But we still had to wait another hour until Marilyn finally showed. We spent those waiting hours mostly talking about the impending birth of the son he would never see. I later told his wife Kay that her husband was sure she would deliver a son.

"That's strange," she said. "He never talked about a son with me." John Clark Gable was born after his father's death which would make him 47 years old today.

Back to The Misfits and the process shots. Director John Huston gave his final "Cut!" command. It was about five p.m. on a Friday afternoon. Gable, the most professional of actors, had a 5 p.m. closing time in his contract. He said his goodbyes to each member of the crew and me and left for his Encino ranch looking robust and in the best of health. He was 60 years old and happily awaiting the birth of a baby boy.

The following Sunday morning I got a call from Don Brin, an AP photographer who had a police radio in his car. He told me an ambulance had been dispatched to Gable 's house, five minutes away from my house. I got there just in time to see Gable being lifted on a stretcher into the ambulance.

Wife Kay told me he had suffered a heart attack. Believe it or not, I beat that ambulance to Hollywood Presbyterian hospital, thanks to the light Sunday traffic. As they wheeled Gable into the emergency room, he was surprised to see me there but he gave me that famous Gable grin and said: "How's the food in this joint?" Clark was famous for his love of food--and drink.

I had already dictated a bulletin story quoting Kay that Hollywood's king suffered a heart attack. It would be a banner story in Monday morning newspapers around the world. Radio stations got it on the air immediately. It had been a few years since Gable had left MGM but soon Howard Strickling, the director of publicity, Ken Hollywood, the cop on the gate, and a score or more other MGM personnel showed up at the hospital, attesting to Gable 's great popularity at his old studio.

And thus began the death watch that would last 10 days until a massive coronary took the life of a beloved superstar. There had been signs during those 10 days that Gable had been sitting up and devouring huge meals, signs that made all of us optimistic he would make it.

The King was dead and 47 years later, there still is no one who could replace him. The movie industry had one Gable --and only one.

I'm still hanging out with a younger crowd. During the past week, I helped Van Alexander celebrate his 92nd birthday, Johnny Grant his 84th, and my own 93rd.

We took Van and his wife Beth over to the Bel-Air hotel for lunch. When you're in the nineties, lunch is preferable to dinner.

Van was 30 years ahead of Martin Luther King in the civil rights movement. He was the white arranger for one of the hottest black bands of the thirties --Chick Webb and his Savoy Ballroom band. At the same time on the other side of the country, Benny Goodman, the King of Swing, employed as his arranger the legendary African-American Fletcher Henderson.

I asked Van how he landed in Harlem with the Webb band?

"Beth and I were high school sweethearts and we used to go dancing at the Savoy ballroom. One night I told Chick that I had two arrangements for his band. He said to bring them along the next time I come to the Savoy.

"I didn't have any arrangements but I went home and made two. Chick liked them and gave me a job. " Since then Van has been a well-known composer, arranger, and band leader. He was musical director on one of the best variety shows on TV --the Dean Martin Show. He composed the first hit for the 16-year-old vocalist of the Webb band. Her name? Ella Fitzgerald. The song? "A Tisket A Tasket."

At age 92, he's still arranging. As for his dance partner at the Savoy, they have been married for 69 years. We 'll take them to lunch again when they celebrate their 70th.

Van used to arrange for Gordon and Sheila MacRae too--a great nightclub act. Gordon had a couple hit movies--Oklahoma and Carousel. And Sheila was Jackie Gleason's last "Alice" on The Honeymooners, TV's longest running sitcom. It started the year before I Love Lucy--1950 and is still running, as is Lucy.

Johnny Grant, the honorary mayor of Hollywood invited 100 guests to his home--the Roosevelt hotel in Hollywood.

The party was held in the Oscar room where the first Academy Awards were held 80 years ago. Wings, a silent movie directed by Bill Wellman, won as best picture. Louis B. Mayer, the Academy founder, didn't invite Wellman who became one of the great all-time directors. Janet Gaynor won as best actress and Emil Jannings was the best actor winner. The nickname "Oscar" was unheard of in those early days.

First guests I spotted were Mickey and Jan Rooney, Buzz and Lois Aldrin. Johnny asked Mickey to say a few words. Mickey gave him a mini-series of words. Also talked with Angie Dickinson who still looks sensational. Had a nice reunion with Earl "the Pearl" Watson who was the doorman at the Knickerbocker hotel for many years. He remembered me from my visits with Elvis Presley who lived at the Knickerbocker when he first recorded at nearby RCA. I also visited D.W. Griffith there. D.W. was forgotten by the industry he created in those later days. Practically every camera angle still used today was invented by Griffith --the closeup, the fade dissolve etc. Cecil B. DeMille said D.W. "was the first director to film thought."

Johnny, who is just a kid in my book, asked Rooney to start the speeches with a few words. Mickey gave him a mini-series before he was through, praising Hollywood 's contributions in World War Two.

I remember Mickey once telling me he had a wife who grew on him during the war. "She was a former Miss Alabama who was my size when I married her. After I spent a few years overseas, I came home and had to look up to her. She had grown a good foot in height. "

After talking with Johnny and Angie, I was inspired to go to Vine street and see if my star on the Hollywood Walk of fame was still there after one month. It was. Also discovered that one of its neighbors was the star of Louis B. Mayer, once the most powerful tycoon in Hollywood. L.B. used to cry when he wanted a favor from someone.

He once cried on my shoulder when he wanted me to retract an AP story I wrote about his imminent overthrow as head of MGM with Dore Schary replacing him. My source was 100 percent accurate so there was no retraction.

His most famous crying incident, however, was with Herman Mankiewicz the famed screenwriter. Herman in the midst of writing an MGM epic took up flying, a perilous hobby in the thirties. L.B. called Herman on the carpet and threatened him with blacklisting, which Mayer could have done with a few phone calls.

Herman was adamant. He was going to continue his flying and to hell with L.B. He started to leave Mayer 's office and L.B., on his knees, wrapped his arms around Herman's legs and sobbed:

"Herman, name me one great Jewish aviator."

A dear friend of mine, Marty Allen, at age 85 is the comedy hit of Las Vegas. He and his wife Karon Kate Blackwell, a terrific singer and pianist, appear in an open-ended engagement at the Gold Coast. Their show Hello Dere! is booked through July, and from all the rave reviews, will probably be extended past that date.

That's okay with Marty. He and Karon live in Las Vegas and have spent recent years afloat on cruise ships from Alaska to the Mediterranean. It got so every time a waiter would set a glass of water in front of him, Marty would do 20 minutes of his act. "It's great to be on land once more," says Marty who sent me a beautiful bouquet for my star ceremony. He would have been there if he hadn 't been working in Vegas. Marty still dances in his act. After serving in World War II, he was a door-to-door dance salesman.

"I got the idea that women would love to learn to dance or just dance during their work day. So, for $10 a half-hour, I 'd arrive at their door with a record player and records and we'd dance." He got to the point where he had 15 clients a day and it was costing him a fortune in new shoes and foot powder. In the fifties he teamed with Steve Rossi to become one of the funniest nightclub performers in the business. That's when I first met him. One of these days I'll write a column about the time Marty and I judged the "Miss Nude World" beauty contest in Naked City, Indiana, a nudist camp. Marty does a lot of one-liners while his wife changes costumes.

I liked this one: "If a guy talks dirty to a girl, it's sexual harassment. If a girl talks dirty to a guy, it's $3.99 a minute."