Clark Gable Books

I'm so glad this is out on DVD. The quality of the picture is excellent! Extras on the DVD are a nice added feature. This is a wonderful classic you must have! They don't call it the "Golden Age of Hollywood" for nothing! Simply the best! Highly recommend you also get Jean Arthur's films "You can't take it with you" and "The more the merrier".

A very simple story written for another time that will cause you to laugh, cry, and, if you're very lucky, remember the way it should be and the way it was. A romantic comedy starring greats from another generation, Gable and Colbert. Nothing else need be said.

I had seen the movie years ago, and after searching the internet to find a copy of it, I was so hapy to have found it off of Amazon.com. It was exactly how I remembered...fantastic! The quality was great and the story is funny yet romantic.

What's not to like with this classic, original screwball comedy? It still holds up after all this time, and Clark Gable is as sexy as ever with those pervasive dimples and ironic grin.

If you crave some real star quality, some Hollywood [as well as American] history, get this film now. The chemistry between Gable and Colbert makes this movie hum, and compared to the drek we get today both in our "stars" and the scripts, it is a stellar piece of art.

Heartily recommended!

Since ths reviewer seems to be on an "oldies" kick of late, certainly this film has to be included. The movie swept the Oscars for a production of 1934 vintage, and of all the movies made in this era, this one seems to stand up today as best. The opening credits are absolutely childish; one would swear that he or she were about to watch a silent film. End of swearing! Capra's direction flies at the viewer at a lightning pace. Spoiled rich girl Colbert seems as natural as any seasoned actress, and Gable's famed barking quickly turns to love, albeit none too tenderly. The plot is simplistic; no need to embellish a theme repeated hundreds of times. But, just imagine even one short sex scene in a 2008 remake completely ruining the movie.No, the chemistry between the budding lovers is just fine, thank you; even an idiot can tell where this duet is heading. One story, perhaps apochryphal, has Colbert showing up late for the Oscar ceremony, leaving a cabbie waiting outside the theater, running down the aisle, accepting the award , and running back outside jumping into the cab. As Gable had said in the movie: "All you dames are so darned dizzy".

I'm so glad this is out on DVD. The quality of the picture is excellent! Extras on the DVD are a nice added feature. This is a wonderful classic you must have! They don't call it the "Golden Age of Hollywood" for nothing! Simply the best! Highly recommend you also get Jean Arthur's films "You can't take it with you" and "The more the merrier".

A very simple story written for another time that will cause you to laugh, cry, and, if you're very lucky, remember the way it should be and the way it was. A romantic comedy starring greats from another generation, Gable and Colbert. Nothing else need be said.

I had seen the movie years ago, and after searching the internet to find a copy of it, I was so hapy to have found it off of Amazon.com. It was exactly how I remembered...fantastic! The quality was great and the story is funny yet romantic.

What's not to like with this classic, original screwball comedy? It still holds up after all this time, and Clark Gable is as sexy as ever with those pervasive dimples and ironic grin.

If you crave some real star quality, some Hollywood [as well as American] history, get this film now. The chemistry between Gable and Colbert makes this movie hum, and compared to the drek we get today both in our "stars" and the scripts, it is a stellar piece of art.

Heartily recommended!

Since ths reviewer seems to be on an "oldies" kick of late, certainly this film has to be included. The movie swept the Oscars for a production of 1934 vintage, and of all the movies made in this era, this one seems to stand up today as best. The opening credits are absolutely childish; one would swear that he or she were about to watch a silent film. End of swearing! Capra's direction flies at the viewer at a lightning pace. Spoiled rich girl Colbert seems as natural as any seasoned actress, and Gable's famed barking quickly turns to love, albeit none too tenderly. The plot is simplistic; no need to embellish a theme repeated hundreds of times. But, just imagine even one short sex scene in a 2008 remake completely ruining the movie.No, the chemistry between the budding lovers is just fine, thank you; even an idiot can tell where this duet is heading. One story, perhaps apochryphal, has Colbert showing up late for the Oscar ceremony, leaving a cabbie waiting outside the theater, running down the aisle, accepting the award , and running back outside jumping into the cab. As Gable had said in the movie: "All you dames are so darned dizzy".

REVIEW BY CHARLES ALVERSON:

`Misfits Country' by Arthur Winfield Knight (Tres Picos Press, March, 2008)

It was the boiling summer of 1960. Three famous actors, a celebrated director and a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright arrived in Nevada, USA, to make a film the playwright, Arthur Miller, had written for one of the stars, Marilyn Monroe, his wife at the time.

The film was `The Misfits,' the other stars were Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift and the director was John Huston, creator of many great films including `The Treasure of the Sierra Madre' and `The Maltese Falcon'.

The occasion was a fit setting for a classic motion picture and a personal disaster for most of the principals as portrayed by Arthur Winfield Knight in a work of fiction that reads as if it were a documentary written by someone who'd probed the mind and soul of those involved.

In Knight's imagination--bolstered by the mythology surrounding such luminaries:

Marilyn Monroe is a passive, drug-addled, constantly late nymphomaniac who despises her husband and can be consoled only by Paula Strasberg, the drama coach/masseuse who followed her from New York. `The Misfits' was her last completed film.

Clark Gable is an aging screen immortal whose youthful excesses and efforts to maintain a macho image at age 59 threaten his life and his happiness with his wife, pregnant with his first child. He was to die within two weeks after shooting finished.

Montgomery Clift is an insecure homosexual addict mourning the lost beauty of his face, reconstructed after a car wreck, and scorned by the he-men Gable and Huston. He would die at 45, having destroyed his system with drugs and booze.

John Huston is the hard-drinking, hard-gambling ringmaster of this circus of human wrecks. Despairing of maintaining order, he coddled Monroe and Clift, sometimes directed when drunk and took time out to go camel racing.

Arthur Miller is the odd man out, the Eastern intellectual in a nest of Hollywood neurotics, despised by his soon-to-be ex-wife and constantly rewriting scenes from the film to salvage Monroe's unraveling ability to play the heroine of the film.

This is Arthur Knight's raw material, the puppets he manipulates through gyrations that seem as familiar as they are bizarre. By chance, he was present in Dayton, Nevada, when `The Misfits' was being filmed, but Knight claims that did not influence the writing of this novel. We think we know a lot about Monroe's tragic life as a sex symbol and something about the lives of Gable and Clift. And certainly much of what Knight writes rings true to what we think we know, but the line between fact and fiction in `Misfits Country is imperceptible. This is perhaps the danger of this genre. Will Arthur Knight's imaginings fuse with the `reality' of the lives and events he portrays? Or are the facts and myths so conflated that one cannot tell--or care--which is which?

Knight's version of the making of `The Misfits' is exciting, sexy, torturous and almost as nervous-making as the endless wait to see if Monroe will show up on set. His puppets--Marilyn, Monty, Clark, John, Arthur and a small host of supporting characters--are revealed in chapters averaging less than two pages long. Though we know the film was finished and the fates of the principles, the tension remains high to the very end.

Critics may complain that Knight erases the line between fact and fiction by claiming well-known personalities as booster rockets for his imagination, but he makes them ring tragically true.

As little as I'd want to see an Arthur Miller movie (or read the screenplay), another Arthur has written a book that should become a movie (but where can we find anyone to play MM, Clark or Monty?). Even if you haven't seen the movie, do read this book.

I've read quite a bit on the subject of the making of THE MISFITS, and I cannot imagine a better book on the subject. Knight captures every aspect of the real persons involved in the making of the film, good, bad and appalling. Knowing that Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe and Montgomery Clift will soon be dead adds to the poignancy of the story. I've never read a better treatment of Marilyn. She is exasperating, appealing, loving, caring and on the skids. Buy this book. It is riveting.

In his novel "Misfits Country," Arthur Knight imaginatively creates a movie within a movie, using the actors of the 47-year-old film The Misfits as characters in his new movie about their dysfunctional relationships as they are concurrently creating The Misfits. Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable, Montgomery Clift, Arthur Miller, and John Huston star in Knight's movie which has an atmosphere and residue of a bygone era, most of their best work (Some Like It Hot, From Here to Eternity, Gone With the Wind, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Death of a Salesman) being done well before The Misfits.

Knight creates an intimate, documentary-style piece, employing cinematic writing that immerses the reader in the day-to-day saga of the fictionalized lives of Marilyn, Monty, Clark, John, and Arthur. At times, he uses a close-up, allowing the reader entree into the intimate details of the characters' personal challenges. We feel their angst; we're told their self-doubts; we taste the martinis, whiskey, and champagne they drink; we smell Huston's nearly constant cigar and feel overwhelmed by the fumes of so many cigarettes smoked by Monty, Arthur, and Clark. We pity the pain, suffering, and frustration of Marilyn and Monty as they attempt to confront their ever-present demons. We sense Arthur's awkwardness, his inability to fit in with the others. Clark, much older than his 59 years and in bad health, knows who he is and recognizes he doesn't have a lot of time left; he looks forward to the birth of his son. John has a picture to complete; he'll get paid and he can pay his gambling debts; after this film, he'll move on to the next one.

Knight racks focus and we tunnel to the arid Nevada landscape, an integral character in his story. The unwavering, searing, bright sun forces us to squint. The roasting heat across the salt flats keeps us wiping our faces and necks in an unsuccessful effort to remove constant perspiration.

At other times, Knight utilizes flashbacks for insight into present behavior. He'll then flash forward, showing the characters pondering their future, wondering where they will be in five or ten years, especially poignant because we know several of them will be dead.

Arthur Knight's "Misfits Country" is an enticing, surprisingly realistic work of fiction.

Arthur Knight's "Misfits Country," for those of us either old enough to recall or be adequately studied in cinema to harbor curiosity about what may have actually occurred in the minds and lives of the cast members of Hollywood's hot list during the shooting of what has been univocally described as one of the most difficult film productions ever undertaken, reads like a dream we may have never dreamt ... but always considered.
Arthur Miller's script for The Misfits, directed by John Houston in 1961 and strongly supported by then A-list actors Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe and Montgomery Clift marked the last curtain call for two of America's greatest film stars ... they just didn't know it yet. And ... who would've?
Such retrospective analysis provided the fictional fodder for Knight, who delves deeply into the "what if?" He presents the reader with scenarios created from actual, factual research and a sharper mind for speculative scenarios with even more finely honed prose to explore the dynamics of what happened on the set ... or what may have, behind the sets and soundstages in the personal challenges facing these stars whose inner lights were dimming in a rapidly fading horizon of personal illusion simultaneously melding with that of the public silver screen.
Using the tension of Miller's and Monroe's failing marriage sizzling in the Reno, Nevada desert heat, accentuated by an increasingly inebriated Houston who had indeed lost his "direction," Knight explores the breadth and depth of these rich and famous personas America adored, and insightfully presents through his inner-dramatic format what may have really led to the end of the epic drama, the erratic lives of those who embodied it, and an era when a movie-going public departed theaters in awe, never knowing what dirt might lie within the folds of the theater's curtains. They bought the dream - Knight didn't.
The documented reality of the film's labored production is, in and of itself, tabloid material, but Knight exercises his focused writing to cast the characters in different lights - sometimes soft and forgiving, and others harsh and unyielding. Between the novel's bindings and among its pages, readers become privy to thoughts, attitudes, intentions and actions stripped of a Hollywood mystique that can never be proven. Nor, however ... can his suppositions ever be outright denied. And in such ... the drama within a drama emerges.
The film, after much delay, opened to mixed reviews, no doubt born from an expectation of audiences who were awaiting established superstar performances, but had no clue about a drunken and compulsively gambling director; the downright nasty marital discord of America's blonde-bombshell sweetheart stoned out of her beautiful gourd on drugs and alcohol during filming; the ever-widening gap of her marriage to acclaimed playwright Arthur Miller; or Monroe's implied liaisons with "Monty," a closeted bisexual who sported a drug usage profile equal to or greater than Monroe's.
Fact: Miller and Monroe divorced shortly after production on The Misfits was completed.
What "Misfits Country" offers that the film does not is a vast and deep undercurrent of raw dialogue that wasn't scripted for actors, yet in prose form reveals a story equally as compelling, perhaps even more compelling, than that of the film, where actors were merely reciting lines for takes ... but not delivering the stuff emanating from their true hearts, even if their true hearts' desires are the product of Knight's imagination.
"Misfits?" Probably. But in "Misfits Country," human beings - not actors - with much more real emotions, real issues, real dramas, real problems ... without direction ... and without doubt, seek solace, happiness, and comfort wherever it might exist ... for survival.
Reality, in "Misfits Country" seems to possess more inherent truth than what we saw on the screen when too, and quite fairly, we suspended our belief for entertainment.
Arthur Knight, an early scholar of Beat Generation poets and retired university professor, edited and published several acclaimed anthologies from this historic era of American literature. He's also written plays on his versions of the lives of Billy The Kid, James Dean, and Jack Kerouac. Among his other available novels is "Blue Skies Falling," a thinly-disguised take on the life of Sam Peckinpah.
"Misfits Country" presents readers with yet another dreamy journey into the lives of Hollywood's American film icons ... and outlaws.
Like Knight's past literary endeavors, "Misfits Country" is well worth the read - so read it now ... before the inevitable movie ... about the movie, arrives at your local theater.

I was pleased to receive and have the Clark Gable Paper Dolls in Full Color. They were shipped and received in very quick order, arriving in perfect condition. My Tom Tierney collection is growing.

Just like Judy Garland, I fell in love with Clark Gable when I, too, realized that he was "the nicest fella in the movies." And I'm sure that Judy would also fall in love with Tom Tierney's brilliant homage to our hero, Clark Gable Paper Dolls in Full Color.

This is a gorgeous collection -- a tribute to Gable's career and the author's amazing talents. This book belongs in your collection.

THIS IS A STURDY LOOK AT A GRAET MOVIE ACTOR.A perfect companion to the joan crawford book, as both books include their film "possessed"."Gone with the wind" is also well covered.All three figures look like him, the second one is very impressive. With a welcome tribute to his love for Lombarde with their only film together.WELL DONE SIR.

If you have ever wondered what life in the glory days of Hollywood was like, you will love this book. While a novel written about a real person, the story is engrossing, the plot is believable, the writing about Carole so real and compelling, the dialogue so true, that you feel intimately acquainted with Carole Lombard and Clark Gable by the time the book is done. Carole truly comes alive again in this book. The intertwining stories of Cass and her mother are no less compelling and thought provoking. All in all, a very good read. Highly recommended.

If you have ever wondered what life in the glory days of Hollywood was like, you will love this book. While a novel written about a real person, the story is engrossing, the plot is believable, the writing about Carole so real and compelling, the dialogue so true, that you feel intimately acquainted with Carole Lombard and Clark Gable by the time the book is done. Carole truly comes alive again in this book. The intertwining stories of Cass and her mother are no less compelling and thought provoking. All in all, a very good read. Highly recommended.

In my research for Warm and Wonderful Stepmothers of Famous People (also carried by amazon.com), I looked through virtually all Gable biographies, including the one by Harris. This is the best by far. It has everything but is not gossipy, is very well-written--I found myself reading much more of it than my needs required. Chrystopher Spicer liked his subject yet was thorough and objective--all necessary for a good biography, and with all the biographies I've used in research for my books, I should know.

Gable's Women is a wonderful book! It gives a real insight to the man. A must read for any fan!

Judy Lewis lived a life as a Hollywood star's child that no other offspring of a celebrity can claim - believing that she was the adopted daughter of Loretta Young, she was in fact Young's natural child, conceived during a brief affair with the King Of Hollywood, Clark Gable. However, the Tinsletown of the 1930s, out of wedlock pregnancies were unacceptable, and Gable's status as a married man and Young's Roman Catholic faith forbade any chance of the two ever to be linked in matrimony. Loretta carried out a plan with the help of her mother, in which she let it be known that she was embarking on a trip to Europe, when in fact she was in seclusion, waiting to secretly give birth. The baby girl was placed in an orphange while Young returned to Hollywood to put gossip to rest and resume her career. She reclaimed her infant daughter some months later and let it be known that she had adopted the child. Although the open secret around town was that she and Gable had a love child, it was one that everyone kept mum about. Thus, little Judy grew up with low whispers, a stepfather who turned on her the moment he fathered two sons with her mother, and Loretta's own strange ambivalence and detachment. Although Clark was aware of his daughter (even coming to visit her a few times as an infant), he never publicly acknowledged her. One of the most painful passages recalls Judy's hurt by being called "Dumbo" at a birthday party because of the size of her ears (inherited from her famous father). Young used her little girl's negative experience as an excuse to have Judy undergo excruciating surgeries to reshape her ears so that Loretta's secret would remain safe. When Judy did meet Gable as a teenager, she was still in the dark about her parentage and was awed by the famed actor's visit to her home. Her stepfather became emotionally cold and cruel to his stepdaughter while her mother was off busily doing her work. It wasn't until she was grown that Judy learned the truth about herself - from her fiancee, who admitted that everyone knew that she was the child of two legendary stars. In adulthood, Judy married, had a daughter of her own, and eventually became a psychologist (after working as an actress), and was able to piece together and analyze why her parents made the choices they did, and why her mother continued to deny the truth. With her own background of abandonment, Loretta felt that Gable's distance and lack of financial support of their baby was yet another example of how men were unreliable. Unfortunately, she inflicted her own sense of shame (reinforced by her religion, no doubt), guilt and anger on her daughter. God took the place of a father in Young's life, and she used her religion as a defense with many situations. At the time Uncommon Knowledge was published, Young still had not confirmed that Judy was her biological child, and they two were estranged. Loretta sniffed to the press after the book's initial release, "I cannot imagine why she wrote this book." It was only shortly before Young's death from ovarian cancer in 2000 that the star admitted the truth publicily and mother and daughter reconciled.

Judy Lewis was courageous in revealing what had been denied to her entire life - her father, and the truth. Most of us take for granted our lineage and our identities, but one thing's for certain - looking at photographs of Lewis there is no mistaking who her parents were. Loretta Young's "mortal sin" was in fact something that was hypocrisy at the time, no child is ever a sin, nor is love a sin. But Young's own psychology and the standards of the time prevented her from emotionally stepping up to the plate, the same can be said of Gable, and their child suffered as a result. Judy Lewis continues to inspire with her story, refusing to give into the shame that so affected her mother, and she maintains a close relationship with her daughter and granchildren. She was able to overcome the patterns and cycle that had emotionally crippled her forebearers, and has gone on to live a fufilled life.

Great book. Very interesting. I couldn't put it down. I respect Judy Lewis much more than I do, say, Christina Crawford, because she had the guts to write this book while her mother was still alive to defend herself. This book makes me feel bad not just for Judy Lewis, but also for Loretta Young. What a terrible position to be in. I think she did the best she could at the time. I feel awful for Judy Lewis that she never got to know her father, Clark Gable as well. The book was very intriguing, highly recommended!!!

When I was a little kid, my mother never missed the Loretta Young Show on TV. I grew up knowing that Young was a big Hollywood star who had always been a devout Catholic and therefore a `good girl' - unlike so many wild Hollywood stars.

I'm not immune to all celebrity buzz, but I missed the news years ago that Loretta Young's "adopted" daughter was in fact her own baby, born out of wedlock and fathered by Clark Gable, no less. When I did hear that recently, I had to read this book by Judy Lewis for all the scoop.

A lesser person could have published a shrill "Mommie Dearest" type of book. Instead, Lewis wrote a thoughtful, heartfelt memoir which takes the reader into the heart of a family - the good, the bad, the lovely and the ugly. That the family in question lived under the spotlight of Hollywood fame, wealth and influence is relevant, but not the focus of the story.

Lewis looks at her mother's family and traces patterns of attitude and behavior through the generations: beautiful, strong and talented women left to raise their children after their men left them, and "giving away" young children temporarily to allow them to have better living conditions than a struggling parent could manage.

A key fact is the devout Catholic faith of Loretta and her mother, Gladys. Already starring in pictures in her late teens, Loretta succeeded in the transition from silent films to the talkies. In 1935, the 22-year-old Young went on location to the mountains of Washington state to film "Call of the Wild" with Clark Gable. The production encountered severe winter weather and serious delays, and the stars fell in love. Young had been briefly married at age 17 (then divorced, but since she hadn't been married in church it somehow didn't "count" in Catholic terms), and Gable was married. When Young learned she was pregnant, abortion was out of the question due to her faith - which also told her that her child was a "mortal sin."

Young's machinations to keep her pregnancy out of the news, and to eventually publicly "adopt" the child when she was 23 months old (or so, the kid's exact age was also fudged as part of the smoke screen), from a children's home out of town where she had sent her baby to stay for months, are chilling to read. By the time Judy Lewis knew the truth about her parentage - facts which were "common knowledge" in Hollywood where she grew up - it was too late for her to get to know her father.

I wouldn't have been surprised if this book had been a long self-pitying whine. But Lewis has the gift of a loving and empathetic nature. She looks beyond her own story - backward to her family of origin, and forward as she revels in her daughter's happiness in adulthood - and thus gives us a frame of reference for the hard decisions taken by a young, beautiful and fiercely ambitious - and fiercely Catholic - movie star in the 1930's.

Lewis dishes up a little more psychotherapy than I thought was really necessary, but it's understandable. At the time she wrote this book, Lewis was a newly-minted therapist, having finally obtained the college education that her mother had so firmly steered her away from when Lewis had graduated from high school. Yet another strange thing to me; you'd expect a wealthy, successful woman to *want* her daughter to get a good education. But this story has many strange turns, and I'm glad I got a copy of this book and read about all of them. Sometimes, you just can't make this stuff up.

This book really delivers if you're looking for a fair, in-depth look at what Loretta Young was like and to understand her daughter's difficult journey. This book is especially useful to Loretta Young fans since Young always seemed to want to paint an angelic saint-like image of herself. Loretta's human, just like the rest of us, and it's too bad she never figured out that it is okay to be human and make mistakes. I thought this book gave her mother a fair examination, and I would recommend it to Young fans as well as anyone who was ever raised to feel abandoned and unwanted.

I could not put the book down. Even though I am in my thirties, I love old movies. This was a very entertaining book and I am so glad I purchased it. The writer, unlike many other similar books, does not pity herself. She states the facts in a compelling manner. I found myself wanting to just reach out and give her a hug for the way she was brought up and treated. She really makes you feel like you were there. The pictures are great and really lend to the story. I would recommend this book wholeheartedly!!! It left me wanting to know what happened next in their lives.

I've seen a lot of Gable filmographies, but this one is definitely the best. Great photos, too. Get it if you can!

I already knew most of the facts, but it's the type of book that you just buy to swoon over the photos of Clark. He's the best actor ever! There's sections for all his movies and Broadway performances, complete with photos and reviews. He's just so gorgeous!

As you can tell, I am a big Gable fan. Alas, he died the year I was born. I bought this book about a year ago at a used bookstore in Orlando, Florida and love it. There is a wonderful foreward by Charles Champlain followed by an informative and interesting biography of Clark and then two reminiscences of people that knew him before he became a superstar. One memoir is by a woman named Franz Dorfler who loved him deeply. Following Dorfler's fond recollection, we read one by Paul Fix, who recalled the days Gable was a stage actor. It is intriging to see Gable through two people that knew him well long before he became the indisputed King of Hollywood. The book has beautiful, big, black and white photos on nearly every page. It also details every film he was in, from his bit part in small films to the classic films of the thirties and forties, example, "Mutiny on the Bounty", "Gone with the Wind", "It Happened One Night", "Adventure" etc. For anyone out there who is a Gable fan of any degree, this is a MUST to own. I refer to it often, sometimes just to stare at his beautiful face and masculine build. It's definetly a keeper!

Ordinarily I would condemn any writer who simply rewrote the same book over and over again. Sadly, there are dozens of authors who make a living doing just that. Stuart Kaminsky is one of them, having written the same WWII-era Hollywood mystery nearly twenty-five times already. But for some reason, when Kaminsky does it, I don't mind.

Which is odd, as I don't really like or believe any of the characters. Kaminsky's hero, Toby Peters, is a former cop who turned private eye. He works exclusively for big-name Hollywood stars of the forties (though Kaminsky tries to make us believe that Peters takes on other cases by recounting them in abbreviated form from time to time). His cohorts and friends are Gunther, a "little person" whom Peters met while working for Judy Garland in "Murder on the Yellow Brick Road", Jeremy Butler, giant, poet, former wrestler, and Sheldon Minck, the world's worst dentist, friend, cohort.

Well, it's not that I don't like them. It's that I've seen them so many times I'm bored with them. In every book, Peters swears he will not need Jeremy Butler's assistance again, but in every book he calls on him again - "one last time - I promise." Butler's wife is understandably angry with Peters, but one wonders why she does not simply smack him in the head with a two-by-four to get her point across.

Sheldon Minck is another story. He's a bumbler, a butcher, a man who cannot even hold onto the harridan to which he is married, yet Peters, who is supposed to be somewhat smart, keeps asking him for assistance. I know the book are meant to be humorous, but - oy!

In this installment, Clark Gable hires Peters to find out who has been sending him threatening letters in the form of bad poetry. It is as improbable as any other Peters mystery, but this one goes even more over the top than most because the initials of the murder victims just happen to spell out...well, I can't tell you. But you'll see when you read it how silly it is.

Reading over what I've written, I realize you might think I don't like this book or the Toby Peters mysteries in general. But that's not true. Toby is an old friend, like that one person you've known since high school who never stops talking about the big homecoming game. Sure it's old news and you've heard it all before, but there's love there, man. And that's what counts.

Toby Peters enjoys what he does and where he lives. It's Hollywood, 1938, and, of course,
the most monumental picture to date is in the process of being filmed. In "Tomorrow Is Another
Day," author Stuart Kaminsky brings us another interesting, intriguing, and remarkable "period
piece" of detective fiction.

And because it's a murder mystery, we've got to have a body. And a body is provide tout
suite. While filming the burning of Atlanta, a extra is found dead, still in his Confederate uniform.
Toby is working as part of the film's security crew and, glancing about, he sees Clark Gable
watching from a concealed spot.

Kaminsky then cuts to 1943--five years later--and now Mr. Gable
is receiving death threats and enlists Toby's help. In addition, others who had watched the filming begin dying. Toby's
talent--and presence--is called into play.

Fast paced and energetic--and rather clever, this series is--
"Tomorrow Is Another Day" is a good read for any movie buff. Spry, humorous in places and
suspenseful in others, this Kaminsky is well worth the read. The author's tongue in cheek storyline
and characters make for a pleasurable read. (Billyjhobbs@tyler.net)