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Movie of the Week: Lone Star (1952) and Never Let Me Go (1953)
This week, Clark Gable is an 1845 Texas cattle baron chasing Ava Gardner and an American war correspondent chasing Gene Tierney in the back-to-back features Lone Star (1952) and Never Let Me Go (1953). In Lone Star, a semi-factual historical western, Clark is Devereaux Burke, a cattle baron enlisted by President Andrew Jackson (Lionel Barrymore) in 1845 to help convince Texas to become part of the United States. He encounters newspaperwoman Martha Ronda (Ava Gardner) and her beau, Senator Thomas Craden (Broderick Crawford) who want Texas to become its own republic. Devereaux and Martha soon fall in love despite their differing opinions and he prepares for a final showdown with…
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Gossip Friday: Doing a Double Take
From October 1940: Clark Gable and the Missus are burned up about the story going round that all is not well between them. Those who are spreading the poison should be squelched by the announcement that the pair intend taking a four-month honeymoon-vacation just as soon as Carole completes “Mr. and Mrs. Smith.” Another muffler for the gossip was provided by Clark just a few days ago when he told the following story about the wonderful Lombard sense of humor. It seems a bad case of poison ivy hit Carole recently and swelled her face until it looked like an automobile tire about to pop. A vainer woman would have…
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{New Article} 1933: Get Well Soon, Clark Gable!
This article, from 1933, is all about Clark Gable’s recent tragic illness. Now, it is quite true that Clark became very ill as he started production on Dancing Lady. But this piece really exaggerates: There were many in the film colony who were quick to say, “Gable is leaving the cast of Joan Crawford’s ‘Dancing Lady’ because he doesn’t like his role. That business about being ‘sick’ is just a stall!” But it wasn’t a stall! Clark Gable isn’t bluffing—not this time. He is still dangerously ill at the moment this is being written…. Those who saw him hobble about the MGM lot a few days ago, in a painful…
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Movie of the Week: The Secret Six (1931) and Hold Your Man (1933)
This week, we’ve got a double dose of Clark Gable and Jean Harlow in The Secret Six (1931)and Hold Your Man (1933). The Secret Six is really only known today for being Clark Gable and Jean Harlow’s first film together. Both of them had not quite reached star status. Jean, who had recently made a big splash in Howard Hughes’ Hell’s Angels, was borrowed from Warner Brothers by MGM for her small role here. Clark was billed seventh–lagging behind Wallace Beery, Johnny Mack Brown and Lewis Stone for screen time. Not for long, mind you, as the release of A Free Soul a few months later would cement Clark’s name…
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Gossip Friday: Boom Town Preview Postscripts
From November 1940: Boom Town Preview Postscripts: It required 27 varied location sites and a total of 41 sets to screen this story. Metro buily a boom town of its own for this picture. Clark Gable has been suggesting an oil story for himself for about three years; at the age of 18 he worked as a tool dresser in Bigheart, Oklahoma. Spencer Tracy sets a new record for himself in screen fisticuffs, engaging in five battles; this is the second time he and Gable fight each other in films, although the last time, in “San Francisco,” they wore boxing gloves. Gable is two inches taller in the picture than…
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Movie of the Week: Parnell (1937)
This week, Clark Gable is a mutton-chopped Irish politician in love with married Myrna Loy in Parnell. In this historical melodrama, Gable is Charles Parnell, an 1880’s Irish politician dubbed “The Uncrowned King of Ireland” for fighting for Irish freedom from British rule. The British trump up false charges against him to try and keep his efforts down but are unsuccessful. But then Parnell falls in love with Katie O’Shea (Loy), the estranged wife of a British Parliament member. When her husband finds out, he files for divorce and names Parnell as co-respondent, resulting in political and social ruin for Parnell. Just as he begins to fight back for his…
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Gossip Friday: Adding to the Arsenal
From December 1935: While all the talk of divorce and separation was going about, Clark Gable was quietly purchasing himself some new guns. He has a regular arsenal already, numbering nearly two dozen rifles and shotguns. He is an inveterate hunter and a crack shot. At skeet and the traps his is said to be really expert.
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Movie of the Week: Teacher’s Pet (1958)
This week, Clark Gable is Doris Day’s star pupil in Teacher’s Pet (1958). Clark is Jim Gannon, a hard-nosed editor of a New York newspaper. When Professor Erica Stone (Day) requests that Jim speak to her journalism class, he rebuffs her with a sarcastic and mean-spirited letter, saying that people can only learn the newspaper business by working in the newspaper business and classes are a waste of time. When Jim, forced by his boss, goes down to Erica’s class to apologize, she reads the letter aloud to the class before he has the chance to explain himself. Embarrassed but charmed by Erica, he signs up for her class and…
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Gossip Friday: Punch Devotees
From August 1934: Clark Gable shuns crowds because he has, more than once, found a fist thrust under his nose and, “Come on and fight you big so-and-so,” bawled at him. And not by drunks either. The roles Clark Gable plays waken the animosity of punch devotees. The actor has a horror of coming out of a crowd with a black eye, a swollen nose, or of being forced to fight his way out of the situation. When he is making a picture, Gable never goes out in public because of this strange difficulty.
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{New Article} 1935: A New Log of The Bounty
This is a short article from 1935 about the filming of Mutiny on the Bounty on Catalina Island. It really doesn’t give much detail except to rehash the history of the events depicted in the picture. A new tale, of another Bounty, could be written around the adventures of that sore-beset crew, filming this grand tale for Metro, for all of them, from Director Frank Lloyd on, have stories to tell of trials and tribulations. But it all is well worth it, for without question here, in “Mutiny on the Bounty,” will be one of the greatest pictures ever contrived. I have lately returned from a cruise on this new…
