Story and You

(image via cinemaclock.com) I thought January was going to be a return to normal, or at least as normal as you could call the past few months, but yet again I was in for a surprise. I started taking my first university-level English classes this semester, one focused on literature and the other on academic writing, and they have proven to be much more work than any of the classes I took in the fall. I am definitely learning a lot, but the clear drawback is yet another reduction in my free time. I watched a lot less movies than is typical for me, less than 1 a day, and I often found myself missing my routine of winding down to a movie at the end of each day. Despite the reduction, I did still find the time to watch some great stuff: I continued to work my way through those DVR recordings from 2016, which resulted in watching 3 films each from two of my favorite classic actors, Norma Shearer and Charles Laughton; I watched the silent film Where Are My Children? from 1916, which now ...

(image via military.com) One of the exciting things about classic film stars is just how many films they all made. While it was undeniably hard on them to be producing films non-stop, and no doubt the industry is better off now that actors have the option of cool-down periods between films, it does mean that many of these golden age stars have incredible filmographies that very few modern actors can match. Clark Gable is just such an actor, with 66 films under his belt--and a jaw-dropping 25 of those having been released between 1931 and 1934, the first 4 years of his career. As amazing as these filmographies are, however, the inevitable result is a lot of films flying under the radar. Today, Clark Gable is known for only a handful of his most popular films, leaving the majority of his work forgotten and unappreciated. For Love Letters to Old Hollywood's wonderful Clark Gable blogathon, I will be counting down my top 10 under-seen Clark Gable films. Before I move on to ...