Living Famously

One of the things that gave the golden age of Hollywood its glow - apart from the films that is - is that you were not treated to the gory ins ands outs of who did what to whom. (Or if one reads this week's Who magazine, who has just had their first pedicure, who got custody of his beagle cross, Maggie May, when he divorced a famous Australian actress and . . well, you get the idea.) While, Living Famously (ABC, Saturday nights, 7.30pm) doesn't quite sink to those depths it certainly takes the shine of its stars.

On last Saturday night's Living Famously (ABC, Saturday nights, 7.30pm) a cameraman who worked with Humphrey Bogart on many films, informed us that Bogey was charismatic in front of a camera and exceedingly dull when off. Not to mention - according to both critics and friends - a drunk.

The subject of tonight's documentary is Clark Gable, the King Of Hollywood from the 1930s to the 1950s. He starred with almost every leading lady, from Greta Garbo and Joan Crawford on, and had affairs with most of them. - though not his co-star Marilyn Monroe, who had always told people he was her father. That story always seemed nuts to me until this documentary made it clear he could well have fathered half the children in LA. After his death Loretta Young's 'adopted' daughter Judy Lewis, was told Gable was her dad and Young her biological mother. To avoid the controversy of an illegitimate child by a married man Young was forced by Warner Brothers to put Judy in an orphanage before 'adopting' her at 18 months.

Carole Lombard, it seems, was the only woman Gable truly loved - perhaps because but she was killed in a plane crash not so long after they had married. The years after her death passed, so we are told, 'in a blur of brothels and alcohol'.

Bogart died of throat cancer at 57. Gable only makes it to 59. Grace Kelly, the subject of next week's episode, was killed in a car accident when in her early fifties. Fame, it seems, does not ensure longevity. It does, however, ensure a lot of sex - and, in the case of Kelly and Gable, with each other.

It would also seem you don't have to act (or sing) well to become famous - footage of these stars first films is often excruciating. But one of the terrific things about this series is watching these performers develop their talent over the years, and the charisma that has enabled them to endure. It is impossible not to feel a thrill watching Bogart in Casablanca, Gable in Gone with the Wind, or Kelly in Rear Window. While tarnished, they still have their glow.

So, if you are brave enough to hear the often-unpalatable truth keep watching. Over this summer we will get the low down, on, among others, Alfred Hitchcock, James Dean, Maria Callas, Oliver Reed, Peter Sellers, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, Marvin Gaye (that'll be depressing) and Bing Crosby.

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