Cameo Clark

Unfortuantely for us Gable fans, Clark wasn’t comfortable with the television medium and so clips of him on the small screen are scarce–no little cameos or guest spots like many of his contemporaries.

But, in 1951, he did make a brief cameo appearance in the film Callaway Went Thataway, starring Fred MacMurray, Dorothy Maguire and Howard Keel. From what I gather, he was on the lot waiting around, Fred MacMurray was a long-time friend of his, so he said why not and did the scene in one take.

It’s a cute little comedy. Fred and Dorothy play advertising execs who are in a bind when an old cowboy star named Smoky Callaway comes back into fashion after his old films are shown on television. When they can’t find the real Smoky,they hire a lookalike, a real and quite naive cowboy (Keel) to pretend to be him. Clark appears when they take the fake Smoky to a Hollywood nightclub. First they encounter Elizabeth Taylor, whom fake Smoky doesn’t recognize. Then they pass Clark’s table and fake Smoky takes Clark for someone named Sam!

Watch the scene below (sorry, the clip I found is not the best quality):

Callaway.mov

The film isn’t available on DVD but TCM does show it fairly often.