Gossip Friday: No Dinner Parties!

From January 1932:

Clark Gable and his wife are pretty well reconciled to the fact that they are going to have to fight off divorce rumors from here on in. But just by way of keeping down the quantity, Clark has let it known that Mr. and Mrs. Gable “do not do any entertaining.”

In other words, there wll be no chance for curious “friends” to be present at a party and mistable an innocent little difference of opinion for what would later pass as a “first-hand” report of an argument between the Gables. Social affairs are a hotbed of Hollywood gossip. You know how the whisper goes: “So-and-So arrived alone, my dear…” without taking into consideration that the absent partner may have been detained by work or some other unavoidable circumstance. There isn’t going to be any of this free-and-easy reporting in the Gable home–of Clark has anything to say about it.

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I always have found it interesting that Clark and Ria were never really portrayed as this happy and so-in-love couple. At the point this was written, they had been married less than a year and were constantly fighting off separation rumors. Also interesting to note that on the same page as the above blurb was one about Joan Crawford (Clark’s…um…”special” friend at the time) defending her marriage to Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and saying that maybe they will have a baby soon!