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Gossip Friday: Covered in Oil
From December 1940: Clark Gable says he hopes he’ll never, NEVER have to play the role of a garbage-collector. Not that garbage-collectors aren’t very nice people, in their place–but look a what happened to Gable for playing that oil-man role in Boom Town- From his fans, since the picture, Clark has gotten a slough of gifts reflecting the oil-fields role. Among the presents are miniature oil derricks, nearly 500 pictures of old gushers and old boom towns, samples of crude oil in every conceivable type of bottle and flask and container, books about oil, souvenirs from famed oil fields and wells, nearly tons of oil shale, paper-weights and other gadgets…
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April Movie of the Month: Polly of the Circus (1932)
This month, Clark Gable is a straight-laced minister and Marion Davies is his sassy acrobat love interest in Polly of the Circus. Clark is Father John Hartley, a small town minister living a peaceful life. The circus comes to town, with its star attraction: trapeze artist Polly Fisher (Davies). She is enraged when her risqué posters are covered up and confronts Hartley, who admits that her posters aren’t appropriate in the town. The crowd mocks her at her next performance, causing her to fall. She recuperates at Hartley’s house at his insistence since he feels guilty. Soon they fall in love. But his parish and bishop uncle (Aubrey Smith) don’t support him…
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{New Article} 1936: Don’t Misunderstand the Clark Gables!
Here is an article from early 1936, when Mrs. Gable was Ria Franklin and all of movie fandom wasn’t whipped up into a frenzy over the pairing of Clark Gable and Carole Lombard yet. I don’t think most people understood why the reigning hearthrob of Tinsel Town was married to an older, matronly, stoic socialite with two teenage children. But they were indeed married and therefore it was the press’ obligation to portray their marriage as a wonderful romance, despite evidence to the contrary. Everyone in Hollywood knew that Clark and Ria were pretty much married in name only and that Clark had many affairs. It was a surprise to…
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Gossip Friday: Still Waiting for that Decree
From November 1938: Tip: don’t do a pass-out with surprise if the next beeg (sic) change in who’s-whose-in-Hollywood pops right in the middle of the Clark Gable picture! It’s been so long the way it is that Hollywood can hardly picture things any different: Clark Gable and Carole Lombard clowning happily around movieland together, the merriest romance duo of Hollywood; while Mrs. Clark Gable remains obscurely but undivorcedly in the background. However, there’s a change a-brewing. Long dormant financial settlement negotiations are steaming hot again between Clark and the missus, unless the inside information is all haywire. And so don’t be too, too amazed if all of a sudden, Clark…
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{Photos} 1951: Clark Gable Takes His Lady on Location
In 1951, Clark Gable and his new wife, Sylvia Ashley, headed into the Colorado wilderness to film Across the Wide Missouri. This pictorial was in LOOK magazine: Along with 325 actors and technicians, the Clark Gables lived and worked for six weeks in a little movie boom-town especially built in the Colorado Rockies for Across the Wide Missouri. As newlyweds, the Gables were given a secluded two-room log cabin. At first Mrs. Gable, the former Lady Sylvia Ashley, set out to do all the cooking–but finally settled for a lone coffee-maker. The Gables, like the rest of the crew, in a mammoth tent dining hall accomadating the entire…
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Gossip Friday: Try Clark Gable’s Diet!
From October 1936: Talk of Hollywood at the moment is the new “Four-Day Diet.” It’s supposed to shuck off six pounds in four days! Remember the famous 18-day-diet of a few years ago? Well, that died out. But now, all of a sudden, a lot of the stars—the male stars, particularly—have startled their acquaintances by dropping poundage over week-ends. And they all followed the same regimen—and now the 4-Day Diet is as famous in Hollywood as the 18-Day Diet was a couple years back. Clark Gable knocked off half a dozen pounds in four days via the new route. Here’s the program he followed: FIRST DAY— BREAKFAST : One large…
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{New Article} 1936: I’ve Lived a Lifetime in Five Years
Clark Gable was humble. This isn’t news to any fan of his, but this was new to those in the 1930’s used to worshipping screen gods put high up on unreachable pedestals. Clark’s “aw shucks” attitude was very different and at first MGM didn’t know how to publicize this kind of guy. Then they decided to go with it, and followed him around, posing him hunting and fishing and looking rugged. When Clark first touched the fringes of fame, he avoided parties and admitted that he was uncomfortable in dress clothes. He appeared only at the important places where the studio requested him to go. I well remember seeing him…
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{New Article} 1939: Will Carole Lombard’s Marriage End Her Career?
This 1939 article, written soon after Clark Gable and Carole Lombard’s marriage, is very sexist. Okay, extremely sexist. But it was 1939 after all and so one has to quiet their inner feminist as they read things like… Carole Lombard, who was born Jane Peters, decided early in life that she had to do things to get places. She has devoted herself, through every working minute, to that aim. She has always wanted to be a star. She worked at it, and became a star. She built up the most amazing make-believe personality Hollywood has ever known, but she did it because she wanted something and that was her analysis…
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Gossip Friday: A Swell Pair
From July 1936: Now what’s all this between Carole Lombard and Clark Gable anyway? It’s getting so that you can’t read or hear about one without hearing about the other one 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?) Last double appearance was ar 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,…
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Clark Gable and Carole Lombard–Married, Married At Last
On March 29, 1939, Clark Gable and Carole Lombard were finally married, after three years of will-they-or-won’t-they by the press and their fans. Clark, who emerged on the Hollywood scene just eight years earlier, had been saddled down with an older wife nobody could quite figure out and some secret lovers the press helped him keep hidden. Carole, around Hollywood since her teens, had long been America’s beloved screwball and everyone was breathlessly anticipating her next chapter. Here is Photoplay magazine wishing Carole best wishes on her new role as Mrs. Gable: The little guy who spills the moonlight Over every garden trail, Who plugs our hearts with silver…