Gossip Friday: On the set of Boom Town

From September 1940:

Here’s mud in your eye!

Being a movie star does have its unpleasant moments, too. For example, in “Boom Town”, Spencer Tracy and Clark Gable do a sequence in which they meet in a wooden plank stretched over a mud-hole. Each tries to make the other get out of the way. In the course of this scuffling, someone starts shooting down the street and both, for safety’s sake, dive headlong into the mud. Coming up first, Clark good naturedly tries to shake hands with Spencer, who says, “Aw nuts!” and walks away. Mud-holes are nothing new to Clark. He did a nosedive into one in “Too Hot to Handle”. Remember? After the sequence was shot the boys went back to their dressing rooms to get out of their messy clothes. When they had cleaned up and gotten into dry clothes, Director Jack Conway summoned them and announced he wasn’t satisfied with the “take” and they’d have to do it all over!

New this week:

Lots of new pictures in the gallery

Audio clip of Clark talking about playing Rhett Butler on Gone with the Wind‘s page.