Katy, How the Hell Are You?

Years ago, my wife, Sue Hart, and I, hosted Joan Evans Weatherby, who was in town to see Sue about a publishing project. Her father, Dale Eunson, had written a Montana classic, Up on the Rims, about growing up on a hardscrabble ranch in central Montana, and wondered whether Sue, the go-to person in these matters, could get it republished. Sue could and did. Sue's academic specialty was Montana literature, and in fact Sue was thrilled at the prospect of putting the book back in print.

Joan Evans was the last of Sam Goldwyn's contract players, and had starred in a number of films opposite Farley Granger, Dana Andrews, and Audie Murphy. Her father had left Montana to write screenplays, and her mother, Katherine Albert, had been Louis B. Mayer's assistant at MGM, as well as a screenwriter herself.

Joan told us this delightful story, dating back to World War Two, when Captain Clark Gable was stationed at the Willard Hotel in Washington, where he was making films for the war effort. Mayer asked Joan's mother to get ahold of Gable person-to-person, which was not easy back then. It involved lining up a call through several phone companies, from Los Angeles to Washington. So Katherine plunged in, and could hear the operators chatter in the background: "Hey, get a load of this! Miss Katherine Albert is calling Captain Clark Gable at the Willard hotel in Washington." By the time the call was put together, there were several operators, glued to the earphones, waiting for the show to begin.

The phone rang, Gable answered, and the operator told him a Miss Katherine Albert was calling Captain Clark Gable, person-to-person, and did he accept the call?

He did. "Katy, how the hell are you?" he asked, and the collective sigh was audible up and down the line.