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Gossip Friday: A new heir?
From August 1941: The rumors are thick and fast that the Clark Gables are expecting an heir. It has even been reported that Carole’s brother has been boasting that he soon will be an uncle. But Carole claims it’s only poison oak she’s having–and that’s why she has engaged a room in an eastern hospital. Well, only time will tell. Aw, both cute and sad. They so wanted a child but it was not meant to be. And rumor has it the “eastern hospital” visit was not for poison oak—but to check Carole’s fertility.
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Gossip Friday: Clark pulls one on Joan
Here’s this week’s gossip blurb from March 1937: We nominate for the best gag-puller in the town of Hollywood–Mr. Clark Gable! The story told us recently by Joan Crawford wins him the award in nothing flat. It’s a well known fact that Crawford is hipped on the subject of music on the set. Bennett, the chauffeur, spends half his time putting on and taking off records for Joan between scenes. In her collection of victrola records are some of the finest symphonies and operas. One day, during a recent picture together, Clark walked over to Joan’s Victrola, lifted high the pile of records and screaming, “I’m damned sick and tired…
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Some “Melodrama” in Public Enemies (2009)
I recently saw the new Johnny Depp film, Public Enemies, about notorious bank robber John Dillinger. Dillinger was famously gunned down by FBI agents in front of the Biograph Theater in Chicago, after seeing Gable’s film Manhattan Melodrama. He was set up by friend of his, Romanian prostitute Anna Sage, who was facing deportation and volunteered to hand him over to the feds in exchange for her visa. She told the FBI they would be at the movies that evening and wore an orange (later misidentified as red) dress to alert them to him. It has long been a part of movie folklore that Myrna Loy was Dillinger’s favorite actress…