• clark gable army
    Gossip

    Gossip Friday: Return to the Commissary

    From March 1943:  From the day Carole Lombard died, over a year ago, Clark Gable never entered the MGM commissary to take his accustomed seat at the director’s table. But on his recent jaunty to Hollywood on Government business, when Lt. Gable entered the commissary with producer Eddie Mannix for lunch, everyone in the commissary rose to his feet in a single united urge to pay tribute to the man they love and respect.  And Lieutenant Gable sidled quietly to his chair. 

  • clark gable carole lombard
    Gossip

    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.”

  • Anniversary

    For Us, The King Will Never Die

    Clark Gable died 62 years ago today at Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital in Los Angeles. A heart attack claimed The King of Hollywood at age 59. This pictorial layout appeared in Modern Screen magazine after his death: Clark Gable 1901-1960 For us the King will never die A poor boy…a nobody…with big ears and a magnetic charm, a he-man ruggedness…Clark lived his life, said little, and we loved him. lovers: In Clark’s life there were five wives and no scandals. But on the screen his amours were messy–and with the greats of filmland’s Golden Days. Shown in his arms are Norma Shearer, Greta Garbo, Jean Harlow and Vivien Leigh, the lovely…

  • Army,  Gossip

    Salute to Heroes

    From Movieland magazine in 1943: As you read this, our country will have been at war approximately two years and five months. To no community in our great land, has the war wrought more changes than to Hollywood. To the fight for freedom, Hollywood has given out not only its manpower and its money but its time, its talents, it dreams. The men are in uniform, but the girls have gone to battle in their own way, on bond tours in this country, over the air on Command Performance, out in the mud of the South Pacific, the fiery deserts of North Africa, the snows of Alaska on entertainment tours.…

  • clark gable carole lombard
    Gossip

    Gossip Friday: No Copy is Good Copy

    From November 1937: There are no more natural people in Hollywood than Clark Gable and Carole Lombard. And of all the people in Hollywood a reporter would expect to be good sports and talk a little about their rom–pardon–their friendship, it would be Clark and Carole. But they won’t. Few people know why, but if they’d ask Carole they’d find out. Shortly after they began appearing together a fan magazine story involving the two was published. The writer had obviously referred to a dated joke book. According to Carole, the “smart sayings”  which were put into her mouth and Clark’s were covered in cobwebs. The story also said, right out…

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    Gossip

    Gossip Friday: Every Man For Himself

    From October 1938: Clark Gable and Carole Lombard were at the county fair, minus dark glasses, or any other disguise, and were delighted at getting to the grandstand without a single demand for an autograph. But they reckoned without the man at the microphone, who immediately spotted them and broadcast their presence. From then on, it was every man–and woman–for himself. 

  • clark gable carole lombard atlanta
    Gossip

    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!”…

  • clark gable carole lombard
    Gossip

    Gossip Friday: Gracious and Friendly

    From October 1941: There were lots of stories growing out of that visit to South Dakota by Clark Gable and Carole Lombard. But the best one for my money concerns the Sioux Falls people who talked to Clark and Carole in Watertown. Olaf Pederson a Metz baker, and Maxine Dement, his girlfriend, a maid at the W.E. Perrenoud home, were accompanied by another couple as they took a rural school teacher back to Watertown after a visit here. They stopped at a filing station for gasoline.  “Well, have you seen Gable and Lombard?” asked the station attendant, just to make conversation. “No,” chorused the Sioux Falls people, “are they in…