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Gossip Friday: Many Faults
From January 1937: Carole [Lombard], her best friends will gladly tell you, has many faults. It seems that she simply will not close drawers. Dresser drawers, dressing table drawers, bathroom cabinet drawers, they are all hanging out at a rakish angle when Carole leaves for the studio. As far as Fieldsy [sic] has been able to figure out this caused by the fact that Mrs. Peters used to spank Carole for slamming drawers and doors when she was a child, and now the reaction has set in. Another of Carole’s bad habits is to bite off the edges of stationary while she is thinking what to write in a letter. (Probably…
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Gossip Friday: What Do You Love About Her
From January 1937: Clark Gable speaking of Carole Lombard: “It’s her naturalness. There are no affectations about Carole. She’s honest in what she thinks, says and does.”
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Gossip Friday: Too High a Price
From January 1942: They speculate about Carole Lombard, in search of a picture. Vivid, dynamic Carole who was so sure what she wanted was what the public wanted too, and who then had the misfortune…or miscalculation…to get three flops in a row. Today her health is poor; she looks constantly tired and over-strained, yet you see her frantically reading books, plays, original scripts and Hollywood wonders and wonders…she should be so happy, but the price on some careers runs very high. Carole is too exciting, too stimulating for Hollywood to want her to pay too high a price.
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Gossip Friday: In the Dog House
From March 1938: The latest prank played by Carole Lombard on Clark Gable concerns the monstrous sheep dog Clark gave her as a gift. While Clark was in San Diego on location, Carole had a dog house built for her pet and proudly led Gable out to see it when he returned. One look, and Clark almost swooned, for at the windows of the dog house were cream-colored Venetian blinds with organdy drapes. A dotted-swiss draped dressing table set with dainty bottles of flea powder and dog brushes stood in one corner. Taffeta cushions were scattered about while the dog, tied up with pink bows, reclined on a blue rug.…
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Gossip Friday: Just Give Up
From June 1951 (Sheilah Graham): No one, not even the columnists who were constantly linking Clark Gable with this girl and that grandmother, really expected him to try marriage again. I knew wife number one, Josephine Dillon, when I first came to Hollywood. It was Jo who nurtured the acting ambitions of young Clark. When talking to me about him, she was kind of detached, like an aunt discussing a favorite but far-away nephew. I was in New York when Clark’s second wife Rhea announced the separation. So was Clark, who sprinted all over Manhattan dodging reporters. The tragic death of wife number three, Carole Lombard, seemed to write “End”…
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Gossip Friday: No Parking
From 1940: Miss Carole Lombard is having some difficulties with tradesmen around the boulevards because of her unorthodox method of parking her car. If there is no space available at the curb and no parking lot handy, Miss Lombard runs her dashing red roadster ever so delicately up onto the sidewalk and leaves it there until she has concluded her errands in the neighborhood. Cops and tradesmen, perceiving the “C.G.” on the doors and the Clark Gable registration certificate on the steering post, are loath to take drastic measures. But they feel pretty drastic, nonetheless. Miss Lombard is as considerate as she can be when she leaves her car on…
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Gossip Friday: The Gift of Calico
From July 1941: The town is still in hysterics over Gable’s gift to wife Carole Lombard on their second wedding anniversary. When Carole, all atwitter with excitement, opened the gorgeously wrapped box, there lay the darndest set of calico panties, brassiere and petticoat you’ve ever laid your eyes on. Clark took that “calico for the second year” edict literally and had a studio dressmaker whip up the ruffled numbers. Carole is now trying to think up a comeback gag.
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Gossip Friday: You Just Can’t Beat That Guy
From March 1942 (fan magazines ran about three months behind): Clark Gable is rapidly taking over the role of best businessman in Hollywood. On their recent trip back east, Clark and Carole bought an $1100 car in a Middle Western town and drove it home. In Hollywood they sold the car at only $100 loss. The expenses home amounted to exactly $87. Carole and Clark stopped in small towns and hotels, ate in small restaurants and had a bigger time than Santa Claus. When people have more fun than Gable and get a bigger kick out of doing it the American way–that of the average man–then we give up. You…
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Gossip Friday: Inseparable
From July 1936: Now, what’s all this between Carole Lombard and Clark Gable, anyway? It’s getting so you can’t hear or read about one without hearing about the other at the same time, too. They guffaw loudly at romance-whisperers, and they deny there’s anything to it–and yet they’re about as inseparable as a couple of newlyweds! (And, incidentally, wouldn’t they make a swell pair of brand-new-mr-and-mrs?) Latest double appearance was at the circus, when it played Hollywood–and Clark and Carole were as much eyed, if not more, than the rest of the show, the night they hand-in-handed it in the big top! Marry?–heck, I wouldn’t bet a tin dime on…
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Gossip Friday: Fire This Astrologer
From January 1941: From “Hollywood–Beware in 1942: Events–some happy, some ominous–as seen by a reliable astrologer in the ’42 futures of your favorite stars” Gable and Lombard: Last year I told you all about Mr. and Mrs. Clark Gable and how well suited they are in every way. They still are–but I want to warn Clark that due to the transiting Jupiter, Saturn and Venus, he will be under bad aspects. He must be as conventional as a country schoolmarm during all of 1942 and especially during August. The heretofore tolerant public will scowl and turn thumbs down at Clark’s slightest deviation from the path of convention. August and part…
