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Gossip Friday: Nothing is Sacred
From January 1950: Sylvia Ashley, Gable’s missus, avers that she went to see a Carole Lombard movie, Nothing Sacred, a month before her marriage to Clark. And that did it. She’s now doing over the Gable ranch house–with plans for entertaining on a more formal scale. She’s ordered expansion of the living room to include a grand piano. ___ Well that’s disturbing.
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Gossip Friday: Look Out Carole
From April 1937: It’s a shame to spoil Clark Gable’s fun, but Carole Lombard is a friend of mine, too, and I think she should be warned that Clark has just purchased that two-wheeled carriage they used in “Parnell.” Whenever Gable purchases one of these gags for his “personal use” it usually turns up in Carole’s swanky front yard with a goat tied to it or something. In fact, I hear Clark is dickering for an old thin nanny goat right now, Carole–so don’t say I didn’t warn you.
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Gossip Friday: Not Broke
From October 1941: Clark Gable and Carole Lombard are two people who are not going to be caught broke after their popularity wanes, if they can help it. Besides owning a large ranch in the San Fernando Valley, they have one to North Dakota now to price a farm with a view to buying a cow ranch. A good percentage of the stars live in the glory of their fabulous salaries with never a thought for the future.
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Gossip Friday: Clark Cleans Up
From February 1, 1942: Having just returned home from a three months vacation, Clark Gable found the desk in his dressing room piled high with all sorts of communications–most of them marked “Urgent.” As he glanced through them he saw that the urgency had passed. By that time he was deep in that job that everybody dreads–cleaning out a desk. He remembered suddenly that he had not straightened it out for eight or ten years. Memories flooded as strange mementos that told much of the story of his life, with its triumphs and defeats, were revealed. Way back in one of the drawers was a box containing a gold crown.…
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Gossip Friday: He’s Not Dead
From January 1938: Clark Gable, who’s had to deny his death more frequently even than Mark Twain, reported today that such denials are a real satisfaction to him. “It always gives me great pleasure to tell the newspaper reporters that I am alive,” he said. “The only thing I can’t understand is how and why I’m always being killed–in somebody’s imagination.” Last time Gable lost his life, via the rumor route, the report came from Washington and kept him up most of the night telling callers how happy he was to be alive. “But while I slept, one of those rumors started again. It must have gone pretty far, because…
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Remembering Carole Lombard
Carole Lombard was killed on January 16, 1942, when the plane carrying her, her mother, MGM publicity man and the Gables’ friend Otto Winkler, and several others, crashed into Mount Potosi outside Las Vegas. Carole was only 33. You can read more about her death here. From the Associated Press, February 1, 1942: So much has been written on the subject of Carole Lombard’s tragic death that almost any sentiment must be a repetition of other tributes to her. However, a few paragraphs that appeared recently in the Motion Picture Herald sum up Hollywood’s feelings so adequately, they bear reprinting. “Hollywood,” states the writer, “is mourning Carole Lombard as it…
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Gossip Friday: New Years Eve at the Races
From December 31, 1939: California raised the curtain on its fifth winter horse-racing season today when a record opening turnout of 40,000 watched Neil McCarthy’s entry, Dear Diary and Morning Breeze, run one-two in a $10,000 added stakes for home bred two-year-olds… Scores of prominent film personalities mingled in the exclusive turf club, among them Cary Grant and Virginia Pine, Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, Bing Crosby and his wife, the former Dixie Lee, Joe E. Brown, Al Jolson, Constance Bennett and dozens of others.
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Gossip Friday: Christmas with Carole
From December 1936: Clark Gable will spend [Christmas] morning at Carole Lombard’s home and then an afternoon at the races to watch his horse Beverly Hills and back to Carole’s for a turkey dinner.
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Gossip Friday: Burning up the Wires
From December 1937: The latest of those rumored accidents to movie stars had Carole Lombard jittery on the “Food for Scandal” set. Clark Gable, according to the story, had been injured in an auto crash. Carole burned up the wires trying to find Clark who was out of town. When she finally did, she was so relieved she told him to call her every half hour on the set. And what is more, set workers declare he did.
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Gossip Friday: Wrong Cow
From June 1940: I hate to tell this on Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, nor does it seem possible, but when they built their barn, they bought a cow, which turned out to be a heifer (ingenue to you). Never having had a calf, it couldn’t give milk. Carole learned the truth, exchanged it for a cow. Then they bought everything that goes into first-class commercial dairy, so they would have fresh milk daily.
