They Did Get Back Together After All ...


I’ve always heard these two didn’t really hit it off during Gone With The Wind. I think the story got started with that Ann Edwards book on Vivien Leigh. Not that they actually fought or anything --- just weren’t each other’s type, apparently. But I’d always wondered if they ever met up again --- like at a party or a premiere or something. We know Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh never worked together after Gone With The Wind, but surely they occupied the same space at some point. Well, here’s two shots I’ve found so far --- the only two --- and since I don’t expect to encounter more, now’s as good a time as any to present them both for quick comparison. The first is from from 1940 --- Gable’s visiting the set of Waterloo Bridge --- the two look convivial enough here, don’t you think? He probably dropped over from Comrade X or Strange Cargo. The nightclub pose is ten years later, and you can really see the miles on both their faces. They’d both endured a war up close, Gable had lost one wife and unwisely took another, Vivien was headed toward her own emotional tumult that would shorten her career (although it was around this time, 1950, that she started work on A Streetcar Named Desire). If I could have approached their table that night, I would have probably told Clark to put out that nasty cigarette and never, ever smoke another one --- then when I regained consciousness out in the parking lot an hour or so later, I would perhaps ask the Mike Mazurki/I Walk Alone looking doorman/bouncer if he would please go to the kitchen and bring me back a piece of raw meat for my black eye. But I would have at least gotten that Surgeon General’s warning to Gable (even if it was fifteen years early), and done my good deed for the evening.