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.

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.…

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…

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.

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.

From August 1936: Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, playing the night spots together, are having a picnic of fun. Of late Clark has called Carole “The Madam.” Dining out, he insists on saying “Will the madam have this?” or “Where would the madam like to go?” A Trocadero waiter stared strangely at Miss Lombard after such an address from Gable the other evening. After he had taken their order and departed, Carole murmured, “Perhaps you had better not call me ‘The Madam’ in front of strangers!”