Clark Gable
| Clark Gable | ||
 Gable in a publicity portrait in 1940 | ||
| Background information | ||
| Born as: | William Clark Gable | |
| Born | Feb 1, 1901 Cadiz, Ohio, U.S. | |
| Died | Nov 16, 1960 - age 58 Los Angeles, California, U.S. | |
| Spouse(s): | Josephine Dillon]]1924
(1930 - ) div <be>Maria Langham (1931 - 1939) div Carole Lombard (1939 - 1942) d. Sylvia Ashley (1949 - 1952) div Kay Williams (1955 - ) | |
| Children: | 2, including Judy Lewis | |
| Relatives: | Clark James Gable (grandson) | |
| Occupation: | Actor | |
William Clark Gable (✦February 1, 1901 – †November 16, 1960) was an American film actor, often referred to as "The King of Hollywood". He had roles in over 60 motion pictures in multiple genres during a career that lasted 37 years, three decades of which was as a leading man. Gable died of a heart attack at the age of 59; his final on-screen appearance was as an aging cowboy in The Misfits, released posthumously in 1961.
Born and raised in Ohio, Gable traveled to Hollywood, where he began his film career as an extra in silent films between 1924 and 1926. He progressed to supporting roles for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and his first leading role in Dance, Fools, Dance (1931) was alongside Joan Crawford, who requested him for the part. His role in the romantic drama Red Dust (1932) with reigning sex symbol Jean Harlow, made him MGM's biggest male star. Gable won the Academy Award for Best Actor for Frank Capra's romantic comedy It Happened One Night (1934), co-starring Claudette Colbert. He was again nominated for the award for his roles as Fletcher Christian in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), and as Rhett Butler opposite Vivien Leigh's Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939). He found continued commercial and critical success with Manhattan Melodrama (1934), San Francisco (1936), Saratoga (1937), Test Pilot (1938), and Boom Town (1940), three of which co-starred Spencer Tracy.
Gable spent two years as an aerial cameraman and bomber gunner in Europe during World War II. Although the movies he appeared in following his return were not critically lauded, they did well at the box office. He experienced a critical revival with The Hucksters (1947), Homecoming (1948), and Mogambo (1953), which also featured newcomer Grace Kelly. Later, he starred in Westerns and War movies, such as Run Silent, Run Deep (1958) with Burt Lancaster, and in comedies and dramas that paired him with a new generation of leading ladies, such as Doris Day in Teacher's Pet (1958), Sophia Loren in It Started in Naples (1960), and Marilyn Monroe in The Misfits (1961).
Gable was one of the most consistent box-office performers in the history of Hollywood, appearing on Quigley Publishing's annual Top Ten Money Making Stars Poll sixteen times. He was named the seventh greatest male movie star of classic American cinema by the American Film Institute. He appeared opposite many of the most popular actresses of their time. Joan Crawford was a favorite actress of his to work with, and he partnered with her in eight films. Myrna Loy worked with him seven times, and he was paired with Jean Harlow in six productions. He also starred with Lana Turner in four features, and in three each with Norma Shearer and Ava Gardner.
Early life
William Clark Gable was born on February 1, 1901, in Cadiz, Ohio, to William Henry "Will" Gable (1870–1948), an oil-well driller, and his wife Adeline (née Hershelman). His father was a Protestant and his mother a Catholic. Gable was named William after his father, but he was almost always called Clark, and referred to as "the kid" by his father. Due to the doctor's illegible handwriting, he was mistakenly listed as male and female in the county register; the clerk later corrected it to male. He had Belgian and German ancestry. Gable was six months old when he was baptized at a Roman Catholic church in Dennison, Ohio. When he was ten months old, his mother died. His father refused to raise him in the Catholic faith, which provoked criticism from the Hershelman family. The dispute was resolved when his father agreed to allow him to spend time with his maternal uncle Charles Hershelman and his wife on their farm in Vernon Township, Pennsylvania. In April 1903, Gable's father married Jennie Dunlap (1874–1920).
Gable's stepmother raised the tall, shy child with a loud voice to be well-dressed and well-groomed. She played the piano and gave him lessons at home. He later took up brass instruments, becoming the only boy in the Hopedale Men's town band at age 13. Gable was mechanically inclined and loved to repair cars with his father, who insisted that he engage in masculine activities such as hunting and hard physical work. Gable also loved literature; he would recite Shakespeare among the trusted company, particularly the sonnets.
His father had financial difficulties in 1917 and decided to try his hand at farming, and moved the family to Palmyra Township, near Akron, Ohio. His father insisted that he work the farm, but Gable soon left to work in Akron for the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company.
Gone with the Wind
Despite his reluctance to play the role, Gable is best known for his Oscar-nominated performance in the Academy Award-winning best picture Gone with the Wind (1939). Carole Lombard may have been the first to suggest that he play Rhett Butler (and she play Scarlett) when she bought him a copy of the best-seller, which he refused to read.
Butler's last line in Gone with the Wind, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn", is one of the most famous lines in movie history. Gable was an almost immediate favorite for the role of Rhett with both the public and producer David O. Selznick. Since Selznick had no male stars under long-term contract, he needed to negotiate with another studio to borrow an actor. Gary Cooper was Selznick's first choice. When Cooper turned down the role of Butler, 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 had become determined to hire Gable and set about finding a way to borrow him from MGM. Gable was wary of potentially disappointing an audience that had decided that 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."
By all accounts, Gable got along well with co-stars and was great friends with actress Hattie McDaniel; he even slipped her a real alcoholic drink during the scene in which they celebrated the birth of Scarlett and Rhett's daughter. According to Lennie Bluett, an extra in the film, Gable almost walked off the set when he discovered the studio facilities were segregated and signage posted "White" and "Colored". Gable phoned the film's director Victor Fleming and told him, "If you don't get those signs down, you won't get your Rhett Butler." The signs were then taken down. Gable tried to boycott the Gone with the Wind premiere in segregated Atlanta, Georgia, because African American McDaniel and Butterfly McQueen were not permitted to attend. He reportedly only went after McDaniel pleaded with him to go. They appeared in several more films, remaining life-long friends and he always attended her Hollywood parties.
Gable did not want to shed tears for the scene after Rhett inadvertently causes Scarlett to miscarry their second child. Olivia de Havilland made him cry, later commenting, "Oh, he would not 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 had one last try. I said, 'You can do it, I know you can do it, and you will 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." The role was one of Gable's most layered performances and partially based on the personality of director and friend Fleming.
Years later, Gable said that whenever his career would start to fade, a re-release of Gone with the Wind would soon revive his popularity, and he continued as a top leading actor for the rest of his life. One reissue publicized "Clark Gable never tires of holding Vivien Leigh".
World War II
On August 12, 1942, following Lombard's death and completion of the film Somewhere I'll Find You, Gable joined the United States Army, under the Army Air Forces. Lombard had suggested that Gable enlist as part of the war effort, but MGM was reluctant to let him go. Commanding General of the U.S. Army Air Forces Henry H. "Hap" Arnold offered Gable a "special assignment" with the First Motion Picture Unit following basic training.
The Washington Evening Star reported that Gable took a physical examination at Bolling Field on June 19, preliminary to joining the service.
- "Mr. Gable, it was learned from a source outside the war department, conferred with Lieutenant General H. H. Arnold, head of the air forces yesterday." The Star continued, "It was understood that Mr. Gable, if he is commissioned, will make movies for the air forces. Lieutenant Jimmy Stewart, another actor in uniform, has been doing this."
Gable had expressed an earlier interest in officer candidate school, with the intention of becoming an aerial gunner upon enlisting in bomber training school. MGM arranged for his studio friend, the cinematographer Andrew McIntyre, to enlist with him and accompany him through training.
On August 17, 1942, shortly after his enlistment, he and McIntyre were sent to Miami Beach, Florida, where they entered USAAF OCS Class 42-E. Both completed training on October 28, 1942, and were commissioned as second lieutenants. His class of about 2,600 students (of which he ranked about 700th) selected Gable as its graduation speaker. General Arnold presented the cadets with their commissions. Arnold then informed Gable of his special assignment: to make a recruiting film in combat with the Eighth Air Force to recruit aerial gunners. Gable and McIntyre were immediately sent to Flexible Gunnery School at Tyndall Field, Florida, followed by a photography course at Fort George Wright, Washington State and promoted to first lieutenants upon its completion.
On January 27, 1943, Gable reported to Biggs Army Airfield, Texas to train with and accompany the 351st Bomb Group to England as head of a six-man motion picture unit. In addition to McIntyre, he recruited the screenwriter John Lee Mahin, camera operators Sgts. Mario Toti and Robert Boles, and the sound man Lt. Howard Voss, to complete his crew. Gable was promoted to captain while he was with the 351st Bomb Group at Pueblo Army Air Base, Colorado, a rank commensurate with his position as a unit commander. (Prior to this, he and McIntyre were both first lieutenants.)
Gable spent most of 1943 in England at RAF Polebrook with the 351st Bomb Group. 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. During one of the missions, Gable's aircraft was damaged by flak and attacked by fighters, which knocked out one of the engines and shot up the stabilizer. In the raid on Germany, one crewman was killed and two others were wounded, and flak went through Gable's boot and narrowly missed his head. When word of this reached MGM, studio executives began to badger the Army Air Forces to reassign its most valuable screen actor to noncombat duty. In November 1943, Gable returned to the United States to edit his film, on an old Warner's lot donated to the war effort, assigned to the 18th AAF Base Unit (Motion Picture Unit) at Culver City, California, where other stars contributed with any film equipment they had as well.
In June 1944, Gable was promoted to Major. While he hoped for another combat assignment, he had been placed on inactive duty and on June 12, 1944, his discharge papers were signed by Captain (later U.S. president) Ronald Reagan. Gable completed the editing of the film Combat America in September 1944, giving the narration himself and making use of numerous interviews with enlisted gunners as focus of the film. Because his motion picture production schedule made it impossible for him to fulfill reserve officer duties, he resigned his commission on September 26, 1947, a week after the Air Force became an independent service branch.
Adolf Hitler favored Gable above all other actors. During World War II, Hitler offered a sizable reward to anyone who could capture and bring Gable to him unscathed.
Gable was awarded military honors for service: the Distinguished Flying Cross, Air Medal, American Campaign Medal, European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal, and World War II Victory Medal. He was a qualified aerial gunner having received his wings upon completion of flexible gunnery school at Tyndall field.
He made good use of his wartime experiences in the movie Command Decision (1948), playing a World War II brigadier general who supervised bombing raids over Germany. Variety said, "His is a believable delivery, interpreting the brigadier-general who must send his men out to almost certain death with an understanding that bespeaks his sympathy with the soldier... ".
Personal life
In 1933, Gable was initiated into Freemasonry at the Beverly Hills Lodge No. 528 CA.
Marriages and children
"1957 Confidential Magazine" with article about Gable's first wife Josephine Dillon:
- Gable habitually married. He was engaged to actress Franz Dorfler when he lived in Astoria, Oregon. She referred him to the woman who would become his acting coach and manager, Josephine Dillon. Gable and Dillon married in 1924 and divorced in 1930. Gable would say "he owed her a debt of gratitude" for the training he received from Dillon in the early years of his career. His second wife was Texas socialite Maria Franklin Prentiss Lucas Langham (nicknamed "Ria"). The couple divorced on March 7, 1939. Only 13 days later, during a production break on Gone with the Wind, Gable married comedic actress Carole Lombard, who died in a plane crash less than three years later.
In 1949, Gable married Sylvia Ashley, a British model and actress who was the widow of Douglas Fairbanks; the couple divorced in 1952.
In 1955, Gable married 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., and became stepfather to her two children. On March 20, 1961, Kay Gable gave birth to Gable's only son, John Clark Gable, at the same hospital in which her husband had died four months earlier. John Clark raced cars and trucks most notably in the Baja 500 and 1000, turning down Hollywood offers to act until Bad Jim (1990), a straight to video film. By 1999, his work with The Clark Gable Foundation helped restore the house in which his father was born and open it as a museum in Cadiz, Ohio. He had two children: Kayley Gable (born 1986) and Clark James Gable (1988–2019). Kayley is an actress, while Clark James was the host of two seasons of the nationally syndicated reality show Cheaters. Clark James died at age 30 on February 22, 2019.
During the filming of The Call of the Wild in early 1935, the film's lead actress, Loretta Young, became pregnant with Gable's child. Their daughter Judy Lewis was born on November 6, 1935, in Venice, California. Young hid her pregnancy in an elaborate scheme. Nineteen months after the birth, she claimed to have adopted the baby. Most in Hollywood (and some in the general public) believed Gable was Lewis's father because of their strong resemblance and the timing of her birth.
Five years after Gable's death, when confronted by Lewis, Loretta Young said that she was Lewis's biological mother and that Gable was her father by an affair. Young died on August 12, 2000; her autobiography, published posthumously, confirmed that Gable was indeed Lewis's father. Judy Lewis died of cancer at age 76 on November 25, 2011. In 2014, Young's daughter-in-law alleged that Young had said in 1998 that Judy Lewis was conceived by date rape even though Young had previously admitted to an affair with Gable and it was a known secret in Hollywood at the time; they added that they had chosen to remain silent about the information until both Young and Lewis were deceased but both were deceased for several years before the claim was made.
Illness and death
On November 6, 1960, Gable was sent to Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in Los Angeles, where doctors found that he had suffered a heart attack. Newspaper reports the following day listed his condition as satisfactory. By the morning of November 16, he seemed to be improving. but he died that evening at the age of 59 from a second heart attack caused by an infection. Medical staff did not perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation for fear that the procedure would rupture Gable's heart, and a defibrillator was not available.
Gable is interred in the Great Mausoleum, Memorial Terrace, at Glendale's Forest Lawn Memorial Park next to Carole Lombard and her mother. An honor guard and pallbearers Spencer Tracy and James Stewart were in attendance. Twenty-two years later, Kay Gable died and was interred there as well.
Filmography
- Wikipedia article: Clark Gable Filmography
- Wikipedia article: Clark Gable
External links
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Note: Clark Gable was a volunteer at the Hollywood Canteen |
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