Gossip Friday: Good Day for Golf

From September 1940:

Living in Hollywood is more or less like renting a perpetual reserved room in a madhouse. At 8am of a Sunday this journalist drove to Fox Hills golf course for his usual weekly game, still half asleep. Approaching the first tee he saw  a mob of strange creatures emerge from the morning fog, accompanied by unearthly sounds of catcalls, screeching sirens and exploding guns. Any sane person would have gone home.

We hung around. Presently there appeared Clark Gable, Bob Taylor, Carole Lombard, Mickey Rooney, Spencer Tracy and other celebrities. It turned out to be the annual MGM golf tournament. When Mickey stepped up for his first drive, his boss L.B. Mayer, smothered Mickey with a smoke machine, and after five swings Mickey produced a tremendous explosion. The gold ball was filled with prop department explosive. After that he was chased down the fairway by gangsters hotting blank cartridges.

Only Bob Taylor survived this monkey business. He hit his drive 281 yards, proving that if he can do that well he’d better take a smoke machine all the way around the course with him. Less cool was Clark Gable, who wound up with a score of 92, which isn’t much gold for a man of Mr. G.’s calibre. We didn’t mind missing golf for a day, had a swell time, but hope it doesn’t happen again next week.