Any link to this great source. At least Duke's popularity still remains. I would doubt anyone under 30 could tell you who Gable and Crosby were.
Mike
To be honest Mike I doubt if many people under the age of 30 know who John Wayne was. Last year I was speaking to some teenage girls and they had absolutely no idea who I meant when I mentioned his name. My own best friend at school had never heard of him until we watched "The Searchers" one Christmas.
Oh I don't know, Flynn was a handsome man but he didn't have the King's screen presence or charisma.
Clark Gable has sold the most movie tickets, followed by Duke and Bing Crosby. "Gone with the Wind" is still the most successful film in that respect.
Flynn would have been superb as Ashley Wilkes, unlike the too old and unattractive Leslie Howard. Gable was pretty bad in "Mutiony on the Bounty", playing Christian with an American accent. Then again, it's no wonder since he absolutely hated both Charles Laughton and Franchot Tone.
Still, Gable was truly the greatest movie star of all time and has still sold more tickets than any other.
Gable was great in "The Tall Men" (1955), it's a shame the King of Hollywood didn't star in more westerns.
Well I agree they were past their best in "The Misfits", but Gable at least managed to go against type for the first and only time in his career. You could say John Wayne was past his best in "True Grit" and "The Cowboys", since he was over 60 and had health problems, yet he still managed to turn in two superb performances.
i don't think clark would have offered the role of TRAVIS in THE ALAMO. he would have been a little to old for the part. the real TRAVIS was only twenty six at the time.as for HATARI I never heard of that story.GABLE died in (61).HATARI came out in (62) it could be true.
Gable died at the end of 1960, and Hatari was filmed at the end of 1961. I think somebody like Gable would have been good in The Alamo regardless of his age, at least he could have done a convincing American accent unlike Laurence Harvey.
I've never understood about Hatari, surely Gable would have played the Sean Mercer part so how would Wayne have fitted in? Unless the script was radically changed of course.
Some article about Gable that I read online. I was surprised since I always thought Gable was a Republican as well.
Somebody recently told me that Duke described Clark Gable as an "idiot" and said that acting was the only thing he ever did right.
Does anyone know if this is true, and when he was reported to have said it? I heard that Gable was either considered for, or turned down, Laurence Harvey's role in The Alamo in 1959. Also Howard Hawks apparently wanted to make Hatari with both Gable and Wayne.
