Photoplay (Jan - Jun 1942)

Record Details:

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how wild he was to get into service, so he had told the studio to shut up about it. They had had to do a lot of talking to dissuade him from joining up. Even when they had wished Lowell Mellett, out from Washington, on him and Mellett had said that Gable's real job was to provide entertainment, keep up morale by his comedy and his dame appeal, plus paying his gigantic taxes, he'd been only half-persuaded. Now Carole had scooped him on the bond-selling, but she'd also shown him the way he, too, could work for the government. A publicity man stuck his head in at the Gable dressing-room door. "Ready to go to the airport?" he asked. "And how!" Gable said. "Drive over with me, will you?" The publicity man's name was Larry Barbier and like everyone else at M-G-M, straight from the lowliest grip to Louis B. Mayer, there wasn't anything he wouldn't delight in doing for Gable. So, of course, he went to the airport and, on arriving there, he suggested the star stay in his car until he, Barbier, found out just when the plane was to arrive. Thus it was that Larry was the first person at M-G-M to sense the tragedy that had happened against the wild sides of Table Mountain in Nevada. Not that the airport officials told him the truth. They themselves didn't know it then, but they were evasive about where the plane was, when it was due to come in. Larry knew something was wrong, so, stalling for time, he went outside again to Gable in the car. "Plane had to make an unexpected stop at Las Vegas," he said. "Looks like they'll be at least an hour and a half late. Why don't you go out to the ranch and the moment I get any definite news about its arrival I'll call you and you can hop right over." "Fine," said Gable. "I'll go home and work up a few more gags." Carole Lombards Greatest JVish By WILLIAM F. FRENCH CAROLE LOMBARD'S own words prove that the tragedy which leaves Hollywood stunned and sorrowful consummated her greatest wish. In three old notebooks of mine can be read that wish. Scrawled in shorthand are her words the day she ordered the blanket of gardenias for Russ Columbo's coffin, in September 1934: "I can't say anything, except that — maybe — if it had to happen — it did when Russ was happy. The poor fellow had waited so long for a real chance — and — well — when this — this happened ... he had the taste of success in his mouth. He was — well — picked in full bloom. That's the way I hope it will be with me ... I don't want to just wait . . . and wilt . . . But don't use this in Russ's story." I didn't. Scratched in another notebook, not long after Will Rogers flew into the horizon with Wiley Post, are Carole's words: "How many of us in Hollywood can hope to go out like that — doing something worth while — not just outliving our usefulness. What better end than serving right to the last minute — then stepping out, leaving friends to complete our unfinished business? And, according to the pothooks in a notebook full of passing thoughts Carole and I were once trying to form into a magazine editorial, she said: "Jean (Harlow) had it — a humanness that makes your passing leave a void no one can ever quite fill. If I had that, the other fellow could have the Oscars." I remember that I looked at her and marveled. For to me— and to all Hollywood — Lombard spilled humanness with every step — like a man carrying a brimming pail. She just couldn't hold in her gaiety; laughter, friendliness and camaraderie got out of hand to drench unsuspecting bystanders. For Carole was inclusive, not exclusive. Her tempo was a perpetual challenge to gloom. Of course everyone in Hollywood knows (Continued on page 79) It was in the same car he and Carole had driven so many places together that Gableheard thetragicnews That was already an old famil custom with Clark and Carole. When ever they were separated for even day, they gave each other present strictly goofy ones, strictly for laugh like the ham she had originally ser him when he was courting her. or tb cast-iron, life-sized statue of himse he had sent her. Now he had ever nook of the ranch house loaded wit such nonsense gifts and he could fair! hear the hoots of robust laughter th; she would yip forth at sight of ther It was an hour later that Lan. phoned him and told him to come ova to the airport quick. Larry didrj add that meantime he'd engaged transport plane to fly to Nevada art that he'd rounded up Eddie ManniJ the vice-president of Metro, and Dq Mcllwaine, a Metro publicity man \vl just happened to be dining at t airport, and that Howard Strickl the M-G-M publicity head and of Gable's closest friends, was speec^ ing toward the airport, too. The most popular man in the mov( world got gaily into his car and turnt on his radio to a record station. ::: 3D He wanted (Continued on page photoplay combined with movie mi 8,