Release Date: August 3, 1957 Directed by: Raoul Walsh Studio: Warner Brothers Costarring: Yvonne de Carlo Sidney Poitier Available on DVD here DearMrGable.com’s Movie of the Month, April 2011 Nutshell Review, March 2014 10th Anniversary Celebration Movie of the Week, May 27, 2019 In this Civil War epic, De Carlo is Amantha Starr, a Kentucky belle who has lived a life of privilege on her father’s plantation. While she is away at finishing school, her father dies. When she returns for his funeral, she learns that as her father was deep in debt and all his assets are being sold.  She is shocked when, as the debt collectors round up his…

  Gable: Last Look at a King by Stanley Gordon Look magazine, January 31, 1961 Thirty years ago, Clark Gable slapped Norma Shearer’s aristocratic face in A Free Soul and launched his own personal era of heroes who take no nonsense from women. In his heyday, he was lusty, challenging, unsophisticated. He grew more stolid and thoughtful after the war years, but a glint of hell-raising humor remained. The millions of people who paid $500,000,000 to see his 60 or more movies never wavered in their affection. Wives took their husbands to see Gable pictures, and fathers took their sons, because they admired him as a man. There was no…

By James Reid Screen Book, June 1939 Gable’s unique capacity for debunking himself is one reason for his universal popularity—read SCREEN BOOK Magazine’s interview on Clark Readers of Gone with the Wind had two years to make up their minds, but they couldn’t decide what actress should play Scarlett O’Hara in the movie. That was one reason why an English girl named Vivien Leigh, a virtual unknown in America, was finally handed the role. But from the beginning they knew what actor should play Rhett Butler. Almost unanimously they said: “No one but Clark Gable.” In the pages of the book they kept seeing Rhett as Clark. And, in the…

Life Ends at Forty! By Eleanor Packer Modern Screen magazine, January 1937 Yes, Clark Gable actually believes this and gives his reasons for saying so. “When I’m forty and my work in motion pictures is finished, what will be left for me in life?” Clark Gable asked that question and his gray eyes were dark with honest worry and bewilderment. Only in Hollywood could a young, successful man in his middle thirties ask that question. Only there could he face the problem which Clark must solve when he reaches the forty milestone. In all other places and in all other businesses the average man of forty is just beginning to…

It Looked Good for a Laugh at the Time By Elizabeth Wilson Silver Screen magazine, January 1941 There isn’t a better ribber in all of Hollywood than Carole Lombard, but here are some of her gags that missed fire If I were a Mexican, which I’m not, I would declare a fiesta with hot tamales, tequila, and a bull fight on those rare days when I get a letter from an editor saying why don’t you write a story on Carole Lombard. I won’t name names because they are probably your best friends, but there are stars in this town I can get along without very well. They may be…

By Kirtley Baskette Modern Screen, March 1942 One day, around a dozen years ago, a Hollywood extra named Billy Gable needed a new shirt. He stopped in at Clark’s Dollar Store on the Boulevard. He laid down a precious buck. He picked up the shirt, which he tucked under his arm—also the store’s front name, which he tacked onto his own last tag. The deal was a bargain—any way you look at it. Billy Gable became Clark Gable and Clark Gable became the greatest box office star the screen has ever known. He became the man who has stayed in the top ten for ten straight years. Who rose to…

  At Home with the Gables By Ida Zeitlin Modern Screen, August 1940 This story is for you Gable maniacs who brood, chin in hand, that it isn’t fair. Look at Carole Lombard, for instance. It’s a pleasure. That’s the point, you mutter darkly. There’s a girl who has everything. So what happens? So for good measure she cops Screen Hero No.1 as a husband. There ain’t no justice. That’s where you’re wrong, girls. Carole didn’t marry Rhett Butler. With her eyes wide open, she married a farmer. Clark likes the movies. Nobody forced him into his profession. He wanted to be an actor. But his first and deepest passion…

By Kirtley Baskette Photoplay, December 1938 “Just friends” to the world at large—yet nowhere has domesticity taken on so unique a character as in this unconventional fold Every afternoon, for the past three years, a little meat market on Larchmont Avenue, near Paramount studios in Hollywood, has received a telephone call from a woman ordering a choice New York cut steak. Sometimes she orders it sent to the Brown Derby, sometimes to an apartment penthouse on Rossmore Street, sometimes to the studio. Wherever George Raft happens to be dining. The woman who sees that George Raft has his favorite evening meal, no matter where he may be, is Virginia Pine.…

By Ford Black Motion Picture, February 1939 One thing is sure, Clark and Carole are madly in love. But your guess is as good as Hollywood’s whether they’ll marry The odds in Hollywood, where you can get a bet from the wise guys on practically anything at all, are about fifty-fifty that IF Jane Peters ever marries The Moose, it’ll be the beginning of the bust-up of the grandest, finest romance Hollywood has ever known—off or on screen! You’ll notice I’ve got that IF in capitals. Because the same wise guys will give you about ten to one that “IF” never becomes “when.” You see, Jane Peters is Carole Lombard.…