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Gossip Friday: A Mangy Mule
From February 1939: Carole Lombard’s surprise birthday present to Clark Gable was a mangy mule. Andy Devine brought five chickens and another friend, a sack of fertilizer.
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Happy Birthday, Clark Gable
Clark Gable was born William Clarke Gable to William and Adeline Gable in Cadiz, Ohio, 124 years ago today, February 1, 1901. He only lived to be 59 and has been dead longer than he lived, but if this website is any indication, he is not forgotten. 85 years ago, when Clark was turning 39, he had quite the memorable birthday. He and his wife of less than one year, Carole Lombard, had taken off on a hunting trip to Mexico. Shortly after, they caused a media frenzy when it was declared that the two stars were MISSING! The Gables’ personal secretary, Jean Garceau, recalled: “The Gables loved to go…
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Gossip Friday: No Clark, No Ava
From January 1956: A drive-in movie theater in San Fernando Valley marqueed it “Grace Kelly in Mogambo” following her engagement to Prince Rainier. No mention of Clark Gable or Ava Gardner, who never expected the no-billing treatment when they made the picture with a pretty, unknown blonde.
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Gossip Friday: Easy for Kirk, Not for Clark
From June 1958: When Clark Gable, a rugged outdoorsman, recently tackled an activity-packed P.A. tour for his “Teacher’s Pet,” he came home to announce, “never again. I’ve never been through anything so rough.” I asked returning soldier Kirk [Douglas] if he shared Clark’s sentiments. His answer was both yes and no. “This kind of thing is always a rough, exhausting experience. You seldom have a minute to yourself. Your schedule is jam-packed. You meet a million people, answer a million questions, smile a million smiles. But after you make a few of these tours you learn to roll with the punch. What’s more,” Kirk quipped, “you learn what kind of…
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{New Article} Hollywood’s Happiest Woman
Below is one of Carole Lombard’s final interviews, printed by the Associated Press in the days following her January 16, 1942 death. Hollywood’s Happiest Woman by Mayme Ober Peak Hollywood-Jan. 17–Sitting in her portable dressing room on the set of “To Be or Not To Be,” only seven weeks ago, Carole Lombard told me she was the happiest woman in Hollywood. I remarked that she was making her first picture in more than a year. She nodded, looked at me a little quizzically, and then said, almost sharply, “I don’t care if I never make another picture.” “No matter what career women tell you,” she said, “you cannot find happiness…
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Gossip Friday: A Different Clark Gable
From January 17, 1942: On the screen Clark Gable is a suave, swashbuckling hero. Nothing ever really upsets him. He has ice water in his veins. But today there is a different Clark Gable, a Clark Gable with disheveled hair and reddened eyes, a Clark Gable who looks like a broken man, a Clark Gable who spent the night nervously pacing a floor, and chain-smoking cigarettes, waiting for word about his wife, the beautiful Carole Lombard, in a TWA airliner which crashed in the Nevada mountains. Gable wanted to join the rescue party going to the scene of the wreckage, but policy persuaded him not to.
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Remembering Carole Lombard
Carole Lombard died 83 years ago today, on January 16, 1942. On a record-setting ward bond selling trip with her mother and Gable friend Otto Winkler, they all perished in a plane crash on Mount Potosi outside Las Vegas. As someone who only started researching Clark Gable and Carole Lombard the past 20 years or so, it is incredible to me that she has been gone 83 years. Carole just oozes a tangible human quality–you can see her walking down the street in 2025 no problem. It’s so sad to think we missed out on an elderly Carole, still in her fur coat and diamond brooches with cigarette in her…
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Gossip Friday: Got Their Limit
From December 1958: Kay and Clark Gable got their limit of quail at Catalina. Last year Clark gifted her with long cashmere underwear. She said: “He taught me to shoot. I’m one of the few wives of his gun club who goes along. When I listened to men talking about hunting in the Stork Club, I used to shudder. Now you can have the Stork Club, I’ll take hunting. We looked like Mexican bean pickers after we’d picked up our birds.”
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Gossip Friday: Croonin’ Gable
From January 1, 1936: All the fellows are kidding Clark Gable, the actor, because he does some crooning in his next picture, “Wife vs. Secretary.” Clark can “take it,” though. He just bought a new car for $16,000. Not on time, either.
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Gossip Friday: Tara Lives Again
From December 1958: Some 20 years ago, an acre of real estate in Culver City, Calif. hypnotized millions of movie-goers. It was the site of the mansion Tara in the silver screen epic, “Gone with the Wind.” Hollywood artizans had fashioned a structure that probably out-dazzled any of the real “plantation palaces” which dotted the southern landscape at the time of the Civil War. Two decades later, time has taken its toll on the bleak location. The once brilliant white colonades, where Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh and the late Leslie Howard strolled, have become shades of faded gray. Still they stand, majestic and formidable, guarding the entrance to the make-believe…
