anti-aircraft pop gun on the front lawn to stop airplane photographers from taking shots of the residence before it is completed.

Your correspondent did learn, however, that when completed, the Gable hacienda (which hey do not intend to call “House of the Seven Gables”), will be a modified Colonial ranch style house. That’s pretty complicated, we know, but it’ll have to suffice for the present. Also, there’ll be a cow (which Carole avers she is going to milk personally), and a few barnyard habitants such as a pig, some chickens, ducks and horses. Both Carole and Clark enjoy a canter in the country enormously which accounts for the equines.

Far more important to the lady as a subject of conversation that her domestic life, which she assures you is “but terrific,” is her embarkment in a series of serious dramatic roles for the screen. “Made For Each Other” was the first of the new genre for Mr. Gable’s wife, Carole, and her current film, “Memory of Love,” is the second. She told your correspondent she hasn’t forsaken comedy permanently.

_____

They never did go to Alaska.

“Memory of Love” was re-titled to “In Name Only.”

Clark never did make “Road to Rome” with Myrna Loy. He didn’t co-star with Myrna again after 1938.