Honky Tonk

💡 Did You Know?

When cast, Lana Turner was only 20, and her star was flying high, having just starred in the successful films Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941) and Ziegfeld Girl (1941). MGMi was looking to make Turner its replacement for the deceased platinum beauty Jean Harlow and therefore cast her alongside the "King of Hollywood" himself, Clark Gable.

Nevertheless, the pairing proved successful, and their steamy scenes together were unnerving to almost everyone, including Gable's wife Carole Lombard. She knew that he had an affinity for blondes, and upon hearing of Turner's casting, went to production head Louis B. Mayer and told him to specifically tell Turner that Gable was entirely off-limits.

Lombard had a habit of making surprise visits to the sets and was noticeably present during the bedroom scene with Turner and Gable. While Turner always vehemently denied rumors that she and Gable were involved in an affair, it has always been speculated that a Turner-and-Gable affair had something to do with Lombard's last-minute decision to take a plane back to Los Angeles rather than a train, resulting in the crash which took her life. Turner claimed that the only time she and Gable ever saw each other outside of a professional environment was in the months following Lombard's death. Louis B. Mayer ordered her to have dinner with Gable at his home that he had shared with Lombard where Turner found him a lonely, broken man, a ghost of his former self.