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Gossip Friday: Just One Question
From July 1938: For the first time in his motion picture career, Clark Gable met a fan magazine interviewer who was unable to question him. She was Jane Withers. The youthful motion picture actress, acting as guest columnist for a magazine requested an interview from her favorite star. Upon being introduced to Gable on Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s “Too Hot to Handle” set, the youngster suddenly found herself speechless. A wide smile came over her face and her lips trembled–but try as she would–Jane just couldn’t talk. Clark, noting her embarrassment, immediately took matters into his own hands and put her at ease by conducting his own interview. By the time the interview…
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Gossip Friday: Clark in Calgary
From July 1933: Girls! Girls! Clark Gable may come to Calgary to attend the stampede–but he will accompanied by his wife. Interviewed at the Vancouver hotel last week, Mr. Gable refused to commit himself, but said that there was a possibility of his coming to Calgary. He left the hotel Saturday for an unannounced destination, hinting that it might be Banff and it might be Prince Rupert. Accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. F.N Selman, the party has been travelling by car up the Pacific coast, stopping as long as they wanted in a city and then starting for some other place. At no point would they tell reporters where they…
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Gossip Friday: Everything but Cook
From January 1937: Clark Gable and Carole Lombard visited a phonograph shop not long back, and bought one of those newfangled machines that combine radio, home-recording, loud speaker, and play twenty-four records at a time. Gable watched its performance, then said to the salesman, “That darn thing does everything but cook.” At which Miss Lombard snickered, “You might say the same of me.”
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Gossip Friday: Don’t Try Too Hard
From December 1934: If you would be successful, don’t woo success too hard. This is the only moral Clark Gable has gained from his astonishing career. “Success–this kind of success-was the last thing in my mind,” the star explained frankly. “I liked acting and wanted to make a living at it, but I never once believed I would accomplish more than that.” Gable made these remarks on the set of “Forsaking All Others,” the new all-star picture in which he shares honors with Joan Crawford and Robert Montgomery. The picture, which opens Sunday at the Strand Theatre, was directed by W.S. Van Dyke. “Few professional actors look forward to any…
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{New Article} 1940: Joe Lucky
This 1940 article was in The Saturday Evening Post, whom I’m guessing paid their journalists per word because all their articles are so very bloated. This one is 5,838 words, but who’s counting. Me, the one who typed it, I am the one counting. Anyway. This article is supposed to be about how lucky Clark is and that’s why he is a success. But yet it goes into a rather pointless meandering tale of Clark’s early years working in the oil fields, the lumber camps, as a small time theatre actor–a lot of hard, broke times that eventually led to success. At least the author did indeed interview Clark, so…
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Gossip Friday: His Own Critic
From July 1936: The big show at a Hollywood boulevard movie house the other evening was for that group of people who sat behind Clark Gable and Carole Lombard at a showing of “San Francisco.” But Gable’s conversation about the picture he’s in didn’t go unnoticed. He’d make a good movie critic.
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Happy 100th Birthday, Judy Garland!
Judy Garland, born Frances Gumm on June 10, 1922, would have been 100 years old today! Although Judy and Clark Gable never co-starred together, they were both on the MGM roster and Judy’s big break into stardom was because of her singing her adulation for a certain Mr. Gable. At the beginning of 1937, 14-year-old Judy was contracted to MGM but they didn’t really know what to do with her. She was extremely talented, yes, but was too young to sing romantic songs. Judy was set to appear on the radio show “Ole Maestro,” a radio variety program run by Ben Bernie. The vintage torch song “You Made Me Love…
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Gossip Friday: Sound Your Siren
From January 1940: The boys play too rough on Clark Gable’s sets, Carole Lombard discovered. She visited her husband on the sound stage where Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s “Strange Cargo” was in production, in time to see Gable watching with great amusement while Lou Smith, his stand-in, and Stanley Campbell, his make-up man, reenacted the fight that is staged by Gable and Albert Dekker for the film. Neither of the combatants saw Miss Lombard until Smith suddenly ducked and Campbell landed a haymaker on Miss Lombard’s cheek. The two retired in great confusion and amid profound apologies, while Gable grinningly warned his wife that “next time you step into this gymnasium, you better…
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Gossip Friday: Earn Respect
From May 1954: “I saw Clark Gable the other night in New York. Now there’ a really great guy. They don’t call him “The King” for nothing. I used to hang around the caddy shack at the club when I was a kid hoping for a chance to pack his bag. Sometimes I got it. If I didn’t, I followed him around. He was always swell to me, always my idol. Still is. So when I saw him in Twenty-One I went right up. He’d been in Europe for a long time but I might have seen him yesterday. He said some pretty nice things about me, said he was…
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{New Article} 1934: What’s Happened, Gable?
The latest article in the Article Archive is a typical one for the period. The MGM publicity machine was very keen on painting Clark Gable as this rebellious rogue who scoffed at fame and stardom and wanted nothing more than to walk away from it all. “The fault lies purely with myself,” [Clark] said. “I thought I wanted something, something I find I don’t want at all. I was not meant to be a motion picture actor—or any actor. But in the beginning I didn’t realize that I thought I wanted acting fame more than anything in the world. How, then, can Hollywood be blamed for giving me what I…
