Warren G. Harris > Quotes

“I never met anyone who didn’t like Clark Gable,” director Mervyn LeRoy once said. “He was a great individual, a great citizen, and was admired by all who knew him. He will be remembered when most other stars are ‘gone with the wind.”
― Warren G. Harris, Clark Gable: A Biography

“He was very handsome and romantic. But he also frightened me, he was so wild. I knew I shouldn’t have married him, but that was one of the biggest attractions.”
― Warren G. Harris, Lucy & Desi: The Legendary Love Story of Television's Most Famous Couple

“As expected, Nevada’s summer heat was oppressive; temperatures under the desert sun bubbled around the 130-degree mark, which made it even harder for Monroe and almost everyone except [Clark] Gable to put in a full day’s work. Though he had a chauffeured limousine at his disposal, he drove himself back and forth to work in his silver Mercedes-Benz SC. He always arrived punctually at eight-forty-five A.M., bringing along gallon Thermoses of booze-spiked lemonade and iced tea to fortify himself. For the better part of the morning, he would sit around studying that day’s script pages or gabbing with the crew while waiting for the other principals to arrive.

Though the delays were driving him mad, he tried not to show it. But one day while his writer-friend John Lee Mahin was visiting from Los Angeles, Gable told him, “It’s not professional, John, it’s stealing. It’s stealing the bank’s money and United Artists’ money. I don’t see how they’re going to get a picture out of this, but I’m stuck with it now, and I’m trying to do the best I can. It’s been hard on me.”
― Warren G. Harris, Clark Gable: A Biography

“Adela Rogers St. Johns, always the journalist closest to Gable, wrote that “The King is dead. Long live the King. There has been no successor, nor will be. The title died with him.” She recalled that Gable once told her, “I don’t believe I’m king of anything, but I know why they like to think I am. I’m not much of an actor, but I’m not bad unless it’s one of those things outside my comprehension. I work hard. I’m no Adonis, and I’m as American as the telephone poles I used to climb to make a living. So men don’t get sore if their women folks like me on the screen. I’m one of them, they know it, so it’s a compliment to them. They see me broke, in trouble, scared of things that go bump in the night, but I come out fighting. They see me making love to Jean Harlow or Claudette Colbert, and they say, ‘If he can do it, I can do it,’ and figure it’ll be fun to go home and to make love to their wives.”
― Warren G. Harris, Clark Gable: A Biography

“In an editorial headlined “The King Is Dead,” The New York Times noted, “Even among the hierarchy of great motion-picture stars, of whom there were many in the happy years of his ascendance, he was acknowledged supreme. Perhaps he was not the most skillful and subtle in the way of technique. Perhaps he did not possess the polish of some of the latterly imported British stars. But what Gable had in a measure that no other star quite matched—or projected as ferociously as he did—was a true masculine personality. Whatever the role, Gable was as certain as the sunrise. He was consistently and stubbornly all Man….People everywhere—men, women and small boys—admired Clark Gable. He was a conspicuous symbol of the rugged American throughout the world.”
― Warren G. Harris, Clark Gable: A Biography

“In a press interview at the time, Gable said, “My days of playing the dashing lover are over. I’m no longer believable in those parts. There has been considerable talk about older guys wooing and winning leading ladies half their age. I don’t think the public likes it, and I don’t care for it myself. It’s not realistic. Actresses that I started out with like Joan Crawford and Barbara Stanwyck have long since quit playing glamour girls and sweet young things. Now it’s time I acted my age.

“Let’s be honest,” he continued. “It’s a character role, and I’ll be playing more of them. There’s a risk involved, of course. I have no idea if I can attain the success as a character actor as I did playing the dashing young lover, but it’s a chance I have to take. Not everybody is able to do it.”
― Warren G. Harris, Clark Gable: A Biography

“During the flight back to Los Angeles from Milwaukee, Lucy became sick and went to bed as soon as the couple got home. Two days later, Desi rushed her to Cedars of Lebanon Hospital and the conclusion was the same as before. Another miscarriage.”
― Warren G. Harris, Lucy & Desi: The Legendary Love Story of Television's Most Famous Couple

“Like most women of her generation, Desiree Ball (known familiarly as “DeDe”) had been raised to become a wife, housekeeper, and mother hen. When DeDe married Henry Ball, it was taken for granted that she—and eventually the family—would accompany him wherever his job took him. As a result, Lucy spent her early years far from Jamestown, first in the copper-mining territory around Anaconda, Montana, and then in Wyandotte, Michigan, a factory town dependent on the automotive industry in nearby Detroit.”
― Warren G. Harris, Lucy & Desi: The Legendary Love Story of Television's Most Famous Couple

“But there was nothing of the southern bigot about her. On the Memphis street where Marilyn lived, there were only blacks for playmates, the children of servants who worked for the neighbors and her own relatives. The difference in color was meaningless to a little girl seeking companionship; that attitude never changed in adult life.”
― Warren G. Harris, The Other Marilyn: A Biography of Marilyn Miller

“The minute you start fighting for anything, you've won. The end doesn't matter.”
― Warren G. Harris, Gable & Lombard: A Biography

“broke”
― Warren G. Harris, Clark Gable: A Biography

“Desi didn’t really want to settle down with Lucy, or with any other woman for that matter. But Lucy put up such a campaign that he wound up believing that he did.” Lucy”
― Warren G. Harris, Lucy & Desi: The Legendary Love Story of Television's Most Famous Couple

“LUCY and Desi. Lucy and Ricky. As far as the public knew, the private life of the Arnazes closely resembled that of the Ricardos on the TV screen; a camera crew just dropped by once a week to film a half hour of slapstick and tender kisses.”
― Warren G. Harris, Lucy & Desi: The Legendary Love Story of Television's Most Famous Couple

“That evening, Desi took her to El Zerape, a Mexican-Cuban nightspot close to downtown Los Angeles and the current rage for slumming Hollywood celebrities. It turned out to be a group excursion organized by George Abbott, a fanatic ballroom dancer. Nearly the entire cast of Too Many Girls was there, including the fourteen singing and dancing choristers that RKO had hired from the New York production at a weekly salary of forty dollars each.”
― Warren G. Harris, Lucy & Desi: The Legendary Love Story of Television's Most Famous Couple