{New Article} 1936: He Lives His Impulses

That crazy, non-conformist Clark Gable!

MGM publicity pretty much shoved the idea that Clark was a free spirited, unsophisticated  regular Joe down the public’s throat repeatedly. Not that it wasn’t mostly true, because Clark indeed shunned the spotlight and the glamour that came along with it. But MGM really pushed for these kind of stories. This article is just Clark chatting with the reporter at the MGM commissary.

“People often have asked me what I get out of it all—you know, being a movie star, making money, all the prerequisites.  I don’t get out of it what a lot of people would, that’s a fact. I’m not luxury-minded. I don’t give a hoot for swell houses, swimming pools and entertaining. I don’t like big parties. I have no use for a yacht. I prefer a tramp steamer. Camping, fishing and shooting don’t cost much of anything when you don’t go to swank resorts—and I don’t. I have no use for swell clothes. I hate to dress up—I feel like one of those old fashioned tailors’ dummies when I have to put on the soup and fish. I like to wear slacks and sweaters and leather-lined jackets—nothing that must be fitted. My tailor has modeled a dummy according to my measurements and, any fitting that has to be done, is done on it. I call it ‘The Sissy.’ I like plain food, stew and beans, raw onion sandwiches and hamburgers and,” laughed Clark, “watermelon.

“No, there’s only one luxury success has brought me. I don’t kid myself that I have success, either—I’ve told you before that it’s a lot of applesauce for any screen star to make little of what he gets—and that still goes. Anyway, the only luxury success has brought me if that I now can buy the right, most of the time, to do what I want to do, when and where I want to do it.

Clark’s romance with Carole Lombard was relatively new and at this stage the press was still stepping rather carefully around their romance and the fact that Clark was still a married man. There is a picture of him and Carole as part of the article, but other than that the subject was skirted.

And I don’t think,” Clark said, more gravely now, “that I’ll live on impulse when, if ever, I marry again. Right now I’d say that I never will because I might meet some girl and marry her within a month, but I don’t think so. If ever I marry again, I want to be sure that I know all about the girl—I want to know her for a couple of years—find out how she thinks and what she wants out of life, everything about her.  It’s all right for a very young chap to fall head over heels. But an older man, a man who has been married, is a fool if he hasn’t learned to walk more carefully, to take more time, to test his own emotions.

That’s interesting he says that, since him and Carole would not be married for three more years. Perhaps he took his own advice!

You can read the article in its entirety in The Article Archive.