-
Gossip Friday: Boom Town Pranks
From August 1940: You may have read about Clark Gable getting a split lip in a fight scene for “Boom Town” and how the studio had to give him a few days to let it heal. Here’s the sequel to the story, which contains a typical Hollywood chuckle. Gable was called on for the closeups after the fight some time later, and after a fake blow at close quarters, when the scene was in the can, he grinned and carelessly spit out a tooth! Everyone saw the blank space in his front row of teeth and consternation reigned. When Clark had enjoyed his joke, he revealed that he had painted…
-
Gossip Friday: Summer Entertaining with Clark and Carole
From August 1941: Informality’s the role on the Gable farm. Clark and Carole love to have company drift in around dinner time and stay for a feed-providing they help prepare it themselves. And if it’s a July night, hot and breathless, you’ll find the Gables out beneath the stars. Supper is served picnic style on the porch. The makings are spread out colorfully, lavsihly. From then on each guest is his own chef with no food combinations barred. Count on Clark to set the mood with a superman three-decker: alternate layers of sliced tomatoes mixed with thin crisp bacon, sliced breast of chicken and slices of roast beef–mounted on toasted…
-
Movie of the Month: Never Let Me Go
This month, we’re skipping ahead to 1953… Never Let Me Go pairs aging Gable with one of the top stars of the late 1940’s/early 1950’s, Gene Tierney. A simple, rather old-hat storyline: Gable is an American newsman stationed in Russia. He pursues and falls in love with Marya (Tierney), a Russian ballerina. American/Russian relations being what they were in those days, their marriage is frowned upon. Even more frowned upon? Gable’s idea of taking Marya home to the U.S. Efforts to get her passport are stalled and then altogether stopped. Gable is tricked into getting on a plane without her and is refused admission back into Russia. Back in the States, he…
-
Gossip Friday: Seeing Red
Date unknown: Clark Gable told us red is his favorite color. He likes to achieve, to take life by the horns. He enjoys competition and relentless hard work. Lovers of red thrive on action. They like dramatic effects, surprising, spectacular ways of doing things; they are not too patient and can take it on the chin. They are courageous, fearless and independent. They believe in themselves because they know that to believe in one’s self is the first law of successful doing. Clark had no relatives in the theater, no pull, no magic carpet to climb upon. He succeeded because he had the ability to work and had confidence in…
-
Gossip Friday: A new heir?
From August 1941: The rumors are thick and fast that the Clark Gables are expecting an heir. It has even been reported that Carole’s brother has been boasting that he soon will be an uncle. But Carole claims it’s only poison oak she’s having–and that’s why she has engaged a room in an eastern hospital. Well, only time will tell. Aw, both cute and sad. They so wanted a child but it was not meant to be. And rumor has it the “eastern hospital” visit was not for poison oak—but to check Carole’s fertility.
-
Gossip Friday: Clark pulls one on Joan
Here’s this week’s gossip blurb from March 1937: We nominate for the best gag-puller in the town of Hollywood–Mr. Clark Gable! The story told us recently by Joan Crawford wins him the award in nothing flat. It’s a well known fact that Crawford is hipped on the subject of music on the set. Bennett, the chauffeur, spends half his time putting on and taking off records for Joan between scenes. In her collection of victrola records are some of the finest symphonies and operas. One day, during a recent picture together, Clark walked over to Joan’s Victrola, lifted high the pile of records and screaming, “I’m damned sick and tired…
-
Some “Melodrama” in Public Enemies (2009)
I recently saw the new Johnny Depp film, Public Enemies, about notorious bank robber John Dillinger. Dillinger was famously gunned down by FBI agents in front of the Biograph Theater in Chicago, after seeing Gable’s film Manhattan Melodrama. He was set up by friend of his, Romanian prostitute Anna Sage, who was facing deportation and volunteered to hand him over to the feds in exchange for her visa. She told the FBI they would be at the movies that evening and wore an orange (later misidentified as red) dress to alert them to him. It has long been a part of movie folklore that Myrna Loy was Dillinger’s favorite actress…