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Gossip Friday: Driving Bored
From April 1936: Clark Gable did two things this month that may interest you—he brought back the style of wearing big striped bow ties for street wear—and he slapped down $16,000 for a new Deusenberg auto—and he looks so, so bored while driving it. Can you imagine that?
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Gossip Friday: Comparing Salaries
From September 1940: Players who came to the Hollywood feast early get most of the gravy. The highest salaries go to firmly established stars like these: Clark Gable hits the cash register for about $7,500 weekly, 52 weeks a year, with fat bonuses. Ronald Colman pockets $150,000 per picture, plus 10% of the world gross when it goes over a certain amount–and it usually does. Robert Taylor brings Barbara Stanwyck an envelope containing about $5,000 weekly, plus bonuses. Bette Davis earns not less than $3,500 a week the year round. Deanna Durbin, who blossomed before the economy blight, earns over $2,500 a week, and bonuses. Claudette Colbert draws $150,000 per…
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Gossip Friday: A Thousand Girls
From October 1936: Did you ever hear Clark Gable’s grand crack, after he’d lectured before a class at Vassar? Asked how he’d enjoyed the experience, Clark grimaced, replied: “I’d rather talk a thousand times to one girl, than one time to a thousand girls!”
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Gossip Friday: Dog Gone
From December 1935: Clark Gable lost a dog. It had an identification tag on his collar. Quite soon, Clark received a letter from a Beverly Hills boy named Johnny Marks. “Dear Mr. Gable,” wrote Johnny, “I found your dog and I’d like to keep him.” He offered the best of care. Whether Clark decided such gall deserved a reward, the fact remains that he sent a message, telling Johnny to keep the dog.
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May Movie of the Month: Boom Town (1940)
This month, Clark Gable is a womanizin’ oil chaser, Spencer Tracy is his long-suffering best pal, Claudette Colbert is his best girl, and Hedy Lamarr is his sidedish in Boom Town. Gable is “Big John” McMasters and Tracy is “Square John” Sand, or as Big John calls him right from the beginning, “Shorty”. They are two wildcatters out west trying to strike oil. They pool their money and smarts and soon hit it big. Putting a snag in their festivities is the arrival of Elizabeth or “Betsy” (Colbert), Shorty’s sweetheart from back home. She arrives to see him but falls in love with Big John instead, and they are married…
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Gossip Friday: In Need of a Vacation
From October 1933: Clark Gable returned from a “recuperative vacation” in the Northwest only to enter the Cedars if Lebanon Hospital for a tonsil operation! Though he plans to return to MGM for one, and possibly two pictures immediately, the truth of the matter is that Clark is far from being a perfectly well young man and really needs a real rest and a long vacation. If it can be arranged he hopes to leave for a six months tour of Europe with Mrs. Gable sometime this Fall.
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Spotlight on: Suzanne Dadolle
French model Suzanne Dadolle doesn’t rank among Carole Lombard, Joan Crawford or Grace Kelly as one of Clark Gable’s great love affairs. But she was on Clark’s arm for over a year while he was overseas in the early 1950’s. That is, until she loused it up…. There isn’t much information about Suzanne out there. Google her and all you get are pictures of her with Clark, mentions of her in articles about Clark, and one lone uncredited movie role from 1963 on IMDB. I don’t even know if she is still alive. But she lived what was a lot of women’s fantasy for a while: Clark Gable’s constant companion for a…
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Gossip Friday: Calling It Quits
_ From August 1935: Clark Gable stated on the set of China Seas, a few days ago, that on May 1st, 1940, he firmly intends to turn in the key to his dressing room and leave pictures forever. “Even if I am still in demand at that time, I shall quit,” says Clark. Actors have said that before but Clark has been fed up with the picture business for some time, according to his own statements and everyone believes HE MEANS IT! SERIOUSLY!
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Gossip Friday: Drives a Ford and Hunts Rabbits
From March 1932: The height of swank was reached the other day when a Hollywood florist started delivering flowers in a Rolls Royce. At the other extreme, Clark Gable and Wallace Beery, two of the town’s brightest celebrities, drive Fords. Clark Gable, by the way, never spends a weekend in Hollywood if he can help it. His latest hobby is jack-rabbit hunting, which is pursued far up in the hills at night, with an old car and a powerful searchlight.
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Gossip Friday: Covered in Oil
From December 1940: Clark Gable says he hopes he’ll never, NEVER have to play the role of a garbage-collector. Not that garbage-collectors aren’t very nice people, in their place–but look a what happened to Gable for playing that oil-man role in Boom Town- From his fans, since the picture, Clark has gotten a slough of gifts reflecting the oil-fields role. Among the presents are miniature oil derricks, nearly 500 pictures of old gushers and old boom towns, samples of crude oil in every conceivable type of bottle and flask and container, books about oil, souvenirs from famed oil fields and wells, nearly tons of oil shale, paper-weights and other gadgets…