All the Stars in the Heavens by Adriana Trigiani

that’s a lot of hooey. We’re a carnival amusement. They made movies in Australia, China, Germany, long before they came here. We didn’t invent the movies, but just like anything American made, we take a good idea from anywhere and make it better. We’ve come a long way fast.”
    â€œAny advice, sir? How does one break in to the business?”
    â€œThe accent works for you. Work the Old Britannia for all it’s worth.”
    â€œI will indeed.”
    â€œA ditch digger with a British accent could walk through the gates of MGM, and Louis B. Mayer would sign him up. An American ditch digger would walk through the same gate and be escorted off the lot. There’s something about you people. You sound like you have culture.”
    â€œLucky for me, they will never meet my family and disprove that theory.”
    â€œCommoners?”
    â€œMr. Gable, you have no idea.”
    â€œI might. I’m from Cadiz.”
    â€œArabia?”
    â€œOhio.”
    â€œI passed through Ohio on the train. Lovely and languid.”
    â€œIf you say so. I worked the oil rigs. Met a girl and got hooked on theater. Got out. Became an actor. That’s how I ended up here.”
    â€œThere’s always a girl in the story.”
    â€œEvery picture is a love story.” Gable steadied his gaze on the water. “Even when they call it something else. They might call it an adventure, a mystery, a historical, or a Tom Mix western, but they’re all love stories.”
    David Niven was aware that Gable had a reputation with the ladies. A lovely blonde had kissed him good-bye before he boarded the König that morning. Virginia Grey was a young starlet, her father a movie director, so she understood Hollywood and the life of a leading man. As Gable moved through the world, his way was made clear by women who could not get enough of him, or he of them. They had made him a star, and he owed them. Whatever he could do to repay the debt was fine with him, and in fact an obligation.
    Niven studied the fan magazines to plot his course in Hollywood. Photoplay had reported Gable’s recent passionate pursuit of the actress Elizabeth Allan, an English rose who had enchanted Hollywood with her regal bearing and delicate beauty. She had a British accent, which proved Gable’s theory. It didn’t matter that Gable wasmarried; he was a contract player, at a salary of $3,000 a week, he could buy anything or anyone he wanted, including the press, who could be convinced not to write about his private life.
    David Niven could only imagine how much fun it was to be Clark Gable.
    â€œThings are changing in Hollywood. More eyes on us.”
    â€œI can be discreet,” Niven promised.
    â€œYou don’t have any choice in the matter. They can fire you over anything these days.”
    After a decade of gum-chewing flappers, the movie business left the Roaring Twenties behind and was ready for class and couth. By 1934, hemlines had dropped, bob haircuts grew out to chignons, and breeding replaced moxie as girls went back to being women. Good taste was in style, so were the traditional values of home and hearth.
    The future of the movie business would be built on a moral high ground thanks to the Hays Code. The summer of 1934 changed everything. There was a binding clause in every actor’s studio contract that said he or she accepted the responsibility of setting an ethical and decent example for the audiences that came to see them in the movies.
    No longer could you play an angel; you had to be one.
    The dramatic movies of the 1930s might have been filled with stories of gangsters and their molls—Gable himself had played his share of thugs and thieves—but there were consequences for bad behavior. If you sinned on the silver screen, you might die for it; if you repented, it made a splendid final scene audiences would never forget. You want them weeping on the way out. Hollywood was now in