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1941: Why Clark Gable is Today’s Topic for Gossip
By Edward Martin Hollywood magazine, December 1941 William H. Gable, a plain man from Ohio, had a birthday the other week. His son Clark had given him a little car to use on hunting and fishing expeditions and Gable, Sr., dropped around to the studio to express his thanks. It was only the second time he had ever set foot in a studio. Clark’s director in Honky Tonk, Jack Conway, exchanged a few words with the star’s father. “That’s quite a boy you raised,” he said, trying to draw the old gentleman out. “He’s all right,” came the grudging reply. “One of the nicest things about him is that he’s…
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July Movie of the Month: Parnell (1937)
In July, for the month that celebrates the anniversary of this website, I always select an important Clark Gable film–one that is a highlight in his career for one reason or another. This year I don’t think that Clark would agree with my choice! It is his much-maligned effort to portray a soft spoken Irishman in Parnell. In this historical melodrama, Gable is Charles Stewart Parnell, an 1880′s Irish politician dubbed “The Uncrowned King of Ireland” for fighting for Irish freedom from British rule. The British trump up false charges against him to try and keep his efforts down but are unsuccessful. But then Parnell falls in love with Katie O’Shea (Myrna Loy),…
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{The Brown Derby Restaurant} Part 2: Cooking for Clark Gable
I wrote earlier about the history of the Brown Derby Restaurant as well as it’s importance in Clark Gable history. And since it was his favorite restaurant, I couldn’t help but buy myself The Brown Derby Cookbook and get to cookin’ Clark’s favorites. From a cooking standpoint, I am very lucky that Clark was a meat and potatoes kind of guy. His favorite foods were steak, pancakes, potato salad, coleslaw, etc. No caviar or crepes suzette or cheese souffle for this Ohio-bred boy. There are over 500 recipes in the cookbook–everything from onion soup and chicken pot pie to strawberries romanoff and lobster medallions. (My husband suggested I do a Julie and…
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{The Brown Derby Restaurant} Part 1: The History
This post is Part One of a series of posts I will be doing regarding Clark Gable’s favorite restaurant in Hollywood, The Brown Derby. The Brown Derby Restaurant was a Hollywood standard. In its heyday, it was as famous and as symbolic of Hollywood as as the Hollywood sign or Grauman’s Chinese Theater. I don’t think I have read a single book on a Hollywood star yet in which the Brown Derby wasn’t mentioned, even in passing. A 1932 article described it as such: The Brown Derby is more than a Hollywood institution. It is not only a place to meet and talk over contracts and plan divorces and further romance under…
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Clark Gable’s Star Rises in MGM Publicity
It’s interesting to see what a few short years in Hollywood will do to one’s stardom! Clark Gable burst on the scene in 1931 and literally went from a nobody to a somebody over night. His path can be traced through MGM’s magazine advertisements…. In 1931, he was a newbie and certainly didn’t merit a picture in the stars at the top or even listed in bold among names such as Marion Davies, Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford or Norma Shearer (all of which would be Clark’s leading ladies!). No, Clark is listed in the small print among names such as Dorothy Appleby, Gus Shy and Edwina Booth. But also among…
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Goodbye, Mr. Gable
Fifty two years ago today, Clark Gable died in Los Angeles at age 59. Described by many as a man they thought would live forever, his death came as a great shock to his friends, family and fans. The obituary piece that ran in the following week’s TIME magazine: A Hero’s Exit Time Magazine, November 28, 1960 “I’ve laughed about my so-called death before,” he said last year, when his health seemed excellent and he smilingly scotched the sort of morbid rumor that forever comes up in the career of an aging giant. Of course he was not dead. The lines of his face had deepened and the skin had…
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{New Article} 1931: What a Man–Clark Gable
As I mentioned earlier this week, this article is the first one on Clark Gable to appear in Photoplay magazine. Clark’s ascend to fame wasn’t very gradual–one month he was completely off the radar and the next the fan magazines were frantically scrambling to find out his backstory so they could put together an article. Well, every time a group of Hollywood’s prettiest get together these days, they say it’s a Gable Club. They’re all gabbling about Gable. It seems the lad has captured the fancy, not alone the screen fannettes, but also of the loveliest of the screen stars themselves. It is a remarkable thing, but typical of Hollywood,…
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1931: What a Man!–Clark Gable
By Harry Lang Photoplay, October 1931 “It’s a lot of hooey!” he says, when they rave over him as “The Second Valentino.” Here’s the sort of guy he is Clark Gable himself gets a huge laugh out of being called “the second Valentino”—or the “It” man of the movies. “Aw,” he comments, “It’s a lot o’hooey! But as long as they spell my name right, what the hell?” Around the studio the men he works with razz him unmercifully about his sudden eminence as the sex appeal champion. “What-A-Man Gable” is what Wally Beery calls him. Cliff Edwards calls him things, too, but you couldn’t print ‘em! But they like…
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1938: Gentle Gable
Gentle Gable By Katharine Hartley Movie Mirror magazine, October 1938 That’s the last name you might think of giving to Clark but it’s the first adjective that leaps to the minds of his intimate friends—who certainly have their reasons! Gentle is the one adjective in the word that you, perhaps, would never think of applying to him, yet those of us in Hollywood who know Clark Gable best it is not only apt, but preeminently so. You may insist that it is exactly because he isn’t gentle that his particular type of manliness has such an appeal on the screen—but Gable isn’t always the swaggering Gable of “San Francisco,” the…
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It Started in Naples (1960)
Release date: August 7, 1960 Directed by: Michael Shavelson Studio: Paramount Costarring: Sophia Loren Vittorio De Sica Marietto Available on DVD via Amazon Nutshell Review, March 2014 DearMrGable.com’s Movie of the Month, November 2014 Article: Sophia Loren and Clark Gable, October 1959 Clark is Mike Hamilton, a Philadelphia lawyer who travels to Rome to settle the estate of his estranged brother who had drowned. He is shocked to learn that he has a nephew–an impressionable, unruly eight-year-old boy named Nando (Marietto), who is being cared for by his mother’s sister, Lucia (Loren). At first Mike tries to give Lucia some money and head back to America, but as he gets…