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Gossip Friday: Clark Cleans Up
From February 1, 1942: Having just returned home from a three months vacation, Clark Gable found the desk in his dressing room piled high with all sorts of communications–most of them marked “Urgent.” As he glanced through them he saw that the urgency had passed. By that time he was deep in that job that everybody dreads–cleaning out a desk. He remembered suddenly that he had not straightened it out for eight or ten years. Memories flooded as strange mementos that told much of the story of his life, with its triumphs and defeats, were revealed. Way back in one of the drawers was a box containing a gold crown.…
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Happy Birthday, Clark Gable
William Clark Gable was born February 1, 1901 in Cadiz, Ohio. The only child of William “Bill” and Adeline “Addie” Gable arrived at 5:30am in the middle of a raging snowstorm, and weighed ten and a half pounds. To celebrate, there is a new series of articles on the site that were written by Adela Rogers St. Johns, a dear friend of Clark’s (so much so that there were rumors for years that one of her sons was not her husband’s but Clarks…she always denied it). Adela wrote them after Clark’s death in November 1960 to eulogize her friend. Some snippets: The king is dead. Long live the king, because…
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Gossip Friday: Dozed Off
From January 1938: Clark Gable is an actor who knows how to relax. In “Test Pilot” there is a sequence in which he is supposed to be asleep while other players carry on action and dialog. For the rehearsal, Gable lay down and really dozed off. Director Victor Fleming woke him up, saying: “I’m afraid you might ruin a take by yawning, or talking in your sleep, or snoring.”
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Gossip Friday: He’s Not Dead
From January 1938: Clark Gable, who’s had to deny his death more frequently even than Mark Twain, reported today that such denials are a real satisfaction to him. “It always gives me great pleasure to tell the newspaper reporters that I am alive,” he said. “The only thing I can’t understand is how and why I’m always being killed–in somebody’s imagination.” Last time Gable lost his life, via the rumor route, the report came from Washington and kept him up most of the night telling callers how happy he was to be alive. “But while I slept, one of those rumors started again. It must have gone pretty far, because…
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Remembering Carole Lombard
Carole Lombard was killed on January 16, 1942, when the plane carrying her, her mother, MGM publicity man and the Gables’ friend Otto Winkler, and several others, crashed into Mount Potosi outside Las Vegas. Carole was only 33. You can read more about her death here. From the Associated Press, February 1, 1942: So much has been written on the subject of Carole Lombard’s tragic death that almost any sentiment must be a repetition of other tributes to her. However, a few paragraphs that appeared recently in the Motion Picture Herald sum up Hollywood’s feelings so adequately, they bear reprinting. “Hollywood,” states the writer, “is mourning Carole Lombard as it…
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{New Article} 1950: Clark and Sylvia
New to the website is a series of syndicated newspaper articles written 74 years ago this week. The media was in a frenzy because, out of the clear blue, Clark Gable had hurriedly gotten married just before Christmas 1949 and hightailed it to Hawaii. The game of “who would be the next Mrs. Gable” had been played practically since Carole Lombard’s funeral eight years prior. Any woman Clark was pictured out with was declared to be the one. The British, thrice-married widow of Douglas Fairbanks Sr. was a shock then and it’s still a shock now. 74 years later, it still isn’t clear what on earth Clark was thinking. There…
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Gossip Friday: No Marriage
From January 1955 (Louella Parsons): A rumor from several sources today had Clark Gable and Kay Williams Spreckels, ex-wife of multi-millionaire Adolph Spreckels, in an elopement. A telephone call to the Gable home in the San Fernando Valley brought the information that Gable was week-ending at the ranch home of a friend and that he and Mrs. Spreckels were expected home for dinner. When questioned about a marriage, the servant who answered the phone said: “As far as I know, there isn’t any marriage.” A few days before Christmas, Mrs. Spreckels stopped at my house and when I asked if she and “The King,” as the popular Gable is known,…
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Gossip Friday: Steal from Spencer
From January 1939: Clark Gable’s New Year resolution is “to steal a scene from Spencer Tracy,” while Spencer Tracy is anxious just to “do the best I can in the roles I get.”
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2023 in Review
Happy New Year! 2023 was a very challenging year for this website, and nothing I wanted to accomplish got done. This is because for several months, the site was hijacked by hackers which turned it into a Russian gambling site. I spent countless hours and ridiculous amounts of money to get it back online. Why on earth it seemed a lucrative idea to hijack a Clark Gable website and have it redirected to Russian gambling I will never know. It was such a frustrating process I came very close to just throwing in the towel, quite frankly. The good news is is that everything is back and in order with…
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Gossip Friday: New Years Eve at the Races
From December 31, 1939: California raised the curtain on its fifth winter horse-racing season today when a record opening turnout of 40,000 watched Neil McCarthy’s entry, Dear Diary and Morning Breeze, run one-two in a $10,000 added stakes for home bred two-year-olds… Scores of prominent film personalities mingled in the exclusive turf club, among them Cary Grant and Virginia Pine, Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, Bing Crosby and his wife, the former Dixie Lee, Joe E. Brown, Al Jolson, Constance Bennett and dozens of others.
