From August 1950: When Clark Gable eloped with Lady Sylvia Ashley a few months ago, the Hollywood skeptics and frustrated matchmakers started comparing notes on whether or not the newlyweds were properly suited to one another–and the answer turned out to be “no.” They agreed that the lady was a charmer, all right, but they also agreed that the new Mrs. Gable, being a super-sophisticate, was not the girl for a rugged, down-to-earth guy like Gable, who preferred hopped-up automobiles to yachts, and whose best pal was more apt to be a garage mechanic than a member of the titled aristocracy. If Lady Sylvia was a bit miffed at his…

From August 1951: Gable’s Wife Returns but Won’t Talk Mrs. Clark Gable, who still buys her airplane tickets under the name of Lady Sylvia Ashley, arrived home from Honolulu today and promptly shook her head at questions about her divorce fight with her movie-idol husband. The 40-year-old blonde socialite stepped down from the Pan American Stratocaster at International Airport at 7:25am, carrying the usual tourist accessories–an armload of leis and a ukulele. But her smile faded when she spotted the newsmen and she tossed her long blond locks in annoyance when asked if she planned to press immediately her divorce action against Clark Gable. “I’ve made all the statements about…

From February 1950: Clark Gable hasn’t been in the Metro commissary since he wed. He did show up once in the studio barber shop. Clark’s got a pretty fair idea of what his buddies will do to him. Its going to be murder. Among other things, he’ll get an Ashley crest gone rusty with a note: “Maybe you can shine it up and use it on your car door like Doug Fairbanks did when he was married to Sylvia.” Clark’s next-door neighbor in the valley was asked if he wouldn’t sell his home. Seems Sylvia wants it for her sister, husband and two children.

From January 1950: Yep, Clark Gable and Sylvia Ashley stole a march on everyone. Five days before the wedding, one scribe wrote that Clark had been seeing Sylvia frequently, “but it is no romance. Neither Sylvia nor Clark is marriage minded. Sylvia ever has cared for anyone but Douglas Fairbanks and Clark cannot forget Carole Lombard.” On Clark’s wedding day, a friend moaned to me, “It’s bad, but it would have been worse had he married Paulette Goddard.” Well that’s debatable. Another friend said, “Sylvia didn’t have a chance when he was wooing Dolly O’Brien, who kept saying no; but when Sylvia returned here three months ago, she rolled up…

From November 1950: Surprise of the month was seeing Clark Gable at the local opening of the San Francisco opera. And in tails! Maybe you don’t think the king’s marriage to Sylvia Fairbanks hasn’t changed him. Another surprise twosome was George Jessel and Jane Wyman.

From July 1951:  Clark Gable, who plonked out $350,000 to get his freedom from Ria Gable, can relax. Sylvia wants not a cent from him—nor any part of his property. She sent word to me from Honolulu where she had fled after the bitterness of their parting. “Why should I ask for part of his 20-acre ranch in Encino when I own 4,000 acres in Del Mar?” Sylvia asked.  Although Clark remains as mum as an oyster, he told a mutual friend that he has never spent as much money in his life as he did during the year-and-a-half he was married to the former Lady Ashley. He says he…

From May 1952: Mrs. Clark Gable’s furnishings are selling at auction today–but the auctioneer bemoaned that the event is the quietest in Hollywood history because “she wants to keep it refined.” The former Lady Sylvia Ashley decided to auction off $250,000 worth of her antique furnishings, paintings and dishes after she bid farewell to Gable in a divorce court. Every night for two weeks, collectors and dealers will jam the American art galleries to bid happily on such items as an English mahogany washstand and an antique Georgian solid silver kettle. But the disappointed curiosity seekers found only a handful of Lady Sylvia’s mementoes from her string of famous husbands,…