THE DAY CLARK GABLE CAME TO TOWN

What happened to me between that warm summer day when I was eleven or twelve, and the day nine or ten years later when Wallace Beery strolled into the bar where I was having a drink?

Or the day Don Ameche somewhat breathlessly walked up to the jeep where I was operating the public address system and asked me if this was where "the jocks were playing."

Or when my big brother Franz jumped up from the table where we were eating, and asked popular bandleader Joe Reichman for his autograph?

What happened?


Gable was passing through my hometown on his way from Glacier Park back to Hollywood when my chum Jimmy Todd and I happened to run into Jimmy's father coming from the Montana Hotel. “Clark Gable is in the lobby and you may be able to see him if you get over there,” he told us.

Get over there we did. And there he was sitting at a ridiculously small table in the worn-at-the-edges lobby writing postcards. It was a hotel with a storefront lobby, and rooms upstairs you walked up to, which probably were offices at one time. I was a little embarrassed by it--as I was with so much of my Kalispell, Montana hometown when I saw tourists.

One of Gable's postcards I happened to see was addressed to Carole Lombard--or did I just fancy that? There were only two or three other people there, watching him in respectful and somewhat awed silence. It added to the specialness of the
occasion.

When it looked like he was about ready to leave, Jimmy and I skipped outside where we had seen his sporty canary-yellow, two-seated, convertible roadster crouching at the curb. I'd never seen such a car; so Hollywood it was. The top was down, with California license plates, and it gleamed in the summer sun. Its curves were mesmerizing.

It was one of those cars with those huge wheels, with gloriously white sidewall tires. I don’t know whose idea it was, but Jimmy had a pencil and we proceeded to pencil our initials on those tires. When he came out something possessed us to point out what we had done; we didn’t truly know what to expect.

But by golly he flashed that famous Gable grin and said, “That’s neat, Buddies!” Buddies! Then we asked him for his autograph, while others stood and watched--admiring us, I was sure. He asked us our names and scribbled out autographs on hastily produced scraps of paper.

Then, this Great Man, who'd transported me in “Mutiny On The Bounty,” “Call Of The Wild,” “San Francisco” and other unforgettable movies shook our hands, and hopped in his roadster. When he started it up it growled, and then settled into a sound like a snoring lion sleeping off gorging on an antelope. It was a fitting departure, and I was sure as he drove away he waved and said, “So long, Buddies!”

This was too much. This we needed to tell others about. We headed for the one place we knew we could probably find people to tell--the soda fountain down on the corner. We walked in proudly and began going up to people saying, “Shake the hand that shook the hand of Clark Gable,” proudly showing them the autographs. People were more excited by the news that he had been in town.

Now it so happened that one of the soda jerks was a girl I'd had my eye on for sometime. The only trouble was--apart from the plethora of troubles a kid on the cusp of his teens could have with such delicate matters--she was a couple of years older than I was. About to enter high school! A big difference during those years.

When I showed her Gable's autograph I was ready to bask in the glory of the moment: she obviously envied it.

“What’ll you take for it, Tommy?”

I was almost knocked off my stool, and couldn't come up with an answer right away. But I enjoyed the feeling of having her so interested in me. Finally, I decided the fitting exchange for such a treasure was something I'd never had enough money to buy. The thought of getting a kiss from her had crossed my feverish mind, but only for a moment.

“How about a double chocolate malted milk shake?” Mary Jane suggested. That was something as out of reach for me as, well, Mary Jane almost.

I greedily tied into the milk shake she had made--but now I'd lost my cachet as far as she was concerned. She was staring--much too affectionately, I thought--at the autograph. Maybe, I'd settled for too little.

Oh, well, I comforted myself, maybe she'll see my name on the autograph and it will remind her of me.

It was in 1944 when I was sitting in a bar and restaurant in Santa Monica, which I was told by a rather excited patron was owned by Wallace Beery. "Oh?" I responded, totally unruffled. Oh, I was so cool!

You may be too young to know or remember who Wallace Beery was--one of Hollywood's Top 10 box office stars in the 30s. I remembered him especially for his role as Long John Silver in Treasure Island. And who should walk into that bart but--you guessed it!--Wallace Berry. Heads turned, as they will even in Los Angeles, but I deliberately resisted the impulse to do the same.

I sat looking straight ahead, sipping my drink. I wasn’t going to join the gawkers! There was something demeaning about it; as if an admission of a lower status. As if I was admitting I was nothing but a hick from the sticks of Montana. I'd had enough of that.

Ditto with Don Ameche. He'd made his film debut in 1935 and by the late 1930s, he had established himself as a leading actor. But I remembered him most as a major radio star, especially when he played opposite Frances Langford in The Bickersons, a comedy series about two married people always at one another's throat.

Well, I was sitting in a jeep running the public address system in a baseball field in Coronado, just up the Strand from the Amphibious Forces base where I was stationed. A local team was playing a team of jockeys in some sort of benefit game. One of the jocks’ sponsors was Ameche, and up he walks.

“Is this the game the jocks are playing in?” he asks. Dashing, romantic Don Ameche, star of radio and screen! For a moment I had the feeling of some sort of equality between us. Even such a trivial thing as asking me for information seemed to put me in a new place with this celeb.

Did I ask for his autograph as I had with Clark Gable? No way. I effected the manner of a person accustomed to having such people in his life every day. I had the distant manner I would show any stranger, and carefully avoided doing anything that would suggest that I knew who he was. Or that I was deferring to him; or was a fan gone ga-ga over him. I quietly said, “Yup.” And that was it.

In a convoluted way I was trying to tell myself I wasn’t inferior--not even to Don Ameche or Wallace Beery. I was trying to be strong by not refusing to put myself in thrall to anyone. I was the anti-hero, like those movie cowboys I watched at the Saturday afternoon movies (when I had the 10 cents for a ticket). They would sit nobly but silently on their horses refusing to kowtow to anyone.

It wasn’t that I didn’t recognized the high status of celebs/ Oh, I did. That's the problem. I was fully aware of who they were, while resisting the desire to just stare at them, and enjoy that awesome feeling that comes when you are in the presence of someone or something great. I wasn’t about to allow that to make my behavior any different from how I would act around non-celebrities. I was above all that!

To admit their greatness, their celebrityhood, or whatever it was that made them stand out, was for me an admission that I was inferior.

I also held those who kow-towed to "important people" as beneath me. And when others who I held in high regard did it, I would be disappointed.

As I was the night my Big Brother sought an autograph from orchestra leader Joe Reichman--and Big Brother went down a notch or two on my admiration scale.

It was 1945 and Franz and I had met up at the famed Biltmore Bowl in L.A. He was there for a radio broadcasters meeting; I was on shore leave, and we were going to fly to Montana next day.

Eating dinner where the Oscars were handed out, and serenaded by the Joe Reichman Orchestra, with a floor show, no less, was way beyond what this simple 20-year-old lad from the Montana boondocks would have dared to expect. It took some effort and attention for me to muster the nonchalance that would show others this was no big thing for me.

Reichman recorded 80 sides between 1934 and 1942. He was also a favorite of Franz's wife Helen. And when the orchestra took a break he walked up the tiered aisle in our direction. He was going to walk right by us.

Suddenly, Franz jumped up right in front of him, pen and paper in hand, and asked him for his autograph. Franz told him about Helen and Reichman smiled and graciously signed. Then he spotted me and came to the table with a big smile, his hand extended. He was asking to shake hands with me!

It must have been my Chief Petty Officer uniform, I thought, and people in L.A. were much more friendly toward servicemen than people in San Diego. No one else had stopped Reichman, or seemed particularly impressed as he walked by. Some even paid no attention to him.

I shook his hand, trying hard to act like it was the sort of thing I did most any day.

Here's the first offer of a viewer's post for us to ponder, author unknown. Viewer notes: "Oh, the possibilities of expanding ideas of doing under-the-table and black market pee-dealing..or urine sample scalping in front of theaters on opening night...."

THE JOB - URINE TEST

(Whoever wrote this one deserves a HUGE pat on the back!)

Like most folks in this country, I have a job. I work; they pay me. I pay my taxes and the government distributes my taxes as it sees fit. In order to get that paycheck in my case, I am required to pass a random urine test (with which I have no problem). What I do have a problem with is the distribution of my taxes to people who don't have to pass a urine test.

So, here is my Question: Shouldn't one have to pass a urine test to get a welfare check because I have to pass one to earn it for them?

Please understand, I have no problem with helping people get back on their feet. I do, on the other hand, have a problem with helping someone sitting on their butt - doing drugs and/or not being a citizen , while I work. . . . Can you imagine how much money each state would save if people had to pass a urine test to get a public assistance check?
I guess we could title that program, 'Urine or You're Out'..

Pass this along if you agree or simply delete if you don't. Hope you all will pass it along, though. Something has to change in this country -- and soon!!!!!!!


My comment: What would count as passing the test? How would we know when someone did, or didn't, pass the test?