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{Ohio} Dennison, Where Clark Gable was Baptized
A brief little post here on our trip to Dennison. Dennison, Ohio is a little town of about 3,000 people about 23 miles from Cadiz. Our sole purpose for visiting was the Immaculate Conception Church. Clark Gable’s mother, Adeline, was a devout Catholic. She was very ill after his birth and had psychotic episodes and seizures. In one of her lucid moments, she pleaded for her only child to be baptized Catholic. There was no Catholic church in the little town of Cadiz at that time, so a neighbor named John Conway and his wife took baby Clark to the closest church—Immaculate Conception in Dennison. He was baptized there on…
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Carole Lombard Roundup!
I have done Carole Lombard Month the past five years and I know how past posts get lost in the shuffle, so here is a round-up of past items about Carole Lombard: Clark Gable and Carole Lombard Photos: Clark Gable and Carole Lombard on a Picnic On Valentine’s Day, Clark Gable Drives Carole Lombard Crazy! Carole Lombard Behaving Like a Mugg! Culver City Welcomes Mrs. Rhett Butler 1938: Clark Gable and Carole Lombard Attend the Marie Antoinette Premiere A Photographer’s View on Gone with the Wind and Carole Lombard Hollywood: Carole Lombard Lived Here Ahoy to the USS Carole Lombard Property of Carole Lombard Clark and Carole at the Races…
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Gossip Friday: Unknown Backstage
From September 1937: Carole Lombard tells this one on herself. It seems that during the Los Angeles run of “Idiot’s Delight,” Clark Gable took Carole to see Lynn Fountanne and Alfred Lunt in this latest of their plays. Upon being introduced to Carole backstage after the play, Miss Fontanne asked Carole, quite naively: “Are you English?” Whereupon Carole replied she was not. “Oh,” said Miss Fontanne, “are you in pictures then?” Carole smiled in her best Gracie Allen fashion and replied, “Yes–I’m just around–” And we’d give a pretty penny to learn what Miss Fontanne’s reaction was when she found out to whom she’d been speaking!
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Clark Gable, Carole Lombard and One Wild Cat
Carole Lombard was known for her menagerie of animals. Her home in Bel-Air was affectionately referred to as “the Farm,” because of its diverse residents: a rooster, cats, dogs, doves and ducks. In early 1937, Clark Gable had some time between films and set off on a hunting trip to Arizona. This was before they were married thus it was inappropriate for Carole to accompany him, so she flippantly requested he bring her back “a wildcat or two.” Little did she know that Clark would take her seriously… He returned from his trip with a seventy-five pound mountain lion cub, complete with sharp claws and teeth and a personality to…
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{Gone with the Wednesday} 75th Anniversary Event in Cadiz, Ohio
The reason for me traveling to Ohio was twofold: One, to follow in Clark’s footsteps around the state and visit where he was born and where he lived before departing the Buckeye state for good in 1920. Two, to attend the Clark Gable Foundation’s 75thAnniversary of Gone with the Wind event. We arrived on Thursday, October 2. A lot of people fly into Pittsburgh when they go to Cadiz, because the little town is so close to the Pennsylvania line. We flew into Akron though, because we decided to stay in New Philadelphia, which is 30 miles north of Cadiz. We arrived Thursday night and discovered by our quick…
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Photos: Farmer Gable and His Wife
Photos from the November 1939 edition of Silver Screen magazine: They really live on a ranch, but Carole and Clark call it “The Farm.” It has fourteen acres in Encino, California, and they bought it from Director Raoul Walsh, who used to live there. Their house isn’t very large, but it’s built for comfort and informality. Carole and Clark did all of the furnishing and decorating themselves. There’s a large main living room with a small adjacent bar; a cozy dining room off which is the kitchen and butler’s pantry; two small cellar rooms, one of which Clark calls his “gun room” and the other “the office” because that’s where…
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{Ohio} Cadiz, Where Clark Gable was Born
Let’s begin our walk in Clark Gable’s footsteps through Ohio at the beginning, shall we? Cadiz, Ohio is a small town, with no mega-malls, no Starbucks, not even a supermarket–just a Dollar General and a convienence store. It does indeed seem like it’s in the past–I have no doubt that many of the buildings that are there now were there when Clark’s parents moved there. The homes are all older and mostly unassuming, with some Victorians here and there. The most impressive building is the looming city hall, pictured above, that was built in 1894, so Clark’s birth would have been recorded here. Cadiz-ians are quite proud of their hometown…
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Gossip Friday: All Done Up in Cold Cream
From May 1936: It is not often that you can get a gasp of surprise out of the famous Fieldsie, Carole Lombard’s best friend and secretary, for she knows all the tricks and all the answers, but when she read in the gossip column of several chatter writers the other morning that Miss Carole Lombard had attended the swanky Turf Ball on Saturday night looking perfectly devastating in white and with Clark Gable she nearly fell out of bed. For it seems that on that Saturday night all done up in cold cream and looking anything but devastating Li’l Missy Lombard played double solitaire with Fieldsie until two in the…
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{New Article} 1942: A Letter to Heaven
This article is one of many memorial pieces printed in April 1942, the first month after Carole Lombard’s January death that most of the magazines caught up to the news. It is written by someone named “Romayne,” who says they worked with Carole. Pretty sure that’s a pseudonym, but a touching piece nonetheless… Carole Dear: You said you were coming to our set to visit us next week. You said we’d have fun like we had before. So I looked forward to a lot of laughter. You said that Clark, Ruggles, you and I would have our pictures taken together and that we’d call that ‘little number our anniversary.’ That…
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Gone with the Wednesday: Rhett Said It (Part 2)
Quotes from Rhett Butler, Part 2: “Would you satisfy my curiosity on a point which has bothered me for some time?….Tell me, Scarlett, do you never shrink from marrying men you don’t love?” “And to think you could have had my millions if you’d just waited a bit longer. How fickle is woman.” “What a woman!” “You’re like the thief who isn’t the least bit sorry he stole, but is terribly, terribly sorry he’s going to jail.” “You’ve been married to a boy and an old man. Why not marry one the right age, with a way with women?” “Forgive me for startling you with the impetuosity of my sentiments,…