Looking at Hollyw D with Ed Sullivan
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CJaic:a~o Sanday Tribane Looking.. at Hollyw d with Ed Sullivan hopped a freight train to Bend, Ore., and learned there that his How Gable uncle had moved away a year earlier." Gable then joined a stock com- Stays at pany headed by Earl Larrimore, but when that f<)lded at Port- land, Ore., he joined the news- Top paper ranks - he' became an advertising solicitor for the Port- By ED SULIJVAN land Oregonian. He was as- signed to the want ad depart- Hollywood. ment, and one day an attractive LARK GABLE starts now ad came in from the Pacific Tel- on his tenth year as a ephone company, so Gable an- C matinee idol, which indi- swered it himself and got the cates that the so-called fickle job. He worked there for a year public is not so fickle as you and with that money headed for ' would believe. It was back in Hollywood. 1930 that Gable's career as a On the Los Angeles stage the matinee idol started and almost young Ohioan played bit parts finished during the filming of with Jane Cowl and Lionel Bar- ••The Painted Desert." They rymore. That graduated him were on location in Arizona, and to the Broadway stage with there was to be a dynamite ex- George M. Cohan, Arthur Hop- plosion of a hill. The perform- kins, and Al H. Woods. Los ers retreated to a spot some Angeles summoned him for the hundreds of yards distant from part of Killer Mears in ••The the explosion when the danger Last Mile," and it was while he was sounded, Gable with the was emoting in that that Pathe rest. The man who prepared scouts signed him. From Pathe the blast was incautious; he he went to Warners, from War- failed to block up the rear of ners to free -lancing, fro m the concussion tunnel, and when free-lancing to "Dance, Fools, the fuse was applied the dyna- Dance" at M-G-M. mite backfired. A huge piece Along the route, betv-een hop- of .roek .came within inches of ping freight trains and hitch- creasing Gable's hair. ••I've hiking, between the Portland never been so close to sudden Oregonian and the Pacific Tele- death," says Gable. The inter- phone company, between the Los na tional picture Angeles stage and Broadway, colony was never Gable's natural gift of tactful- so close to losing ness was confirmed. In addition its No. 1 matinee Clark Gable a. the hoofer in hia co-.tarring picture with Norma Shearer ••• Idiot'. Delight:' he acquired a certain ••savvy" idol. that experience bestows on its The rock, how- " Cody and Lowe turned down launched in the Crawford pic- applause convinced Irving Thal- hardier pupils. The cumulative ever, missed, and the part," says Gable, "because ture, Norma Shearer and Direc- berg that in Gable he had a effects of his background and Gable starts 1939 they thought the fans wouldn't tor Clarence Brown will certify great star. From then 01:1 he hop -scotch existence are very under most favor- like the AI Capone characteriza- that it received its first great was accorded the de luxe treat- evident today. able auspices. He tion. They objected particularly momentum in "A Free Soul." ment of a star, and for nine Personally he is a very like- has completed to one scene in which the gang- Gable was so good in this that years he has held his position able, genuine person. He lives ••Idiot's Delight," ster, after sending his mob out the M-G-M biggies, after view- in the Hollywood parade as the simply, avoids all but rare Hol- with Norma to knock off a rival bootleg king, ing the first rushes (the first No.1 heart-throb generator. lywood parties, spends most of Shearer, and it is pictured seated at the piano scene shop, decid~ to make Where did Gable win this per- his leisure hunting and shootlr-r looks like a playing a strain from Beetho- Gable repugnant to the audience sonal charm that has marked all and fishing, and salts away his real good pic- ven. It seemed to me that this for fear that he'd steal the pic- of his screen characterizations? dough in the bank. Profession- ture. He has scene would carry terrific con- ture from the stars. To accom- The answer is that he always ally he is known to Hollywood started to work trast value in shaping the char- plish this renegade purpose they had it, from the time that he directors as a skilled, competent in ••Gone with acterization of the gangster. I wrote in a scene in which Gable worked on his dad's farm at Ra- workman. He is what tl]e pro- the Wind," and told Stromberg I'd love to play was to give Norma Shearer a venna, O. He says that he fessionals call a "quick study," the character it. That was the picture that violent shove, figuring that the thinks he got his yen for the meaning that he learns his lines of Rhett Butler took me out of the precarious audience would turn from cheers theater from his mother. She quickly and doesn't blow up appears made ranks of bit players. Another to hisses. Instead, so compel- had studied painting In Paris when the cameras are trained ----------- -to order for his bit player at the time was Janet ling was Gable's charm and so and leaned toward that and the on him. In comporting himself talents. Gaynor. I used to drive her furious were audiences at Norma allied arts. His father was more with crowds of fans he is so Gable's long tenure of popu- tty) as a piano-playing Al Ca- home every night from F. B. 0., Shearer's screen role of a phi- matter-of-fact, a Pennsylvania like Jack Dempsey that some- larity can be explained best in pone. The people who figured now RKO, and she never landerer, that when the scene Dutchman who was practical, times it is difficult to dissociate a simile: The big fellow from in Gable's start, were Hunt thought I'd be a matinee idol, was shown at the preview the God-fearing, and a hard worker. them in your mind. I often call Cadiz, 0., has all the ingratiat- Stromberg, the late Lew Cody, and I never thougbt she'd be an customers started applauding It was at Akron, 0., that Gable With Norma Shearer in the picture him" Champ," so strong is the ing charm and tact of Jack Edmund Lowe, and Joan Craw- Academy winner. Gable for shoving her around. launched his theatrical career. that made him a star •.. A Free Soul." impression that Gable i8 Demp- Dempsey. I've never met two ford. To clarify' that muddled If Gable's career really was That spontaneous outburst of Ed Lilly, later associated with sey. persons so alike in their ability statement: Stromberg, M-G-M Earl Carroll on Broadway, had This year undoubtedly will to handle applause as these two, producer and former St. Louis arrived in Akron with a stock find him married to Carole Lom- and their continued popularity sports writer, figured vitally in · C I Full- color pictures of the set W 0 movie stars company, and Gable, who was bard. The groundwork for his testiffus to that ability. Gable, it because he called Gable up St a r SIn, 0 0r appear today on page one of the Picture Section. working as a tire molder in the divorce has been established al- and proposed the par t in rubber factories, served his ap- like Dempsey, never says the LORETTA YOUNG ROBERT TAYLOR ready, entailing a property set- wrong thing to his fans. In- ••Dance, Fools, Dance." Lew prenticeship as a call boy for tlement of some $350,000,which Cody figured in it because pre- • Loretta Young was born Gretchen Young in • Hollywood's gain was the medical profes- the stock company. ••It was out stinctively he knows what to Salt Lake City, Utah, on Jan. 6, 1913. She sion's loss, for Robert Taylor had planned to is more than his year's salary of that that I got my first real say and when to say it. You viously Stromberg had called changed her name to Loretta when she em- become a doctor ever since he was a boy in of $300,000. He and Carole are might continue the parallel by him up to take the part and barked on a motion picture career. For many knee pants. His father was a physician in stage job," recalls Gable, ••with great pals. She likes the things drawing a comparison between Cody rejected it on -the grounds years she studied dancing and hoped to follow Nebraska and wanted Robert to follow in his a tent show that was routed to that appeal to him, and her Gene Tunney and Rudy Vallee. that the gangster role would it as her career. Her plans were changed, footsteps. While at Pomona college, a short Montana. The tent show fold- light-heartedness is a foil for his These two are as much alike in alienate the affections of his however, quite by accident, when she volun- distance from Hollywood. he became interested ed, so Phil Phillips, the pianist, natural seriousness. reactions and expressions as any fans. Ditto Edmund Lowe, who teered to take her sister Polly Ann's part in a in dramatics and appeared in most of the col- and I decided to strike out for Carole Lombard and Gable other pair-a trifie uneasy with at the time was the leading picture because Polly Ann happened to be out lege plays.