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For Us, The King Will Never Die
Clark Gable died 62 years ago today at Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital in Los Angeles. A heart attack claimed The King of Hollywood at age 59. This pictorial layout appeared in Modern Screen magazine after his death: Clark Gable 1901-1960 For us the King will never die A poor boy…a nobody…with big ears and a magnetic charm, a he-man ruggedness…Clark lived his life, said little, and we loved him. lovers: In Clark’s life there were five wives and no scandals. But on the screen his amours were messy–and with the greats of filmland’s Golden Days. Shown in his arms are Norma Shearer, Greta Garbo, Jean Harlow and Vivien Leigh, the lovely…
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Salute to Heroes
From Movieland magazine in 1943: As you read this, our country will have been at war approximately two years and five months. To no community in our great land, has the war wrought more changes than to Hollywood. To the fight for freedom, Hollywood has given out not only its manpower and its money but its time, its talents, it dreams. The men are in uniform, but the girls have gone to battle in their own way, on bond tours in this country, over the air on Command Performance, out in the mud of the South Pacific, the fiery deserts of North Africa, the snows of Alaska on entertainment tours.…
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Gossip Friday: Spotted
From November 1938: Carole Lombard and Clark Gable spotted stopping at a spot for a corned beef and cabbage dinner. They were joined by Franchot Tone and Pat Di Cicco.
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Gossip Friday: No Copy is Good Copy
From November 1937: There are no more natural people in Hollywood than Clark Gable and Carole Lombard. And of all the people in Hollywood a reporter would expect to be good sports and talk a little about their rom–pardon–their friendship, it would be Clark and Carole. But they won’t. Few people know why, but if they’d ask Carole they’d find out. Shortly after they began appearing together a fan magazine story involving the two was published. The writer had obviously referred to a dated joke book. According to Carole, the “smart sayings” which were put into her mouth and Clark’s were covered in cobwebs. The story also said, right out…
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Gossip Friday: Every Man For Himself
From October 1938: Clark Gable and Carole Lombard were at the county fair, minus dark glasses, or any other disguise, and were delighted at getting to the grandstand without a single demand for an autograph. But they reckoned without the man at the microphone, who immediately spotted them and broadcast their presence. From then on, it was every man–and woman–for himself.
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Gossip Friday: Not Inflated Snobs
From January 1940: Judging from the letters pouring in from Atlanta, the down-to-earth good-fellowship displayed by Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, there for the premiere of “Gone with the Wind,” scored as great a hit as the picture. Remembering how often our touring celebrities have made exactly the opposite impression in their contacts with John and Jane Public, I think the Academy ought to vote Clark and Carole a special statuette. By simply being “folks,” they’ve probably done the industry more good than has resulted from any one super-production of the year. It’s significant that, as the praise comes marching back from Georgia, Hollywood wears an expression of astonishment. “Imagine!”…
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New Articles!
You’d think considering that Clark Gable has been dead for nearly 62 years that I would run out of material; that one day there would just be no articles left. That day is nowhere in the near future! There are five new articles in the Article Archive today, and I must admit that none of them are especially remarkable. So instead of devoting a post to each, here they are and they are quite diverse and span thirty years! 1933: Is the Future Threatening Gable? This article speculates whether Clark Gable’s fast ascension into super stardom will cause him to flicker out quickly. (Spoiler alert: it doesn’t). Leslie Howard, himself,…
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Gossip Friday: Gracious and Friendly
From October 1941: There were lots of stories growing out of that visit to South Dakota by Clark Gable and Carole Lombard. But the best one for my money concerns the Sioux Falls people who talked to Clark and Carole in Watertown. Olaf Pederson a Metz baker, and Maxine Dement, his girlfriend, a maid at the W.E. Perrenoud home, were accompanied by another couple as they took a rural school teacher back to Watertown after a visit here. They stopped at a filing station for gasoline. “Well, have you seen Gable and Lombard?” asked the station attendant, just to make conversation. “No,” chorused the Sioux Falls people, “are they in…
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Gossip Friday: Big Foot
From January 1939: Clark Gable was afflicted today with an ailment that brought no romantically sympathetic telegrams from his feminine fans. His 11-C size feet have swollen half a size, after six weeks of hoofing in patent leathers as a song and dance man for “Idiot’s Delight,” his latest motion picture. All his shoes tweak. Dr. H.A. Jones, a chiropodist, who was called in to see if something could be done to shrink the star’s growing feet, suggested Gable soak them in salt water twice a day.
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Gossip Friday: No Time Off
From September 1937: Metro studio offered Clark Gable six weeks more of vacation. The studio messenger found Gable in his dressing room right on the lot, where he had been hiding out for a couple of days. “I don’t want more time off,” Gable said, nearly flattening everybody with astonishment. He had come back to town quietly, gotten a script of his next story, which is “Test Pilot,” and become so interested in it he wanted to go to work.
