{New Article} 1937: Clark Gable Answers the Call of the Wild

No, this article from 1937 isn’t rehashing Clark Gable’s hit movie of the same name. It’s all about Clark going hunting for mountain lions. Which I did not find particularly thrilling, to be honest. The one interesting tidbit is the story of how Clark caught that wild mountain lion he gave to Carole Lombard, in his own words.

“Our next cat didn’t give us such a long chase. The dogs had him treed and were dancing and howling below him when we arrived. Then I had to laugh. It was a cub, about six months old, and it was trying to put up a ferocious front.

“I tried to think of the terrific amount of damage that little cat would account for in his lifetime, but I hated to see him killed by Butler’s rifle. Even at his age he would slaughter a hundred deer in a year, not to mention the calves and colts of ranchers in the valleys. Full-grown cats don’t stop at deer, remember—they’ll spring on a horse and by sinking those two-inch claws into the poor animal, get leverage so their jaws can break the horse’s neck.

“’I’ll take that little fellow back alive,’ I told Butler.

“The branches were thick, so I climbed after him, and it was easy to drop a noose around his neck. When I hauled him down, Jack grabbed his tail and in a few minutes we had him hog0tied. Then we manicured those knife-like claws and took him back to camp.

“He made a great racket when he was chained to a tree and refused to be friends. So we went out after a companion.

“This time the hounds had a big fellow treed. I got my movies and then went after him. It was a tough job getting a rope around him, but we brought him back to camp, draped over the back of a pack horse.

“With two lions tied to trees let me tell you that camp of ours was far from peaceful! It was a bedlam of snarls, spitting, and general cat yowling. Why in thunder I wanted ‘em alive, Captain Jack couldn’t see. He thought the tarnation varmints should be turned into pelts, and that right pronto.

“But I wanted to make movies and bring ‘em back to town. I figured the little fellow would make a nice pet for Carole Lombard, although I wasn’t sure she’d appreciate him as much as I did.”

No, Carole didn’t appreciate the gift! She was terrified of it and the cat ended up at the local zoo.

You can read all about Clark’s mountain lion hunting expedition in The Article Archive.