-
September Movie of the Month: Dancing Lady (1933)
In 1933, Clark was in a musical–but no singing and dancing for him…just brooding and yelling. In Dancing Lady, Clark is Patch Gallagher, a short-fused Broadway producer who hires down-on-her-luck ex-burlesque dancer Janie Barlow (Joan Crawford) for the chorus line of his latest show. Janie is constantly pursued by a rich playboy admirer, Tod Newton (Franchot Tone). Patch begins to have feelings for plucky Janie, but grows bitter as it becomes obvious she is wrapped up with Tod. When he promotes her to the lead in the production, Tod becomes impatient (Janie said she’d marry him if the play fell through) and pays off the Broadway powers-that-be to shut the play…
-
Gossip Friday: Gone Fishin’
From August 1935: All Clark Gable is waiting for is that two weeks between pictures. Boy, oh boy, has he got it all planned! Big excitement. Listen carefully, girls. Clark is going to leap into that old smelly fishing boat he chartered and go to sea for yellowtail! He won’t have to shave for two weeks, he will wear clothes you would probably give to the ashman, and what a time he will have. No floating around on dance floors in popular resorts for him.
-
{Book Review} The Garden on Sunset by Martin Turnbull
First of all, I have to admit that I have not read a novel in years. In fact, I do not remember at all the last novel I read before this one. The Twilight series, Harry Potter, even that Fifty Shades of Grey everyone keeps yapping about…I haven’t read any of them. The reason is that I have precious little time to read books, unfortuantely, and for years that time has been spent reading only biographies and research materials for this website. For years on end my Amazon wishlist has been filled with biographies. So for me to take on a novel was something out of the ordinary indeed. Of…
-
Gossip Friday: Carole Lombard’s Hair Styling Advice
From March 1937: We watched Carole Lombard swishing around on the “Swing High, Swing Low” set at Paramount the other day, attired in two inches of white chiffon and two carloads of white ostrich feathers. We thought it all looked pretty elegant, and couldn’t understand the worried look in Travis Banton’s face. “These gowns give me the jitters,” he said. “They’re strictly honky tonk fashions, but Lombard makes them look so modish that I’m afraid every woman in the country will copy them–and probably look like a herd of ostriches.” The hairdresser came up just then to arrange Carole’s blonde curls for a close-up. “This wave won’t stay in place…
-
{New Article} 1934: Clark Gable Cuts the Apron Strings
As you can see if you peruse the Article Archive here on this site, I have a lot of Clark Gable articles. And I still have a massive stack of articles to type that seems to grow over time rather than deplete. Fan magazines, especially ones from the early 1930’s, can’t be taken to seriously. Studio publicity departments dropped lines to the magazines, feeding them what they wanted printed. And the magazines knew darn well what was fair to print and what was not. Clark and Ria on the outs in 1932 because he has been holed up in Joan Crawford’s dressing room? Nah…let’s put a nice little gossip item about…
-
Gossip Friday: a Clark Gable Salad and a Greta Garbo Sandwich
From December 1931: Clark Gable has become a second Greta Garbo. No, no, little Oscar, he’s not walking in the rain and going mysterious on the home folks. It’s simply that he’s become so popular with the lads and lassies who go to the movies that scores of reporters follow him wherever he goes, trying to get hot news about him. Our faithful secret service makes us follow burning discoveries: He hates dark suits. If he had his way he’d only wear grey. He dislikes tuxedos because he doesn’t dare have them made in light material. His one objection to pictures is that he can’t wear grey suits on the…
-
{New Article} 1937: Clark Gable Answers the Call of the Wild
No, this article from 1937 isn’t rehashing Clark Gable’s hit movie of the same name. It’s all about Clark going hunting for mountain lions. Which I did not find particularly thrilling, to be honest. The one interesting tidbit is the story of how Clark caught that wild mountain lion he gave to Carole Lombard, in his own words. “Our next cat didn’t give us such a long chase. The dogs had him treed and were dancing and howling below him when we arrived. Then I had to laugh. It was a cub, about six months old, and it was trying to put up a ferocious front. “I tried to think…
-
Gossip Friday: Clark Gable, Earthquake Expert
From February 1934: Clark Gable is quite the California booster. During a misplaced warm spell, someone remarked, “This is earthquake weather.” “Oh,no,” defended Clark politely, “it isn’t the weather that causes the earthquakes, it’s the earthquakes that cause the weather!” Now all he has to do is alibi the earthquakes!
-
1932: The Fans Speak Out About New Star Clark Gable
Clark Gable didn’t tiptoe into pop culture, he exploded. In 1931, he went from a virtual nobody to a superstar practically overnight. By the time 1932 arrived, he was declared either the next big thing or the next flash in the pan. Fan magazines of the time are of course full of fluff and are driven by studio publicity hounds–but what did the fans think? The following letters were all written to Picture Play magazine in 1932. From January 1932: After seeing Clark Gable in “Dance, Fools, Dance,” “The Finger Points,” and “A Free Soul,” I believe him to be the greatest find the screen has ever known. He has…
-
70 Years Ago Today, Clark Gable Joins the Army
Within weeks of Carole Lombard’s untimely death in January 1942, rumors swirled that Clark Gable was going to give up Hollywood for good and take off for the Armed Forces like so many other stars had. Carole had wanted her “Pappy” to join while she was alive; in fact her last telegram to him urged him to “join this man’s [Roosevelt’s] army!” Not surprisingly, MGM was desperate to hold on to him, after having lost so many male stars to the service already and tried to dissuade him. Clark made no public statements one way or the other, so the public was left to speculate what was next for their…