 |
| Clark Gable as Rhett Butler |
-Long before he was Hollywood’s leading man, Clark Gable worked a number of odd jobs. He worked in a tire factory, he sold men’s ties in a department store, worked at a newspaper, and as a telephone linesman just to name just a few. He once said that at the time Margaret Mitchell was writing
Gone with the Wind, and inventing the character Rhett Butler, he was working for four dollars a day as a common laborer in Oklahoma. That's a long way from Hollywood.
 |
| Red Skelton, 33° |
-Red Skelton grew up in poverty. By the time he was twelve, he’d already worked a number of jobs, beginning when he was seven years old. He was a newspaper boy, he wracked balls at a local pool hall, in a bordello as a “towel boy,” and for “Doc Lewis” a traveling medicine man where he not only made the miracle medicine, but handed out the bottles to those foolish enough to buy them. He was discovered selling papers outside a theatre by another famous Freemason—vaudeville comedian and later movie and television actor Ed Wynn.
 |
| Ernest Borgnine, 33° |
-In October 1950, Ernest Borgnine was about to give up on his dream of being an actor—he was too plain-looking, and jobs were few and far between. At best, he might get occasional roles as a cab driver, or a milkman. He was beginning to be more realistic about his future. Contemplating a career as a tugboat captain on the Hudson River, he would never have believed that within five years of that moment, he’d be standing before the Academy in a crowded auditorium—receiving the best-actor Oscar. In his nineties now and more than 200 film roles later--he's still at it. Go Ernie!
 |
| Will Rogers |
-In one of Will Roger’s movies State Fair he worked with a former state fair grand champion boar, Blue Boy, who was massive in size, had large tusks, and a foul disposition. He nearly gave the director of the film, Henry King, a heart attack, when one day he found his missing actor asleep in the pen with Blue Boy, his head resting on the animal. “I’ve always been on friendly terms with hogs,” he said. He got a good laugh, and after the film, the director gave him the animal to eat. Will Rogers didn’t feel right about “eating a fellow actor” so he donated Blue Boy to an agricultural college, where the hog lived out the remainder of his life. Very typical behavior for Will Rogers.
~TEC
You'll find many more great stories and facts about famous Freemasons in my book series Famous American Freemasons. This seems to be a popular topic, so if you have some interesting trivia or stories about famous Freemasons you think I could use for future installments, please email them to me at webmaster@toddcreason.org and I just might use them. If you want a few more fun trivia facts, just click on the trivia link in the Favorite Topics cloud in the right column on my blog, and you'll see them all.
I recently attended a non-Masonic function held in a church where the Freemasons had dedicated the building. Out in the parking lot after the function had ended, I made note of the cornerstone. Not realizing I was a Mason myself, one of the others in the group gasped, "Isn't that weird!" 
Is the Fraternity whose Lodges served as an early model for democracy weird? Were many of the leaders of the American Revolution weird? How about the very first organization to break down class barriers, declaring everyone in Lodge to be equal? Or the Lodges in Belgium that first put forth the shocking idea that women are equal to men? How weird is the first organization known to promote worker's rights? Guess where many of those "weird" leaders in medicine, education, the arts, literature, music and architecture came from.
