Gossip Friday: Unorthodox Presents

From December 1938:

The gifts Carole Lombard and Clark Gable have exchanged are even more unorthodox.

Whoever heard of a woman in love with a man giving him a gun for Christmas!

Or a man, crazy about one of the most glamorous, sophisticated and clever women in the land, hanging a petrol scooter on her Christmas tree!

For Clark, Carole stopped, almost overnight, being a Hollywood playgirl.

People are expected to change when they get married. The necessary adaptation to a new life and another personality shows up in every bride and groom.

All Clark and Carole did was strike up a Hollywood twosome. Nobody said “I do!”

Clark Gable doesn’t like night spots, or parties, social chit-chat, or the frothy pretensions of society. He has endured plenty of it, but it makes him fidget.

Carole, quite frankly, used to eat it up. She hosted the most charming and clever parties in town. She knew everybody, went everywhere. When the ultra exclusive Mayfair Club held its annual ball, Carole was picked to run things.

It was Carole who decreed the now famous “White Mayfair” that Norma Shearer set by the ears so wickedly by coming in flaming scarlet–an idea you later saw dramatized by Bette David in “Jezebel.”

These things were the caviar and cocktails of Carole Lombard’s life–before she started going with Gable. But look what happened–Clark didn’t like it, Carole found out–quickly. What did he like?

Gable liked to ride, so Carole got herself a horse and unpacked her riding things.

He liked tennis, so she resurrected her always good game, taking lessons from Alice Marble, her good friend and the present national women’s champion.

Playing with a man, Carole had to get good and she did–so good that now Clark can’t win a set!