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{New Article} 1952: Gable’s Divorce Problem
Well, in a quick turnaround from the article I posted a few days ago, What’s Wrong with the Clark Gables?, it turns out a lot was wrong with the Clark Gables because here they are less than a year later, battling it out in divorce court. On October 4th, Clark Gable filed a divorce complaint against Sylvia Gable in Nevada, charging that, “the defendant has treated the plaintiff with extreme cruelty and has caused him great grievous mental suffering and pain without cause or provocation, and plaintiff’s health was and is thereby and therefrom impaired.” When Lady Sylvia was served with a copy of the complaint she was enraged.…
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Gossip Friday: Wrapped Them Himself
From November 1944 (Louella Parsons): It’s been a month of parties, parties, parties! The little Queen of the Ice, Sonja Henie, certainly looked the part at the big affair she gave at her house….I had the time of my life doing rumba after rumba with Clark Gable! Between numbers–Clark and I sat at one of the bright little tables and had a long talk. Gable has been going to all the parties–perhaps because he wants to forget all that he saw overseas. It is certainly something new for him because he isn’t a party man and enjoys far more being with a crowd of his pals and hunting and fishing.…
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{New Article} 1951: What’s Wrong with the Clark Gables?
This 1951 article is all about how there is indeed nothing wrong with Clark Gable and Sylvia Ashley’s marriage. Okay, sure. Clark and Sylvia had been married just a little over a year and were at this point spending more and more time apart. That Clark is trying to make this marriage his last is very obvious. I nearly fainted when I saw him all dressed up with Sylvia the first night of the Sadler’s Wells Ballet. Clark doesn’t know one end of a ballet shoe from the other. He went to please Sylvia, of course. And the fashion shows! It’s fascinating to see Clark at Sylvia’s side, hob-nobbing with…
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Goodbye, Mr. Gable
Clark Gable died fifty-nine years ago today, on November 16, 1960. He was fifty-nine years old. He has now been gone for as long as he lived, which is rather startling to realize. Married to Kay with a baby on the way and proud of his recent performance in The Misfits, Clark was very content and not ready to go. But such is life. From Life magazine in January 1961: Thirty years ago, Clark Gable slapped Norma Shearer’s aristocratic face in A Free Soul and launched his own personal era of heroes who take no nonsense from women. In his heyday, he was lusty, challenging, unsophisticated. He grew more stolid…
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Gossip Friday: Quite a Hazard
From November 1960: The hazards of choosing magazine cover subjects! The cover of the December issue of Cosmopolitan magazine just out, pictures a smiling Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable as exponents of the issue’s theme, “the pursuit of happiness.” Since the magazine went to press, Miss Monroe announced her plans to divorce Arthur Miller, and Clark Gable was the victim of a fatal heart attack.
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Gossip Friday: All Eyes on Them
From March 1945: What follows remains to be seen. However, all eyes were on civilian Clark Gable and Ann Dvorak at the David Selznick’s Sunday afternoon tennis party. Clark hardly left her side all afternoon. Interesting news that Ann, who once walked out on a Warner contract to sail around the world with husband Leslie Fenton (now separated), is being paged to resume her acting at this same studio. At the time, they said she’d never darken their door again.
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Gossip Friday: Most Kissed Man
From May 1947: By the time he finishes “The Hucksters,” Clark Gable will be the most-kissed man in Hollywood. His first scene called for him to kiss Connie Gilchrist, who plays a telephone operator; three times. Later the same day, he kissed Deborah Kerr, Ava Gardner and five-year-old Diane Perrine! Clark has dropped 20 pounds since he made “Adventure”–and not from all that kissing, either. He didn’t like the way he looked on the screen with all that weight and went to work exercising it off. Here’s a little tip that may interest you. After seeing Gable and Ava Gardner in action, MGM is thinking about remaking some of the…
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{New Article} 1940: Mrs. Goldilocks and The Bears
Here is one of these articles that I had in a pile for years and I swore I had already typed and posted it, but turns out I didn’t. So here it is. It’s about Clark Gable and Carole Lombard and their friends in Encino–Andy Devine, Phil Harris and Lum and Abner. It all started months ago when Andy Devine, Lum and Abner, Clark and Carole, and Phil Harris kind of struck up a close friendship over hunting and fishing. Sunday mornings, or whenever they had a free dawn, they’d get up at the crack of it, and rig up duck blinds in a marsh some forty miles from town.…
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Gossip Friday: A Startling Chapeau
From August 1936: While we’re in the startling chapeau department, it might be well to record the fact that Clark Gable arrived at the preview of “The Princess Comes Across” with Carole Lombard and a beret. He took a terrific razzing from a gang of youngsters on the sidewalk and went in to view the picture, which contains a funny sequence about a he-man type of guy wearing a beret. On the way out the beret was stuffed in the Gable pocket.
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{New Article} World’s No.1 Honeymooners: The Clark Gables!
This article, by Ed Sullivan, appeared in newspapers on October 15,1939. So, here it is exactly 80 years later! It promises that “Sullivan takes you into the Hollywood home of the newlyweds to tell you for the first time the true story of their elopement,” but don’t get too excited because there is no interview with Clark Gable or Carole Lombard here, nor are there really any earth-shattering revelations. On the road maps it is route 101, the Los Angeles natives refer to it more familiarly as Ventura boulevard, the ribbon of concrete which meanders north to San Francisco thru the hot and fertile valleys and foothills of California. I…
