The Hucksters, 1947

Clark Gable and Deborah Kerr pair up in this peek into the advertising industry. Gable, as Victor Norman, tries to land a high-salaried advertising job by helping an ad agency’s client get an endorsement from a beautiful war widow. The widow, Deborah Kerr as Kay Dorrance, sees the interaction between her children and Gable which helps her fall for him.

This was Deborah Kerr’s first American film. To help movie-goers pronounce Kerr’s last name correctly, one of the taglines for the film was “Gable’s New Star is Deborah Kerr (rhymes with star).”

Ava Gardner was in several uncredited roles before she was able to play a possible love interest for Clark Gable in this film. She later played a love interest for Clark Gable in the 1952 film Lone Star and in 1953’s Mogambo.

Irene was very busy designing costumes from Ginger Rogers’ gowns in Shall We Dance in 1937 to Doris Day’s gowns in Lover Come Back in 1961. For The Hucksters, Irene supervised the designs of Deborah Kerr’s gowns as well as Ava Gardner’s.