Everything about Clark Gable totally explained
Clark Gable (
February 1,
1901 –
November 16,
1960) was an iconic American
actor nicknamed "The King of Hollywood" in his heyday. In 1999, the
American Film Institute named Gable seventh among the
Greatest Male Stars of All Time.
His most famous role was
Rhett Butler in the 1939
epic film Gone with the Wind, in which he starred with
Vivien Leigh. He was nominated for the
Academy Award for Best Actor for three films that include
Mutiny on the Bounty (1935); he won for
It Happened One Night (1934). Another memorable performance was his last film
The Misfits (1961), co-starring
Marilyn Monroe.
Gable and
Joan Crawford were together in eight films,
Myrna Loy was with him seven times, and
Jean Harlow was with him six times. He also starred with
Lana Turner in four features, with
Norma Shearer in three.
Biography
Early life
Gable was born in
Cadiz,
Ohio to William Henry "Bill" Gable, an oil-well driller, and Adeline Hershelman, both of
German descent. He was mistakenly listed as a female on his birth certificate. His original name was probably
William Clark Gable, but birth registrations, school records and other documents contradict one another. "William" would have been in honor of his father. "Clark" was the maiden name of his maternal grandmother. In childhood he was almost always called "Clark"; some friends called him "Clarkie," "Billy," or "Gabe".
When he was six months old, his sickly mother had him baptized
Roman Catholic. She died when he was ten months old, probably of an aggressive
brain tumor. Following her death, Gable's father's family refused to raise him as a Catholic, provoking enmity with his mother's side of the family. The dispute was resolved when his father's family agreed to allow Gable to spend time with his mother's Catholic brother Thomas and wife Elizabeth on their farm.
In April 1903, Gable's father Will married Jennie Dunlap, whose family came from the small neighboring town of
Hopedale. Gable was a tall shy child with a loud voice. After his father purchased some land and built a house, the new family settled in. Jennie played the piano and gave her stepson lessons at home; later he took up brass instruments. She raised Gable to be well-dressed and well-groomed; he stood out from the other kids. Gable was very mechanically inclined and loved to strip down and repair cars with his father. At thirteen, he was the only boy in the men's town band. Even though his father insisted on Gable doing manly things, like hunting and hard physical work, Gable loved language. Among trusted company, he'd recite Shakespeare, particularly the sonnets. Will Gable did agree to buy a seventy-two volume set of
The World's Greatest Literature to improve his son's education, but claimed he never saw his son use it. In 1917, when Gable was in high school, his father had financial difficulties. Will decided to settle his debts and try his hand at farming and the family moved to
Ravenna, just outside of
Akron. Gable had trouble settling down in the very rural area. Despite his father's insistence that he work the farm, Gable soon left to work in Akron's
tire factories.
At seventeen, Gable was inspired to be an actor after seeing the play
The Bird of Paradise, but he wasn't able to make a real start until he turned 21 and inherited money. By then, his stepmother Jennie had died and his father moved to
Tulsa to go back to the oil business. He toured in stock companies and worked the oil fields and as a horse manager. Gable found work with several second-class theater companies and worked his way across the Midwest to
Portland,
Oregon, where he found work as a necktie salesman in the
Meier & Frank department store. While there, he met actress
Laura Hope Crews, who encouraged him to go back to the stage and into another theater company. His acting coach was a theater manager in Portland, Oregon,
Josephine Dillon (17 years his senior). Dillon paid to have his teeth repaired and his hair styled. She guided him in building up his chronically undernourished body, and taught him better body control and posture. She spent considerable time training his naturally high-pitched voice, which Gable slowly managed to lower, and he gained better resonance and tone. As his speech habits improved, Gable's facial expressions became more natural and convincing. After the long period of rigorous training, she eventually considered him ready to attempt a film career.
Hollywood
Stage and silent films
In 1924, with Dillon's financial aid, the two went to
Hollywood, where she became his manager and first wife. He changed his stage name from W. C. Gable to Clark Gable. He found work as an extra in such
silent films as
The Plastic Age (1925), which starred
Clara Bow, and
Forbidden Paradise, plus a series of two-reel comedies called
The Pacemakers. He also appeared as a bit player in a series of shorts. However, Gable wasn't offered any major roles and so he returned to the stage, becoming lifelong friends with
Lionel Barrymore, who in spite of his bawling Gable out for amateurish acting at first, urged Gable to pursue a career on stage. During the 1927-28 theater season, Gable acted with the Laskin Brothers Stock Company in
Houston, where he played many roles, gained considerable experience and became a local matinee idol. Gable then moved to New York and Dillon sought work for him on
Broadway. He received good reviews in
Machinal, "He's young, vigorous and brutally masculine" said the
Morning Telegraph. The start of the
Great Depression and the beginning of talking pictures caused a cancellation of many plays in the 1929-30 season and acting work became harder to get.
Early successes
In 1930, after his impressive appearance as the seething and desperate character Killer Mears in the play
The Last Mile, Gable was offered a contract with
MGM. His first role in a sound picture was as the villain in a low-budget
William Boyd western called
The Painted Desert (1931). He received a lot of
fan mail as a result of his powerful voice and appearance; the studio took notice.
In 1930, Gable and Josephine Dillon were divorced. A few days later, he married
Texas socialite Ria Franklin Prentiss Lucas Langham. After moving to
California, they were married again in 1931, possibly due to differences in state legal requirements.
"His ears are too big and he looks like an ape," said
Warner Bros. executive
Darryl F. Zanuck about Clark Gable after testing him for the lead in Warner's gangster drama
Little Caesar (1931). After several failed screen tests for Barrymore and Zanuck, Gable was signed in 1930 by MGM's
Irving Thalberg. He became a client of well-connected agent Minna Wallis, sister of producer
Hal Wallis and very close friend of
Norma Shearer.
Gable's timing in arriving in Hollywood was excellent as MGM was looking to expand its stable of male stars and he fit the bill. Gable then worked mainly in supporting roles, often as the villain. MGM's publicity manager Howard Strickland developed Gable's studio image, playing up his he-man experiences and his 'lumberjack in evening clothes' persona. To bolster his rocketing popularity, MGM frequently paired him with well-established female stars.
Joan Crawford asked for him as her co-star in
Dance, Fools, Dance (1931). He built his fame and public visibility in such important movies as
A Free Soul (1931), in which he played a gangster who slapped Norma Shearer (Gable never played a supporting role again after that slap).
The Hollywood Reporter wrote "A star in the making has been made, one that, to our reckoning, will outdraw every other star... Never have we seen audiences work themselves into such enthusiasm as when Clark Gable walks on the screen". He followed that with
Susan Lenox (Her Fall and Rise) (1931) with
Greta Garbo, and
Possessed (1931), in which he and Joan Crawford (then married to
Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.) steamed up the screen with some of the passion they shared for decades to come in real life.
Adela Rogers St. John later dubbed the relationship as "the affair that nearly burned Hollywood down."
Louis B. Mayer threatened to terminate both their contracts and for a while they kept apart and Gable shifted his attentions to
Marion Davies. On the other hand, Gable and Garbo disliked each other. She thought he was a wooden actor while he considered her a snob.
Stardom
Gable was considered for the role of
Tarzan but lost out to
Johnny Weissmuller's better physique and superior swimming prowess. Gable's unshaven lovemaking with bra-less Jean Harlow in
Red Dust (1932) made him MGM's most important star. After the hit
Hold Your Man (1933), MGM recognized the goldmine of the Gable-Harlow pairing, putting them in two more films,
China Seas (1935) and
Wife vs. Secretary (1936). An enormously popular combination, on-screen and off-screen, Gable and
Jean Harlow made six films together, the most notable being
Red Dust (1932) and
Saratoga (1937). Harlow died of
kidney failure during production of
Saratoga. Ninety percent completed, the remaining scenes were filmed with long shots or doubles; Gable would say that he felt as if he were "in the arms of a ghost".
In the following years, he acted in a succession of enormously popular pictures, earning him the undisputed title of "
King of Hollywood" in 1938. The title 'King' was first offered by
Spencer Tracy, probably in jest but soon
Ed Sullivan started a poll in his newspaper column and more than 20 million fans voted Gable 'King' and
Myrna Loy 'Queen' of Hollywood. Though the honorific certainly helped his career, Gable grew tired of it and later stated, "This 'King' stuff is pure bullshit...I'm just a lucky slob from Ohio. I happened to be in the right place at the right time".Throughout most of the 1930s and the early 1940s, he was arguably the world's biggest movie star.
Most famous roles
It Happened One Night
According to legend, Gable was lent to
Columbia Pictures, then considered a second-rate operation, as punishment for refusing roles; however, this has been refuted by more recent biographies.
MGM didn't have a project ready for Gable and was paying him $2000 per week, under his contract, to do nothing. Studio head
Louis B. Mayer lent him to Columbia for $2500 per week, making a $500 per week profit. Filming began in a tense atmosphere,
Gable won the
Academy Award for Best Actor for his 1934 performance in the film. He returned to MGM a bigger star than ever.
The unpublished memoirs of animator
Friz Freleng's mention that this was one of his favorite films. It has been claimed that it helped inspire the cartoon character
Bugs Bunny. Four things in the film may have coalesced to create Bugs: the personality of a minor character, Oscar Shapely and his penchant for referring to Gable's character as "Doc", an imaginary character named "Bugs Dooley" that Gable's character uses to frighten Shapely, and most of all, a scene in which Clark Gable eats carrots while talking quickly with his mouth full, as Bugs does.
Gable also earned an
Academy Award nomination when he portrayed
Fletcher Christian in 1935's
Mutiny on the Bounty. Gable once said that this was his favorite film of his own, despite the fact that he didn't get along with his co-stars
Charles Laughton and
Franchot Tone.
Gone with the Wind
Despite his reluctance to play the role, Gable is best known for his performance in
Gone with the Wind (1939), which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. Carole Lombard may have been the first to suggest that he play Rhett (and she play Scarlett) when she bought him a copy of the bestseller which he refused to read.
Gable was an almost immediate favorite for the role of
Rhett Butler with both the public and producer
David O. Selznick. But as Selznick had no male stars under long-term contract, he needed to go through the process of negotiating to borrow an actor from another studio.
Gary Cooper was Selznick's first choice. When Cooper turned down the role, he was quoted as saying, "
Gone With The Wind is going to be the biggest flop in Hollywood history. I’m glad it’ll be Clark Gable who’s falling flat on his nose, not me". By then, Selznick was determined to get Gable, and eventually found a way to borrow him from
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Gable was wary of potentially disappointing a public who had decided no one else could play the part. He later conceded, "I think I know now how a fly must react after being caught in a spider's web". It was his first film in
Technicolor. Also appearing in
Gone With The Wind in the role of "Aunt Pittypat" was
Laura Hope Crews, the friend in Portland who had coaxed Gable back into the theater.
During filming,
Vivien Leigh complained about his
bad breath, which was apparently caused by
false teeth. They otherwise got along well. His famous line, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn," caused an uproar since it was in violation of the
Production Code in effect at the time. Gable didn't want to shed tears for the scene after Scarlett (Leigh) has a miscarriage.
Olivia de Havilland made him cry, later commenting, "... Oh, he wouldn't do it. He would not! Victor (Fleming) tried everything with him. He tried to attack him on a professional level. We had done it without him weeping several times and then we'd one last try. I said, "You can do it, I know you can do it and you'll be wonderful ..." Well, by heaven, just before the cameras rolled, you could see the tears come up at his eyes and he played the scene unforgettably well. He put his whole heart into it."
Decades later, Gable said that whenever his career would start to fade, a re-release of
Gone with the Wind would instantly revive everything, and he continued as a top leading man for the rest of his life. In addition, Gable was one of the few actors to play the lead in three films that won an
Academy Award for Best Picture.
Gone with the Wind was given theatrical re-releases in 1947, 1954, 1961, 1967 (in a widescreen version), 1971, 1989, and 1998.
Personal life
Marriage to Carole Lombard
Gable's marriage in 1939 to his third wife, successful actress
Carole Lombard, was the happiest period of his personal life. As an independent actress, her annual income exceeded his studio salary until
Gone with the Wind brought them to rough parity. From their pairing, she gained personal stability and he thrived being around her youthful, charming, and blunt personality. She went hunting and fishing with him and with his cronies and he became more sociable. Most times, she tolerated his philandering. He famously stated, "You can trust that little screwball with your life or your hopes or your weaknesses, and she wouldn't even know how to think about letting you down". They purchased a ranch at
Encino and once Clark had become accustomed to her often blunt way of expressing herself, they found they'd much in common, despite Gable being a
conservative Republican and Lombard a
liberal Democrat. Their efforts to have a child were unsuccessful.
On
January 16,
1942, Lombard, who had just finished her 57th film,
To Be or Not to Be, was on a tour to sell
war bonds when the twin-engine DC-3 she was traveling in crashed into a mountain near
Las Vegas, killing all aboard including Lombard's mother and MGM staff publicist Otto Winkler (best man at Gable's wedding to Lombard). Gable flew to the site and saw the forest fire ignited by the burning plane. Lombard was declared the first war-related female casualty the U.S. suffered in
World War II and Gable received a personal condolence note from
Franklin D. Roosevelt. The
CAB investigation cited 'pilot error'.
Gable returned to their empty house and a month later to the studio to work with
Lana Turner on
Somewhere I'll Find You. Gable was devastated by the tragedy for many months and drank heavily but managed to perform professionally on the set. For a while, Joan Crawford returned to his side to offer support and friendship.
Gable resided the rest of his life at the couple's Encino home, made 27 more movies, and married twice more. "But he was never the same," said
Esther Williams. "His heart sank a bit."
World War II
In 1942, following Lombard's death, Gable joined the
U.S. Army Air Forces. With the rank of Captain, Gable trained with and accompanied the
351st Heavy Bomb Group as head of a 6-man motion picture unit making a gunnery training film. Gable spent most of the war in the
UK at
Wetherby and
Polebrook. While at
RAF Polebrook,
England, Gable flew five combat missions, including one to Germany, as an observer-gunner in
B-17 Flying Fortresses between
May 4 and
September 23,
1943, earning the
Air Medal and the
Distinguished Flying Cross for his efforts.
Adolf Hitler esteemed Gable above all other actors; during the Second World War he offered a sizable reward to anyone who could capture and bring Gable unscathed to him. Gable left the Army Air Forces with the rank of
major.
After World War II
Immediately after his discharge from the service, Gable returned to his ranch and rested. He resumed a pre-war relationship with
Virginia Grey and dated other starlets. He introduced his golf caddie
Robert Wagner to MGM casting. Gable's first movie after
World War II was the 1945 production of
Adventure, with his ill-matched co-star
Greer Garson. It was a critical and commercial failure despite the famous teaser tagline "Gable's back and Garson's got him". After this film, Gable's career as a top star in Hollywood abruptly ended.
After Joan Crawford's third divorce, she and Gable resumed their affair and lived together for a brief time. Gable was acclaimed for his performance in
The Hucksters (1947), a satire of post-war Madison Avenue corruption and immorality. A very public and brief romance with
Paulette Goddard occurred after that. In 1949, Gable married
Sylvia Ashley, a British divorcée and the widow of
Douglas Fairbanks. The relationship was profoundly unsuccessful; they divorced in 1952. Soon followed
Never Let Me Go (1953), opposite
Gene Tierney. Tierney was a favorite of Gable and he was very disappointed when she was replaced in
Mogambo (due to her mental health problems) by
Grace Kelly.
Mogambo (1953), directed by
John Ford, was a Technicolor remake of his earlier film
Red Dust, which had been an even greater success. Gable's on-location affair with Grace Kelly sputtered out after filming was completed.
Gable became increasingly unhappy with what he considered mediocre roles offered him by MGM, while the studio regarded his salary as excessive. Studio head
Louis B. Mayer was fired in 1951 amid slumping Hollywood production and revenue, due primarily to the rising popularity of television. Studio chiefs struggled to cut costs. Many MGM stars were fired or not renewed, including Greer Garson and
Judy Garland. In 1953, Gable refused to renew his contract, and began to work independently. His first two films were
Soldier of Fortune and
The Tall Men, both profitable though only modest successes. In 1955, Gable married his fifth wife, Kay Spreckels (née Kathleen Williams), a thrice-married former fashion
model and actress who had previously been married to sugar-refining heir Adolph B. Spreckels Jr.
In 1955, Gable formed a production company with
Jane Russell and her husband Bob Waterfield, and they produced
The King and Four Queens, Gable's one and only production. He found producing and acting to be too taxing on his health, and he was beginning to manifest a noticeable tremor particularly in long takes. His next project was
Band of Angels, with relative newcomer
Sidney Poitier and
Yvonne De Carlo; it was a total disaster.
Newsweek said, "Here is a movie so bad that it must be seen to be disbelieved". Next he paired with
Doris Day in
Teacher's Pet, shot in black in white to better hide his aging face and overweight body. The film was good enough to bring Gable more film offers, including
Run Silent, Run Deep, with co-star and producer
Burt Lancaster, which featured his first on screen death since 1937, and which garnered good reviews. Gable started to receive television offers but rejected them outright, even though some of his peers, like his old flame
Loretta Young, were flourishing in the new medium. His next two films were for Paramount:
But Not for Me with
Carroll Baker and
It Started in Naples with
Sophia Loren. At 58, Gable finally acknowledged, "Now it's time I act my age".
Gable's last film was
The Misfits, written by
Arthur Miller, directed by
John Huston, and co-starring
Marilyn Monroe,
Eli Wallach, and
Montgomery Clift. This was also the final film completed by Monroe. Many critics regard Gable's performance to be his finest, and Gable, after seeing the rough cuts, agreed.
Children
Gable had a daughter,
Judy Lewis, the result of an affair with actress
Loretta Young that began on the set of
The Call of the Wild in 1934. In an elaborate scheme, Young took an extended vacation and went to
Europe to hide the fact that she was pregnant. After a few months she came back to California and gave birth to their child in
Venice. Nineteen months after the birth, Loretta claimed to have adopted Judy (a gambit that got less believable when the child grew to look much like her mother, with ears that stuck out like Gable's).
According to Lewis, Gable visited her home once, but he didn't tell her that he was her father. While neither Gable nor Young would ever publicly acknowledge their daughter's real parentage, this fact was so widely known that in Lewis's autobiography
Uncommon Knowledge, she wrote that she was shocked to learn of it from other children at school. Loretta Young never officially acknowledged the fact, which she said would be the same as admitting to a "venial sin". However, she finally gave her biographer permission to include it only on the condition the book not be published until after her death.
On
March 20,
1961, Kay Gable gave birth to Gable's son, John Clark Gable, born four months after Clark's death.
Death
Gable died in
Los Angeles,
California on November 16, 1960, the result of a fourth
heart attack. There was much speculation that Gable's physically demanding
Misfits role, which required yanking on and being dragged by horses, contributed to his sudden death soon after filming was completed. In a widely reported quote, Gable's wife Kay blamed it on stress caused by "the endless waiting... waiting (for Monroe)". Monroe, on the other hand, claimed that she and Kay had become close during the filming and would refer to Clark as "Our Man".
David Bret's book
Clark Gable: Tormented Star (2007) claims that Gable had relationships with openly
homosexual men and was "
gay for pay" in his early career. It claims that Gable was branded a "
sissy" by his father as a child, prompting him to adopt a macho image and denounce homosexuality.
Filmography
Gable is known to have appeared as an extra in 13 films between 1924 and 1930. He then appeared in a total of 67 theatrically released motion pictures, as himself in 17 "short subject" films, and he narrated and appeared in a World War II propaganda film entitled
Combat America, produced by the United States Army Air Forces.
Further Information
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