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Gossip Friday: Grand Marshal
From March 1947: While we were there [on the set of “Song of Love”], Clark Gable came over to pay his respects to Katharine [Hepburn]. He had just started shooting on “The Hucksters” with Deborah Kerr, Metro’s new English star. If you haven’t already seen Deborah in the English picture “Vacation from Marriage” you have a treat in store for you when “The Hucksters” is released. In person, she has the same charm that we’ve noted in so many of the English actresses who have come over to this country recently–warmth, sincerity, and poise. Deborah told me, when I went over to her set, that Clark has been most gracious…
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Gossip Friday: Scarlett O’Hepburn
From November 1938: “Idiot’s Delight” with Norma Shearer and Clark Gable, is pushing toward the finish line and Gable expects to rest over the Christmas holidays in preparation for a prospective start on “Gone with the Wind,” shortly after the first of the year. Gable and others predict that Katharine Hepburn will be announced shortly for the Scarlett O’Hara role. ___ I like Hepburn and all, but it’s hard to imagine that she was seriously considered for the part.
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Gone with the Wednesday: 1938’s Casting Roundabout
1938– a year full of suspense and speculation in regards to Gone with the Wind. Who would be Rhett? Who would be Melanie? Who would be Ashley? And especially…who will play Scarlett? To call the book a sensation would be an understatement. In three separate celebrity interviews from that year, magazines stated that young Judy Garland “spent last Christmas reading Gone with the Wind,” Deanna Durbin “has read Gone with the Wind twice!” and–the horror–“Nelson Eddy admits he has not yet read Gone with the Wind!” There was a lot at stake for this cast… In February, Photoplay magazine reported: Our monthly “Gone with the Wind” Department…whispers now have it…
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Gone with the Wednesday: “Gone with the Wind Indeed!”
This week, featured is another article from the archive, Gone with the Wind Indeed!, Photoplay magazine, March 1937. This article is all about the pressing issue of casting the great civil war epic: Time was when you could call a man a rat in Hollywood and get yourself a stiff poke in the nose. But now what you get is–”Rhett? Rhett Butler? Well–I don’t know about that ‘profile like an old coin’ stuff, but I’ve been told I am rather masterful and–” Yes and there was a day when you could call a woman scarlet in this town and find yourself looking into the business end of a male relative’s…
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{Photos} Clark Gable and…
Some of my favorite finds when I am scouring through old fan magazines are candids of random stars together. “I never knew that Blank ever even met Blank!” I often think, particularly now during “awards show season”, how the generations to come won’t feel similar joy, since there are thousands of pictures taken at every red carpet event, awards show and party and so thus the surprise of seeing stars posing together has dwindled. Here are some shots of Clark with other Tinseltown folk… See more in the gallery.
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{Hollywood} Clark Was Here
Let’s follow Clark around Los Angeles… Culver Studios. Formerly Selznick International Studios, this is where Gone with the Wind was filmed. The white house and manicured gardens are well-remembered as the opening shot of GWTW, then with a white sign in front that said, “A Selznick International Picture.” The scene where Mammy, Prissy and Pork stand in front of Scarlett and Rhett’s enormous Atlanta mansion and exclaim over its size (“Lordy, she sure is rich now!”) was filmed right here, in front of this building, with a matte painting standing in for Scarlett and Rhett’s mansion. Carole Lombard made Nothing Sacred and Made for Each Other here. It was later home…
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Gossip Friday: Scarlett Also-Rans
From March 1940: Talk of Hollywood, recently, is how much luck the girls who did NOT get the Scarlett O’Hara role in Gone with the Wind had! Of course, Vivien Leigh was the “lucky” one who got the part. But look at the others– Bette Davis did Jezebel instead and won an Academy Oscar; Norma Shearer, in The Women, did such a swell job that she may get the next Award; Tallulah Bankhead, when she flopparooed on Scarlett, did the stage play that’s getting her international raves…ditto Katharine Hepburn, who also did NOT get the O’Hara plum, but who scored hugely behind the footlights in Philadelphia Story. And Susan Hayward,…
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Movie of the Month: No Man of Her Own
No surprise, since we’re having Carole Lombard month, that this month’s movie is the only Clark and Carole film, No Man of Her Own, from 1932. Thanks to the legendary romance of Clark and Carole that would begin about four years later, this film has now become a fan favorite, whereas maybe if Clark’s co-star hadn’t been Carole it would be dismissed as another soapy melodrama. But actually there is some substance in it, and even overlooking the Clark and Carole legend, it’s a good little pre-code. Clark is Babe Stewart, a womanizing card cheat. As he says to a pining Dorothy Mackaill early on, “You know I’m a hit…
