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Gossip Friday: Santa Checks Up on Good Boys and Girls
In the January 1935 issue of Hollywood magazine, they printed “Santa’s book” of good and bad points for film stars. So who’s getting what they wanted for Christmas and who is getting coal? CLARK GABLE Good Points: For giving is It Happened One Night. Being always thoughtful of others. When a friend had no place to keep her dog, he gave it a home on his ranch. Bad Points: Balks at picture assignments with women stars. Drives studio frantic by disappearing between pictures, when he is wanted for story conferences. Gifts: More dogs to take care of CAROLE LOMBARD Good Points: Proved she could act in Twentieth Century. Came…
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Gossip Friday: Comparing Salaries
From September 1940: Players who came to the Hollywood feast early get most of the gravy. The highest salaries go to firmly established stars like these: Clark Gable hits the cash register for about $7,500 weekly, 52 weeks a year, with fat bonuses. Ronald Colman pockets $150,000 per picture, plus 10% of the world gross when it goes over a certain amount–and it usually does. Robert Taylor brings Barbara Stanwyck an envelope containing about $5,000 weekly, plus bonuses. Bette Davis earns not less than $3,500 a week the year round. Deanna Durbin, who blossomed before the economy blight, earns over $2,500 a week, and bonuses. Claudette Colbert draws $150,000 per…
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May Movie of the Month: Boom Town (1940)
This month, Clark Gable is a womanizin’ oil chaser, Spencer Tracy is his long-suffering best pal, Claudette Colbert is his best girl, and Hedy Lamarr is his sidedish in Boom Town. Gable is “Big John” McMasters and Tracy is “Square John” Sand, or as Big John calls him right from the beginning, “Shorty”. They are two wildcatters out west trying to strike oil. They pool their money and smarts and soon hit it big. Putting a snag in their festivities is the arrival of Elizabeth or “Betsy” (Colbert), Shorty’s sweetheart from back home. She arrives to see him but falls in love with Big John instead, and they are married…
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Gossip Friday: Earthquake!
On March 10, 1933, “The Long Beach Earthquake” hit Los Angeles. From May 1933: Hollywood came through the earthquake practically unscathed. Long Beach and Compton business districts, only a score of miles away, were virtually demolished. But the sustained temblor, which wrecked these cities, caused Hollywood to shake up on its foundations, and people rushed panic-stricken into the streets. No one knew when the buildings, swaying like trees in a gale, would fall upon them. Hollywood was plenty scared. Broadway stage folk who had recently arrived stood with white faces and open mouths, terrifiedly wishing themselves back in New York. And those who had lived in Hollywood all their lives…
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{The Brown Derby Restaurant} Part 1: The History
This post is Part One of a series of posts I will be doing regarding Clark Gable’s favorite restaurant in Hollywood, The Brown Derby. The Brown Derby Restaurant was a Hollywood standard. In its heyday, it was as famous and as symbolic of Hollywood as as the Hollywood sign or Grauman’s Chinese Theater. I don’t think I have read a single book on a Hollywood star yet in which the Brown Derby wasn’t mentioned, even in passing. A 1932 article described it as such: The Brown Derby is more than a Hollywood institution. It is not only a place to meet and talk over contracts and plan divorces and further romance under…
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{Gossip Friday} If You Had 24 Hours to Live…
From April 1935: What would you do if you only had 24 hours to live? Carole Lombard…wants to gather her friends around her for the last bow. Instead of just a few, she prefers a large gay cocktail gathering in her home. “Because,” she said to me, “I think it would be great to go out with a ring of laughter and music in your ears, don’t you?” Cary Grant: “By cable, telephones, wires and radios I would get in direct communication with the few people I have hurt during my life. With death hovering near, I could explain and ask their forgiveness, a thing that seems too difficult to…
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{Photos} Kiss Me, Clark
I’m sure you’ve heard the song by the Postal Service, which is titled “Clark Gable.” The line that features his name is “I’ll kiss you in a way Clark Gable would have admired.” Say what you want about Clark and his acting limitations, but that man was a born onscreen lover! Rosalind Russell recalled: “The only man who could make a love scene comfortable was Clark Gable. He was born graceful, he knew what to do with his feet and when he took hold of you, there was no fooling around.” Let’s get a lesson in the fine art of onscreen lip locking from Mr. Gable himself…
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July Movie of the Month: It Happened One Night (1934)
I began “Movie of the Month” last July after the site’s first anniversary. I try to bounce around Clark’s filmography as I figured it would be rather dull to start from the beginning and end at his death. The films featured so far: June: But Not For Me May: Idiot’s Delight April: Band of Angels March: Saratoga February: China Seas January: Hold Your Man December: Red Dust November: The Secret Six October: No Man of Her Own September: Teacher’s Pet August: Never Let Me Go July: Wife vs. Secretary So, I thought it was fitting to celebrate two years of the site and one year of “Movie of the Months”…
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Gossip Friday: A Toast to the Winner
Since the Academy Awards are this weekend, here’s one from May 1935: The afternoon before the Awards banquet Norma Shearer and Claudette Colbert were having tea together. “I haven’t any more chance of winning it than the man in the moon,” laughed Claudette. “Nor I,” laughed Norma. “Then let’s toast the winner with a cup of tea,” Claudette suggested. They poured the cups. “To Bette Davis,” they chorused. That night, of course, Claudette carried home the little gold statuette [for “It Happened One Night”]. ____ Claudette famously didn’t even attend the ceremony because she was so sure she wouldn’t win. She had to be stopped at the train station and rushed…
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Gossip Friday: Claudette and Bing
Since this week (9/13) is Claudette Colbert’s 107th birthday, here’s some gossip about her from Septmeber 1937: Claudette Colbert was playing some of her favorite Bing Crosby records in her dressing room the other day, when her telephone rang. The star herself answered. An irate voise yelled, “Listen! If you must make all that noise, which disturbs me in my dressing room, for heaven’s sake play something better than those Crosby records. That’s guy’s crooning gives me a pain!” “I don’t know who you are,” cried Claudette angrily, “but you can’t make cracks to me about my friend Bing Crosby and his singing! If you had any musical sense you’d know…