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Gossip Friday: Look Out Carole
From April 1937: It’s a shame to spoil Clark Gable’s fun, but Carole Lombard is a friend of mine, too, and I think she should be warned that Clark has just purchased that two-wheeled carriage they used in “Parnell.” Whenever Gable purchases one of these gags for his “personal use” it usually turns up in Carole’s swanky front yard with a goat tied to it or something. In fact, I hear Clark is dickering for an old thin nanny goat right now, Carole–so don’t say I didn’t warn you.
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{New Article} 1940: Gable vs. Crawford
This is a new short little article gossiping that Clark Gable and Joan Crawford were not getting along on the set of Strange Cargo. This was actually mentioned in a few Gable biographies. Clark did not want to be in the film as he did not like the script (I can’t say I blame him). Joan’s career was on a downturn and she needed a hit so she was paired with Clark, who was just coming off Gone with the Wind success. Joan was a bit miffed at this, since just nine years earlier, she was the big star and Clark was getting his feet wet playing her love interests…
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Gossip Friday: Not Broke
From October 1941: Clark Gable and Carole Lombard are two people who are not going to be caught broke after their popularity wanes, if they can help it. Besides owning a large ranch in the San Fernando Valley, they have one to North Dakota now to price a farm with a view to buying a cow ranch. A good percentage of the stars live in the glory of their fabulous salaries with never a thought for the future.
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Gossip Friday: Clark Cleans Up
From February 1, 1942: Having just returned home from a three months vacation, Clark Gable found the desk in his dressing room piled high with all sorts of communications–most of them marked “Urgent.” As he glanced through them he saw that the urgency had passed. By that time he was deep in that job that everybody dreads–cleaning out a desk. He remembered suddenly that he had not straightened it out for eight or ten years. Memories flooded as strange mementos that told much of the story of his life, with its triumphs and defeats, were revealed. Way back in one of the drawers was a box containing a gold crown.…
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Happy Birthday, Clark Gable
William Clark Gable was born February 1, 1901 in Cadiz, Ohio. The only child of William “Bill” and Adeline “Addie” Gable arrived at 5:30am in the middle of a raging snowstorm, and weighed ten and a half pounds. To celebrate, there is a new series of articles on the site that were written by Adela Rogers St. Johns, a dear friend of Clark’s (so much so that there were rumors for years that one of her sons was not her husband’s but Clarks…she always denied it). Adela wrote them after Clark’s death in November 1960 to eulogize her friend. Some snippets: The king is dead. Long live the king, because…
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Gossip Friday: Dozed Off
From January 1938: Clark Gable is an actor who knows how to relax. In “Test Pilot” there is a sequence in which he is supposed to be asleep while other players carry on action and dialog. For the rehearsal, Gable lay down and really dozed off. Director Victor Fleming woke him up, saying: “I’m afraid you might ruin a take by yawning, or talking in your sleep, or snoring.”
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Gossip Friday: He’s Not Dead
From January 1938: Clark Gable, who’s had to deny his death more frequently even than Mark Twain, reported today that such denials are a real satisfaction to him. “It always gives me great pleasure to tell the newspaper reporters that I am alive,” he said. “The only thing I can’t understand is how and why I’m always being killed–in somebody’s imagination.” Last time Gable lost his life, via the rumor route, the report came from Washington and kept him up most of the night telling callers how happy he was to be alive. “But while I slept, one of those rumors started again. It must have gone pretty far, because…
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Remembering Carole Lombard
Carole Lombard was killed on January 16, 1942, when the plane carrying her, her mother, MGM publicity man and the Gables’ friend Otto Winkler, and several others, crashed into Mount Potosi outside Las Vegas. Carole was only 33. You can read more about her death here. From the Associated Press, February 1, 1942: So much has been written on the subject of Carole Lombard’s tragic death that almost any sentiment must be a repetition of other tributes to her. However, a few paragraphs that appeared recently in the Motion Picture Herald sum up Hollywood’s feelings so adequately, they bear reprinting. “Hollywood,” states the writer, “is mourning Carole Lombard as it…
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{New Article} 1950: Clark and Sylvia
New to the website is a series of syndicated newspaper articles written 74 years ago this week. The media was in a frenzy because, out of the clear blue, Clark Gable had hurriedly gotten married just before Christmas 1949 and hightailed it to Hawaii. The game of “who would be the next Mrs. Gable” had been played practically since Carole Lombard’s funeral eight years prior. Any woman Clark was pictured out with was declared to be the one. The British, thrice-married widow of Douglas Fairbanks Sr. was a shock then and it’s still a shock now. 74 years later, it still isn’t clear what on earth Clark was thinking. There…
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Gossip Friday: No Marriage
From January 1955 (Louella Parsons): A rumor from several sources today had Clark Gable and Kay Williams Spreckels, ex-wife of multi-millionaire Adolph Spreckels, in an elopement. A telephone call to the Gable home in the San Fernando Valley brought the information that Gable was week-ending at the ranch home of a friend and that he and Mrs. Spreckels were expected home for dinner. When questioned about a marriage, the servant who answered the phone said: “As far as I know, there isn’t any marriage.” A few days before Christmas, Mrs. Spreckels stopped at my house and when I asked if she and “The King,” as the popular Gable is known,…
