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Gossip Friday: New Years Eve at the Races
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.
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Gossip Friday: Christmas with Carole
From December 1936: Clark Gable will spend [Christmas] morning at Carole Lombard’s home and then an afternoon at the races to watch his horse Beverly Hills and back to Carole’s for a turkey dinner.
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Gossip Friday: Burning up the Wires
From December 1937: The latest of those rumored accidents to movie stars had Carole Lombard jittery on the “Food for Scandal” set. Clark Gable, according to the story, had been injured in an auto crash. Carole burned up the wires trying to find Clark who was out of town. When she finally did, she was so relieved she told him to call her every half hour on the set. And what is more, set workers declare he did.
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Gossip Friday: Wrong Cow
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.
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Gossip Friday: Lombard in Saratoga?
From October 1936: There is a new custom in Hollywood00to get an actor and actress who are having a romance and team them in a picture. The fans want to watch the lovers they read about. Taylor and Barbara Stanwyck together in a picture were great at the box office. Metro is going to team Clark Gable and Carole Lombard in the flicker “Saratoga,” while they’re hot. ___ Not so much. As we all know, Saratoga starred Clark Gable and Jean Harlow. It was, sadly, Jean’s last role.
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Gossip Friday: The Madam
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!”
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Gossip Friday: No Letters
From September 1941: Then there is this amazing explanation of Carole Lombard’s reluctance and downright refusal to write letters: Carole Lombard chews up more letters than she writes. When she sits down to write she chews the edge of the stationary while she is thinking, and by the time the letter is halfway finished, it is so well chewed up that she throws it in the waste basket and goes out to feed the chickens. That’s why you don’t ever get letters from Lombard.
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Gossip Friday: Strictly Informal
From March 1940: Carole Lombard admitted the other day that her attempt to keep life on a strictly informal basis at the Gable-Lombard ranch has been carried a bit too far. Nowadays when she calls home and asks to speak to Mr. G., the maid cups her hand over the mouthpiece and yodels to the butler, “Hey, tell Paw that Maw’s on the phone!”
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Gossip Friday: Nice Going
From June 1940: Clark Gable and Carole Lombard are confirming the baby item to close friends. They sent one pair of new parents a congratulatory wire saying: “Nice going, you beat us but not by much.” ____ Sadly, not true.
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Gossip Friday: Strangely Related Duos
From August 1936: Strangely related duos in Hollywood. It’s a small world at that. Clark Gable and Carole Lombard. Bob Riskin and Julia Lair. Mrs. Gable and Alex Buckman. (Lombard was Riskin’s old girl, Miss Laird is Buckman’s ex-wife, and you know about the Gables.) ____ Riskin, who wrote the screenplay for It Happened One Night, later married Fay Wray in 1942.
