by David Bret
Jean Harlow’s death had a sobering effect of Clark. Though Carole remained her zany self - publicly deriding him for wearing dentures and for being uncircumcised, though why this should have been a touchy subject is not known - he withdrew into his shell. There were fewer parties and visits to friends’ houses, more hunting-shooting-fishing trips, which enabled him to meditate in peace. What surprised his ‘outdoor buddies’ is that Carole tagged along, not just for the ride or to augment the scenery, but to muck in with everybody else. Clark’s friends were initially horrified by her crude language, the way she pronounced when she and Clark were about to slope off for a little romance, ‘Excuse us, guys, we’re off to fuck in the duck-bind! ’ The Travis Banton gowns still hung in her closet, but these days the fan magazines photographed her most frequently in hacking jacket and corduroy trousers.
One such shot appeared in Chicago’s Herald Tribune in November 1937 when, in conjunction with columnist (later legendary show host) Ed Sullivan, the paper ran a nationwide poll, syndicated with 50 other publications, to find the King and Queen of Hollywood. For most readers, glamour was all that counted, so Carole in her new get-up stood little chance against the likes of the no-less sophisticated Constance Bennett and Claudette Colbert. Sullivan later claimed the idea for the competition stemmed from a comment made by Spencer Tracy while driving his car through a throng of autograph hunters on the set of Test Pilot. He is supposed to have leaned out of his car and bawled, ‘All hail the King!’ The film had yet to begin shooting - the utterance actually occurred in It Happened One Night, when Peter Warne had been ushered on to the night bus by his reporter pals.
Clear favourites Clark and Myrna Loy romped past the winning post - allegedly by way of rigged voting and a cash injection from MGM - and were presented with their crowns by Sullivan on 8 September at the El Capitano Theater. Clark tried to play down his ‘regal’ role, dismissing it as ‘bullshit’ and telling Ben Maddox, ‘I eat, sleep and go to the bathroom like the next guy. So why treat me different to anybody else?’ He was, of course, different from everyone else, and he knew it. For the rest of his life, Clark would be known as the King - a title relinquished only after his death and passed on to Elvis Presley.
His next film, Test Pilot, would prove one of his most successful to date, though at the time few would cotton on to its allegorical message. Directed by Victor Fleming, now a close friend, it co-starred Spencer Tracy, Lionel Barrymore - and ‘Queen’ Myrna Loy, who since Jean Harlow’s death had been elevated to MGM’s top female star. The locations were filmed at the Air Corps base at March Field, Riverside, permitting Clark to escape the artificiality of Hollywood for a while and spend quality time in the company he preferred. He began what would prove a lifelong friendship with an engineer named Al Menasco, a former World War I test pilot hired by Fleming to put him through his paces for the film’s aerial sequences.
Ben Maddox compared Clark’s Jim Lane and Tracy’s Gunner Morris with Don Quixote and his loyal servant, Sancho Panza: the daredevil aviator and the cloying grease monkey who fusses over him like an over-anxious mother. Maddox was, of course, as one in the know, accurately interpreting the film’s homosexual subtext. Modern-day audiences might perceive the pair as ‘fuck-buddies’ - the theory being that if, during their exploits, no suitable females could be found to alleviate the tension, then each other’s company would suffice. This is displayed in a scene which would have gone over the heads of Thirties heterosexual audiences when Jim takes a prostitute back to the hotel room he shares with Gunner, only to have him send her away. The claim is that Jim needs his rest for the next day’s aerial manoeuvres, though cynics might argue that Gunner wants him all to himself. This was clearly the intention of gay scriptwriter Waldemar Young, with whom Clark had a ferocious argument over some of the ‘faggish’ dialogue between him and Tracy that he wanted toned down. To his way of thinking, red-blooded pilots did not recite poetry or quote from the classics! Even his love interest in the film, Myrna Loy, is one of the guys, knowing more about baseball than he does. And, as invariably happens in Hollywood gay-themed dramas (Philadelphia, Brokeback Mountain, etc.), one of the protagonists has to die so that the one remaining might hopefully achieve so-called ‘normality’ after the credits have rolled. Gunner Morris is crushed to death, expiring heroically while his buddy, as close to tears as his over-enforced machismo will permit, risks pronouncing, ‘I love you, Gunner!’
Clark’s biographer, Warren G. Harris, also makes the unforgivable error of adhering to Gable’s own perturbing theory that gay translates only as effete when he observes, ‘Gable and Tracy both had such masculine images that there was no chance of their Test Pilot relationship being interpreted as homosexual’. Clark had already dispelled this theory with the half-dozen or so man-to-man liaisons he had more than willingly entered into.
While making the film, he began a rare, entirely platonic relationship with a woman - his first since Josephine Dillon. Carole had just completed Fools For Scandal, which had been so savaged by the critics that she announced a temporary retirement from the movies, she said, to play nursemaid to friends who needed her more than the ‘shitty studios’. Madalynne Fields was about to marry the director Walter Lang, too, and Carole wanted to handle the arrangements. She had also just taken in the scriptwriter Donald Ogden Stewart, recently separated from his wife and suffering the after-effects of a serious accident. Living with her too was ex-husband William Powell, still in shock after losing Jean Harlow, and recovering from cancer treatment. She was therefore too preoccupied to worry about what Clark might have been getting up to with 21-year-old former child star Virginia Grey (1917-2004) - who never wed, she claimed towards the end of her life, because if she could not have Gable, no other man would do!
Clark wanted Virginia to co-star in his next film, Too Hot To Handle, but she had already been assigned to another project - and in any case, MGM did not yet consider her leading lady material. Therefore he was once more teamed up with Myrna Loy. This time she was the famous aviatress who crash lands her plane and falls for the newsreel photographer (Clark), who rescues her. What she does not know is that he is the one responsible for almost killing her, forcing her to land in a field where his rivals can’t get to her.
In May 1938, the Gable-Lombard affair was finally regarded as official by the press when Photoplay published a lengthy feature: ‘Can The Gable-Lombard Love Story Have A Happy Ending?’ Its writer, Edward Doherty, drew comparisons between the roles the couple played on the screen and what was happening in real life. Though he tried not to be judgmental - he was obviously a huge fan of both - it did not take him long to get to the point:
A beautiful blonde girl, witty and winsome and wise, in love with a debonair actor who has been married a number of years and whose wife is unwilling to divorce him. What will happen? How will the characters react? How will the story end? Will the wife step gracefully aside, someday, and allow her husband to marry the younger woman? Will she wait in patience, knowing that time oft withers infatuation . . . or will the girl, tired of waiting, give the man up? Will there be tragedy? Or will the last reel of the drama be played to the chime of wedding bells?
Hollywood, Doherty added, had always been eager to promote synthetic on-screen romances between its stars, but when it came to the real thing, it did its utmost to protect them from the world outside the confines of the studio. Everyone in America knew, courtesy of the Hollywood press, that the Gables had separated and that Clark sometimes escorted Carole here and there. But the press had been reluctant to tell the truth about Gable and Lombard, until now:
[Hollywood] has given no hint of the heartaches that must exist deep below the surface of the story: the anguish, the yearning, the bitterness, the tears. This isn’t a Springtime love affair, but it has poignancy and beauty for all that. Here are two people in the full splendid summer of their lives, with the sun of fame and fortune shining brightly on them - and autumn coming on apace. Here is the wife, the charming, culture
d, sophisticated Mrs Rhea [sic] Gable, watching the two with emotions no one knows. What will the autumn bring her - restored serenity, or gray despair, loneliness or peace? Perhaps if Carole and Clark had met in the Springtime of their lives they would have been merely infatuated with each other. But it is not so now. They have experienced too much of life to trifle with anything so endearing as real love. They have suffered too much, learned too much to take love lightly . . . Stories in every newspaper every day indicate that love dies many deaths. Carole’s love for William Powell died. Clark’s love for Josephine died. His love for Rhea is dying, if it be not dead.
While Clark and Carole regarded Doherty’s feature as mere gossip, Louis B. Mayer was furious, but terrified of taking any action against Clark just yet on account of the discussions still taking place about Gone With The Wind. Mayer knew that, with his decidedly short fuse and despite the cost to himself, financially and career-wise, Gable would not think twice about walking out on the picture. He had threatened this already, for any number of reasons; therefore it was imperative that the studio get his signature on the contract. Yet it took until 25 August for MGM to officially announce that he would be playing Rhett Butler. He was photographed signing the contract with David Selznick and Louis B. Mayer - forcibly smiling and cursing from the corner of his mouth. He had just been told that if he rejected the part, in view of the Photoplay feature he would be suspended indefinitely without pay and would probably never work in Hollywood again. The starting date for Gone With The Wind had been set for 5 January 1939. Meanwhile, he was put into Idiot’s Delight with Norma Shearer.
Since last working together, Gable and Shearer had seen a reversal of fortune. He was at the peak of his popularity, while she was no longer a massive name - her last film, Marie Antoinette, had bombed. But as a major shareholder with MGM she still held tremendous sway over the parts she was offered, even if this meant riding roughshod over colleagues. According to a story fabricated by Howard Strickling, Margaret Mitchell declared Shearer too ladylike to portray her flighty heroine - this resulted in MGM receiving hundreds of letter from Shearer fans, pleading with her to turn the role down. In fact, the woman mockingly referred to by Carole Lombard as ‘Scarlett Goldberg’ had never been offered the part in the first place. The further announcement that she had begged Louis B. Mayer to let her do Idiot’s Delight with Clark was another fib - and one that would lead to his first serious quarrel with Carole. He made the mistake of telling Carole how Shearer often turned up on set wearing no panties under her clinging gowns while shooting Strange Interlude. And when Carole made one crack too many in front of friends about his ‘lack of staying power’ and his ‘small appendage’, he shot back that he had not received any complaints from Norma the last time around, and doubtless there would be none now!
Robert Sherwood’s Pulitzer Prize-winning prophetic, anti-Fascist drama had taken Broadway by storm two years earlier, with Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne as the two principal tourists stranded at an Italian ski resort on the eve of the outbreak of an unspecified war. By the time the movie version was released in January 1939 this looked like becoming reality. Lunt played song-and-dance man Harry Van and Fontanne was the Russian countess who is actually a meagre trapeze artiste with whom he enjoyed a one-night stand some years ago, a casual affair she has completely forgotten about.
Sherwood was roped in to write the screenplay, which had to be vetted by the Hays Office to ensure every trace of political content and innuendo had been removed - this meant any references to Italy and Mussolini, including the snatches of Italian dialogue pronounced by soldiers and bit parts. Foolishly, these were now delivered in Esperanto - and to completely ruin the piece, the setting was moved to Switzerland.
To perfect Clark’s interpretation of Harry Van, director Clarence Brown sent him on a two-week song-and-dance course - his big moment in the film comes when he performs a pretty zappy ‘Puttin’ On The Ritz’. Clark tried to get out of the routine, but Brown persisted, and on his first day of rehearsals - in front of the other students - he received a package from Carole. It contained his costume - a ballet dancer’s tutu, a pair of size 11 slippers and a sequinned jockstrap with his initials which, had he been brave enough to wear them, would have proved no less camp than the film’s scenario. In the original play, Robert Sherwood intimates that the tourists are about to be annihilated by enemy bombs - they laugh and sing while fearlessly awaiting their fate. In the film version it would have been considered unthinkable to allow A-list stars to perish in a holocaust, so the enemy planes are made to go away while the former lovers sing hymns! Hugely entertaining, but clap-trap nonetheless.
Joan Crawford visited the set, furious that ‘No-Tits Norma’, as she called her, could have been offered such a role when she could neither dance nor sing. Nor, declared Joan, did she have any experience playing loose women - the part should have gone to herself, or Carole Lombard. Louis B. Mayer calmed her down by casting her as superbitch Crystal Allen in The Women - another Shearer picture to be directed by George Cukor, which would prove the top-grossing film of 1939 after Gone With The Wind. The production would more or less herald the end of Shearer’s illustrious career. Shortly after completing it, she cast discretion to the winds by having a very public affair with ‘two-way blade’ George Raft. Her swan song in 1942, Her Cardboard Lover, would see her woefully miscast opposite Robert Taylor. Reputedly out of respect for Irving Thalberg, she never married again. She died in June 1983, aged 80, and was interred by his side.
Carole soon learned that Shearer posed much less of a threat than an extra hired to play one of Harry Van’s chorines. Lana Turner (1921-95) had been discovered at 15, sitting at the counter in the Top Hat Cafe, by the Hollywood Reporter’s Billy Wilkerson, who was famed for bedding under-age girls. Wilkerson had introduced her to fellow lust-merchant Zeppo Marx, then out of the movies and working as an agent. He found her work as an extra in A Star Is Born, released in 1937. That same year - and though anything but - she had answered the call from Mervyn LeRoy, who was on the lookout for a ‘sexy but virginal’ murder victim for They Won’t Forget. LeRoy put Lana in a tight skirt that exaggerated her narrow hips and a tight-fitting sweater under which she had worn a silk-lined non-uplifting bra, which encouraged her ample breasts to bounce as she walked.
Henceforth labelled ‘The Sweater Girl’, Turner became an overnight sensation, entering Hollywood folklore as one of the film capital’s most-slept-with stars. Eventually she would work her way through eight husbands. Almost certainly she was fired from Idiot’s Delight because Carole suspected her of getting too close to Clark. And once again the old ‘appendicitis’ chestnut was used as an excuse for dropping out of the production voluntarily - or rather the alleged removal of scar tissue from a botched appendectomy of 1935. Even so, in the not-too-distant future she would re-enter Gable’s life with a vengeance.
So far as is known, Carole Lombard remained faithful to Clark until the very end, whereas he cheated on her whenever the opportunity arose. If anything, their first bust-up brought them closer, and they kept on addressing each other as ‘Ma’ and ‘Pa’. Tired of trying to persuade Clark to divorce Ria, Carole set about finding them a house in the country, where they would be able to hunt, fish and live in sin to their hearts’ content, far from the prying eyes of the Hays Office and studio spies.
Carole’s house-hunting, and the fact that Joan Crawford was ‘seeking comfort’ from Clark following her separation from Franchot Tone, was picked up on by Kirtley Baskette, a reporter from Photoplay. Joan had ordered him out of her house four years earlier when the questions had become too personal and Joan’s expletives had turned the air blue. Baskette’s Knack, which made him one of the most despised hacks in Hollywood, was delving deeply into the private lives of stars and jumping to career-threatening conclusions, which were usually spot on. He had recently bumped into Joan at a party, asked her outright if she and Clark were having an affair, and been told, ‘Oh, I can assure you, Mr Baskette,
Mr Gable and I are very definitely just good friends!’. Of course this brought him to the conclusion that they were lovers and led to his writing a nasty exposé in the January 1939 issue of Photoplay, which hit the newsstands earlier than usual, on 11 December - just in time to ruin his victims’ festive period. For the time being, however, Clark and Carole did not see it for that same morning they embarked on a skiing holiday to Sun Valley, Idaho.
In his uncensored feature, ‘Hollywood’s Unmarried Husbands And Wives’, Baskette singled out five ‘living-in-sin’ couples who had been thrust under the Hollywood spotlight. Joan Crawford and Franchot Tone should have been included, but Baskette was saving them for a special ‘exclusive’ that, in the wake of this one, would never see the light of day. Baskette sarcastically observed how Virginia Pine always ensured that George Raft had his favourite meal waiting on the table when he arrived home and assumed that Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Taylor must have been cohabiting because they lived on adjoining ranches. Also how there was absolutely no proof that Charlie Chaplin and the much younger Paulette Goddard had tied the knot; how Gilbert Roland had been Constance Bennett’s devoted slave for years - and how Clark Gable and Carole Lombard might as well have been married, the way they were carrying on:
Unwed couples they might be termed, but they go everywhere together, do everything in pairs. No hostess would think of inviting them separately, or pairing them with another. They solve one another’s problems, handle each other’s business affairs. They build houses near each other, buy land in bunches, take up each other’s hobbies, father or mother each other’s children - even correct each other’s clothes, each other’s personalities. Yet to the world, their official status is ‘just friends’, no more.