TV and Movies

[Oznell]

Not sure if anyone mentioned yet that Gable is featured every Tuesday and Wednesday in May on TCM.  Notable entry tonite is "Manhattan Melodrama" at 12:45 a.m. Eastern with Myrna Loy and William Powell...

I've appreciated Clark Gable more as i've gotten older.  Somewhere on TCM they have a quote from Frank Capra, who directed him in "It Happened One Night".  It went to the effect that in real life he was the most like his character in that movie, nice guy reporter Peter Warne, who helps runaway heiress Claudette Colbert.   Capra said something like "He was a down to earth guy, loved everything, he got down with the common people".

In this day of kind of wishy-washy male stars, the unambiguously masculine spirit of actors like Gable, John Wayne and Joel McCrea really stand out, in a good way.  Gable was tough but he did have an unmistakable tender side.  His own favorite performance that he gave was tellingly, of the broken-down, but sweet modern cowboy in "The Misfits"....

I must really like him, b/c I'm not at all fond of mustaches or any facial hair, and yet he's still tops with me.  I also love his slightly flat, Midwestern accent that never strays from his roots.  Perhaps one of the least pretentious actors of the movie Greats...

[TexasMom1]

i am taping many of the CG shows for sure! I absolutely love him with Myrna Loy as well as Claudette Colbert. I can't really say any of our current actresses or actors will ever reach the caliber of the stars in the 30's and the 40's. 

I equate the pairings mentioned above with the movies Irene Dunne made with Cary Grant. Amazing. 

I am a huge TCM fan! 

[Big Sister]

Thank you for the reminder,  I saw the movies on the TV Guide listing last night.  I'm planning to watch.

[Oznell]

TexasMom1-- Ditto to every one of your assessments!

[Mmsfoxxie]

IMO, the movies these days can't touch movies with Clark Gable, James Stewart, Ronald Coleman, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Claudette Colbert, Myrna Loy.  And a bunch more that I can't remember right now.  Thirties, forties and fifties, those were the movies.

I very seldom watch movies today and consider it very, very good.

There's a movie on right now called Wife vs Secretary starring Clark Gable, Jean Harlow and Myrna Loy.  Very good but simple movie.

[Lapdog]

There is  a clip on Youtube of Clark dressed in Tophat and Tails dancing to "Puttin" on the Ritz"  very cool.

[twinsister]

One of my favorite Clark Gable movies is It Started in Naples with Sophia Loren.  A cute, romantic comedy from 1959 or 1960.   He was so handsome in Gone with the Wind, especially at the beginning when he was standing at the foot of the stairs.

[Oznell]

Lapdog, I had forgotten about that playful clip of a young Clark performing "Puttin On the Ritz" with "Les Blondes".   Cute!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij22kyvf2ps

[culebra]

We all will never forget him as Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind! It was perfect casting.

[Mmsfoxxie]

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@Oznell wrote:

Lapdog, I had forgotten about that playful clip of a young Clark performing "Puttin On the Ritz" with "Les Blondes".   Cute!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij22kyvf2ps

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Oh, I don't think I've seen this before.  Great dancing but the singing was terrible, lol.  I think that woman was Norma Shearer, another favorite of mine.  Gable was very slim in that movie.