Time & Perspective Quote by Clark Gable

Gable’s line is a masterclass in old-Hollywood misdirection: take a scandalous premise, shrug it off with a grin, and pivot to something wholesomely masculine. The profanity (“Hell”) opens like a barroom aside, not a press release, signaling that he’s speaking from the gut while also performing a persona. “All the dames” isn’t just period slang; it’s a wink at the gossip economy that fed on star bodies. He reduces the rumor mill to an absurd tally, then punctures it with logistics. Not morality. Not denial. Scheduling.

That’s the subtext: the studio-era sex symbol can’t look prudish, can’t look guilty, and can’t look controlled. So he chooses a third lane, the one that keeps the myth intact. The joke concedes the premise just enough to sound honest (“I’m supposed to have”), then reclaims authority by reframing the story as ridiculous labor. If the public insists on imagining him as insatiable, he’ll play along, but on terms that make him the amused narrator rather than the hunted subject.

Fishing is the perfect counter-image: solitary, patient, traditionally “man’s man” leisure, a release valve from the manufactured frenzy of celebrity. In context, it’s also a neat dodge of specifics at a time when stars lived in a semi-policed moral theater. Gable doesn’t argue with the machine; he deflates it, keeping his virility, his autonomy, and his likability in the same breath.