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Gossip Friday: On the Sick List
From January 1940: Clark Gable and Carole Lombard are on the sick list–but in a minor way. Carole is merely overtired from the Atlanta junket, and Clark has lost his voice from the same cause. As a matter of record, Clark found the jaunt much less dangerous than he had anticipated. “I had expected to be torn apart,” he said on his arrival back here. “But the people in the South are ladies and gentlemen–they leave you with your pants.”
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Gossip Friday: Not Inflated Snobs
From January 1940: Judging from the letters pouring in from Atlanta, the down-to-earth good-fellowship displayed by Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, there for the premiere of “Gone with the Wind,” scored as great a hit as the picture. Remembering how often our touring celebrities have made exactly the opposite impression in their contacts with John and Jane Public, I think the Academy ought to vote Clark and Carole a special statuette. By simply being “folks,” they’ve probably done the industry more good than has resulted from any one super-production of the year. It’s significant that, as the praise comes marching back from Georgia, Hollywood wears an expression of astonishment. “Imagine!”…
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Gossip Friday: Good Picture
From September 1947: Clark Gable has finally seen “Gone with the Wind.” He was telling on the “Homecoming” set how he happened to miss it. At the world premiere in Atlanta he was so weary from the civic celebration that he put his feet up on the railing before the front row and slept right through the picture. When it came to the premiere here [in Los Angeles], his wife, the late Carole Lombard, said she didn’t want to sit through the four-hour show again. So they walked through the crowds, down the aisle and right out the back exit. Recently a friend arranged a showing and invited Cark. “Good…
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Clark Gable in Tampa Part 3: Scarlett Never Got Rhett Butler Back
Continuing our series of articles from Clark Gable being interviewed at the Tampa International Airport in February 1958, here’s Part 3, in which he gives an answer to whether he thinks Rhett ever goes back to Scarlett, and he spoils the end of Run Silent Run Deep: Scarlett Never Got Rhett Butler Back By Panky Glamsch, Tribune Staff Writer Just as Rhett Butler never returned to Scarlett in Gone with the Wind, Clark Gable may never return to The Tribune Woman’s Department. But at least four women staff members will never be the same. The day it was announced The King would arrive at Tampa International Airport, the air was…
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Gossip Friday: Very Much All Right
From March 1941: Wouldn’t you think that, after coming 3,000 miles to see Clark Gable (and a few others), and, after rearranging a whole week so as to be able to get out to MGM, when he would be working on a picture–wouldn’t you imagine that we’d have something very serious and important to talk about? Something like the Rhett Butler portrayal which climaxed his career. Or like the shoulder which gave him so much trouble a few months ago. Or like his home life. Or Carole Lombard. Well, we did touch on those subjects, of course, but lightly. No need to say much about Rhett Butler, since Gable put…
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Gossip Friday: Rhett’s Command Performance
From January 1940: When Clark Gable and his wife, Carole Lombard, got home from their exciting trip to Atlanta for the premiere festivities of “Gone with the Wind,” Gable sank into his favorite chair, sighed, grinned and exclaimed: “Well, Mrs. G., here we are at home–and isn’t it wonderful? Now I know how kings feel when they finally get into their private suites and pull off their trappings, after reviewing the troops, laying a cornerstone and addressing the populace.” From first to last Gable has been doing a command performance. Frankly, he didn’t want to tackle the role of Rhett Butler. After all, the guy was a Southern renegade, a…
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Gossip Friday: Rhett Can Ride
From March 1940: Clark Gable proved that if he ever gets tired of romantic leads he can sign up as a hard-riding western star. Assigned to “sit out” a scene on a spirited black horse, Gable found the animal feeling too good to stand still. So, before the next take was ready, Gable galloped his steed up the road and gave it such a workout that it was glad to take a rest while the picture was being shot. The riding part was that of Rhett Butler in “Gone with the Wind,” David O. Selznick’s Technicolor production starring Gable, Vivien Leigh, Leslie Howard and Olivia de Havilland and currently showing…
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Remembering Olivia de Havilland
Olivia de Havilland, one of the very few classic-era actresses still with us, has died at age 104. Her passing will probably only merit two paragraphs in celebrity magazines this week, probably under the title “Gone with the Wind Actress Dies”—a title that makes me, as it would her, wince. Olivia de Havilland played sweet, doomed Melanie in Gone with the Wind, and ironically was the last to die of the principals of the film. But that is hardly the only film she should be remembered for. Olivia won two Oscars (for 1947’s To Each His Own and 1949’s The Heiress) and was nominated a total of five times–including her Best…
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Gossip Friday: Rhett on the Radio?
From April 1939: Latest bulletin from the Hollywood Front is that Cecil B. DeMille is dickering to present a radio version of “Gone with the Wind” on his regular Monday drama hour. And, by the way, they do some funny things in Hollywood occasionally. David O. Selznick spent thousands of dollars testing various candidates for the role of Rhett Butler…but Clark Gable, who was the first one signed for the picture, didn’t make one test! __ That never happened. Would have been quite the long radio program!
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Gossip Friday: Runaway Race for Rhett?
From February 1937: ...I note that Joan Crawford is gaining strong support for the role of Scarlett O’Hara, that Melvyn Douglas and Franchot Tone are threatening Leslie Howard’s lead in the race for Ashley’s role and that Clark Gable’s runaway race for the part of Rhett Butler is stirring up determined opposition. Those who want Clark can see nobody else in the role–those who don’t wax pretty savage in their counterblasts. As, for instance: “All I can say is ‘Heaven forbid Gable in the role of Rhett!’ and you can tell the horde who had the stupidity to choose him that they had better read the book over again. Such…
