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{Photos} Boom Town (1940)
Here’s some photos from this week’s Movie of the Week, Boom Town (1940). With a cast consisting of Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, Spencer Tracy and Hedy Lamarr, the portraits are of course wonderful. There’s some behind-the-scenes photos I found in a fan magazine of Clark and Spencer filming their first scene together, ending up face first in the mud! Clark Gable with a baby and small child is always worth the price of admission in my book. Saving the best for last, the funniest screenshots from this film are from Clark’s fist fight with Spencer (well Clark and Spencer’s stunt double):
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Movie of the Week: Boom Town (1940)
This week’s movie is Boom Town (1940). 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” (Claudette Colbert), Shorty’s sweetheart from back home. She arrives to see him but falls in love with Big John instead, and they are married the night they met. A year passes and when Shorty thinks that Big John is not treating Betsy right, the two men come…
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Gossip Friday: The Turkey Star
From August 1931: The hunt for male stars–always a desperate one in Hollywood, is on with added fervor this season. if rival producers do not find a male star with sufficient sex appeal to offset the charms of Clark Gable, one studio will have captured the best bet since Valentino and the box office record of that lot will soar. From present indications Clark Gable is the man of the moment. I haven’t heard any of the masculine element tearing their heats out over him–but how the women do talk! A local wit has named him the “Turkey” star–because the women go Gable-Gable-Gable all day. A still more potent indication…
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Movie of the Week: Wife vs. Secretary (1936)
This week, Clark’s torn between Jean Harlow and Myrna Loy (poor guy) in Wife vs. Secretary. Clark is the dashing editor-in-chief of a magazine in this one. Myrna is his delightful wife, who seems to spend her days lounging around their spacious two-story New York apartment in glamorous gowns, throwing lavish parties, assisted by a full-time cook, maid, driver and butler. No kids underfoot either. Ah, to be a rich 1930’s housewife! Jean is Clark’s loyal secretary, who says how high when he says jump. A youthful Jimmy Stewart is Jean’s neglected fiancé, who is constantly snubbed by Jean’s work commitments and is growing quite tired of it. Despite the…
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Gossip Friday: Better Be Home Soon
From 1955: When Clark Gable returned from making “The Tall Men” in Durango, Mexico, he brought Kay Spreckels a gold monogrammed ring. Every local columnist insisted it was a wedding ring–but here’s the inside story. The crew of the picture is crazy about Kay, so they pooled their cash and sent the ring to Kay via “The King.” He did call the beautiful blonde every day while he was away. And Kay’s maid summed up the situation, saying “That man better come home soon or he’ll be too broke to marry you!”
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Movie of the Week: Manhattan Melodrama (1934)
This week’s movie is Manhattan Melodrama (1934). Clark Gable is Blackie Gallagher, a gambling, gun-slinging gangster, who remains best friends with his childhood pal, Jim Wade (William Powell), an ambitious lawyer. Blackie’s girl, Eleanor (Myrna Loy) grows tired of the shady side of life and soon falls in love with Jim and marries him. Jim is promoted to district attorney and starts a campaign to become New York’s next governor. When a blackmailer threatens Jim’s campaign, Blackie decides to handle the situation himself and kills the man. On trial, Jim has no choice but to prosecute Blackie and he is sentenced to death. The conviction helps Jim win the election,…
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Gossip Friday: Off the Hinges
From December 1939: Carole Lombard visited the set of the untitled Clark Gable-Joan Crawford picture when some of the early scenes of his escape from a Guinea prison were being filmed. One brief shot showed him running down a corridor and through a door which slammed behind him. But Gable did it so violently that an end section of wall, presumably made of stone, rocked dangerously, and a hinge was torn from the door. Whooped Miss Lombard: “He’s just like that at home!”
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{Photos} Run Silent Run Deep (1958)
Run Silent Run Deep was filmed in cooperation with the United States Navy and aboard the US Redfish submarine. In between takes, Clark Gable apparently spent a great deal of time with the enlisted men onboard, eating meals with them. Burt Lancaster often didn’t join and limited himself to eating with the commanding officers. There are a batch of on the set photos from San Diego: Look at the look this guy is giving Clark:
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Movie of the Week: Run Silent Run Deep (1958)
This week it is Run Silent Run Deep (1958). Much like Somewhere I’ll Find You a few weeks ago, I realized when I sat down to watch this that I hadn’t seen it in a very long time and that I have only seen it twice. Reason being? I don’t much like it. It’s not that it’s bad movie, it’s certainly not. I suppose it is mainly that it is just not my cup of tea; I’ve actually never even formally reviewed it for the website. Clark Gable is Commander Richardson, a steel-willed Navy captain whose submarine is sunk by the Japanese early in World War II. After a year…
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Gossip Friday: Don’t Set Your Watch To It
From November 1933: Studio bound, Clark Gable always sets his watch by a clock on Hollywood Boulevard. And the other day he learned that the clock had been stopped for weeks at 9:30.