Clark Gable

I saw him several times in the late 1950s at the ultra-glam Bel-Air Country Club in Los Angeles.  As I outlined in a piece I called The Caddy, I was hopelessly trying to be one.  Gable and I had seen one another several times in passing.  One day we were in an area alone together and he looked at me, flashing that famous smile, and asked me if I was new.  He seemed very nice and not at all like the world-famous movie star he was.  He also looked even older than he appeared on the screen.  I thought he appeared quite worn out from his jaunt around the links but was trying to cover it up. I was rarely in awe of meeting movie stars but I made an exception for him.

He certainly was one of the biggest stars ever and to a large degree his fame has lasted... a handful of movies has seen to that, with one movie in particular.  I resisted referring to him as one of the greatest actors ever because, frankly, so many men and women have eclipsed him on that score.  But let's be fair and balanced at the same time... there was nothing wrong with Gable's acting. He knew the ropes, worked with good directors and had a vibrancy in his work that few men could match.  He always delivered. Frankly, I'm not aware of his giving any lackluster performances.  It is equally true that he pretty much stayed in a safe zone of acting. His persona was tough-talking, breezy, jaunty, confident, engaging... and he had an everyman appeal but with a glamorous physical presence.   

What I always liked about Clark Gable was that I could count on him. Sure he was usually the same in his roles but that could be said of most anyone.  The point is do you like that sameness... and I did.  I have seen every film he made in my lifetime and caught up on quite a number of the earlier ones.

During Hollywood's Golden Age, he dazzled on that screen and is as responsible for it being called the Golden Age as anyone. Next to his hunting buddy, Robert Taylor, he was one of the longest contracted actors at MGM.  That gargantuan machinery made sure that his exposure was guaranteed, his every need was met and that his indiscretions were hushed up but they never paid him as much as he made after he left them.

William Clark Gable was born in 1901in a little one-horse town in Ohio called Cadiz. (Even as late as last year, the population was just 3,242.)  It was a hardscrabble life as the scrappy son of an oil wildcatter who was often out of work.  His mother died when young Billy was only 10 months old and he would go on to say he was forever looking for another.  After her death he was farmed out to various relatives. His early childhood was not a happy one.

He quit high school at 16 and got menial jobs when they came through.  His life changed when he saw a play and determined then and there to become an actor.  Never lacking in confidence or bluff if need be, he thought he had what it took to become one as well. Most girls thought he was good-looking and everyone said he was outgoing... what more was needed?  Through sheer bravado he got on with stock companies and did some touring.  He latched onto a drama coach who was the first molder of the future actor. Things probably got a little fuzzy when he married her.  Josephine Dillon was 15 years older than Gable. She taught him some needed skills and while he wound up occasionally on Broadway, they soon found themselves in Hollywood.  She thought that was the answer.  He thought it was time for a divorce.

By 1931 he had made a handful of movies. There were no starring roles and in fact, he didn't even receive screen credit for a number of them.  No one had much noticed him.  At Warner Brothers, director Mervyn LeRoy was an exception to that and wanted Gable to appear in his upcoming gangster film, Little Caesar, but was over-ruled by studio head, Jack Warner, who thought Gable's very large ears made him unemployable as a romantic leading man.  

Gable was ready to throw in the towel and return to New York and the stage.  At the same time MGM's head of production, boy wonder, Irving Thalberg, who always had more insight than Warner could ever hope to have had, saw Gable differently.  He thought Gable was a stud.  No, no, he didn't want to send him a box of chocolates, he wanted him to slug some guys in MGM movies and put some sassy dames in their places.  In Gable he saw cocky, manly and riveting but under an umbrella of natural charm. That was a good place to start. 

There's some dual-edged humor to this image that Thalberg wanted to create.  It hadn't been and would never truly be MGM's thing... the brash, the ill-tempered, hard core. They wanted daisies and pastels and symphony orchestras.  In the beginning, studio chieftain, Louis B. Mayer, thought Thalberg (they were never bosom buddies) was out of his mind.  Gable was not MGM material.  Equally funny is that Gable was Warner Bros. material. Personality-wise, how was he so different from Warner's big star, Jimmy Cagney?

Gable's career at MGM was perfectly orchestrated.  He was built and groomed to be what they wanted.  Part of that grooming would include a pencil-thin moustache which all agreed made him sexier. They were pleased that he was compliant and it was noted that he was always letter-perfect with his lines, even though they didn't know he was dyslexic.  Off screen, he was already known as a boozer and a womanizer although he preferred the company of his sports-minded friends.  Among the studio's publicity department, which had employees with master's degrees in BS, and the studio's and Culver City police departments, the grip would be tightened a bit.  What Gable principally learned around this time was how to be more discrete.

He was already known for being a climber and the studio wanted that squelched as much as possible, too.  After divorcing his drama coach wife, he married Texas socialite, Ria Langham, who was 17 years older, to whom he would stay married for most of the 30s. Each wife was useful but the marriages were largely a sham and Gable was busily unfaithful during both.

It was already decided that Gable's great appeal was to women.  In no time at all, Mayer sang a different tune because of the inordinate amount of fan mail that the up-and-coming new actor was receiving from adoring females.  All said how much they loved him, most said how handsome they found him to be, one claimed a wet spot on her purple stationery was drool and several offered to have the childless actor's baby.

I always thought his appeal to women was curious... or perhaps it's not, given the times. As I see it he didn't have a lot of respect for female characters in his films.  They were not only rarely his equal but he mistreated them... at least verbally and sometimes with a good whack.  Some of these things were done with some humor but usually not.  And female fans liked that?  

MGM had every intention of putting him opposite every female star they had and among the first was the biggest... Greta Garbo. The film, is Susan Lennox (1931), which is totally forgettable but they made a sparkling screen team.  Gable would sleep with a number of his female costars but she was not among them.

Red Dust (1932) was a scorcher in its day and has some responsibility in getting those who monitor morals to start censoring movies.  The story concerned an Indochina rubber plantation owner who is involved with two women... a prostitute (Mary Astor) and the wife (Jean Harlow) of one of his employees. It was steamy stuff in those days.  Gable would change the actresses and the title but essentially make the same film 21 years later.

He was happy his Duesenberg was one foot longer than Gary Cooper's

Astor and Harlow, more than likely, knew Gable well but his relationship with Harlow turned to friendship.  She was going to be planning a wedding to William Powell who was divorcing Carole Lombard who would in a few years marry Gable.  So Hollywood, isn't it? 

Gable and Harlow would make six movies together.  She was one of several actresses with whom Gable would work several times. When the ladies liked him, they liked him. He and Myrna Loy would work together eight times.  Lana Turner, who worked with him four times, and her pal, Ava Gardner, who worked with him three times, were also women who knew him well.  

He would make eight pictures with Joan Crawford.  I've never seen any of them and although most were popular at the time, none has the lasting fame some of their individual films did.  She was a top star when they started working together and was billed over him in all but the last one, Strange Cargo (1940).  With occasional lapses, they had a 30-year sexual relationship.  They both treated their complicated relationship as friends with benefits, but she was in love with him and would claim he was the love of her life.

I would not normally mention his making No Man of Her Own (1932), a silly piece of nonsense about a card shark and a librarian who marry before knowing one another.  The lady in question is gifted screen comedienne Carole Lombard who by the end of the decade would be the third Mrs. Clark Gable. It was the only movie they made together and there wasn't a spark of romance at the time.

Studios began loaning out their stars to other studios who wanted them because it was good business... for everyone but the star. He received the same salary while the lending studio collected a small fortune.  He did No Man of Her Own at Paramount and would do his next one for Columbia.

He copped a bit of an attitude going to Columbia because, at the time, it was considered second-tier and he thought he was too big for them.  The film would become another of those signature Gable roles, opposite Claudette Colbert in It Happened One Night (1934). It was pretty titillating in 1934 to consider what it meant. 

Its screwball comedy leaning features a snarky newspaperman who has just been fired for his inexperience.  He boards a bus to try his luck elsewhere and encounters a snotty heiress on the lam.  When her father posts a large reward for her return, our intrepid hero sees a way out of his woes.  It was a small film, cheaply made, but had some memorably funny scenes.  Oh yeah, it went on to win best picture, best actor, best actress and best director (Frank Capra) at the Oscars.  Now Mr. Top Box Office was also Mr. Best Actor. Whaddayathink of that, Mr. Spencer Tracy?  

Manhattan Melodrama (1934) is one of the movies that one day began to change my mind about thirties' movies and more pointedly early thirties' movies.  The tale of two of childhood friends who end up on opposite sides of the law, one a murderer and one a governor, with a woman in between them, was another role with Gable's name written all over it and we know which part he played. William Powell and Myrna Loy (who would next begin their Thin Man series) were on board.  Melodrama is certainly underscored but there was some incisive writing and this trio played so well off one another.  It has always been famous as the film gangster John Dillinger came out of hiding to see and was gunned down leaving the theater.

Keeping warm with Loretta Young

The filming of Jack London's Call of the Wild (1935) in snowy Washington State is most famous for Gable's affair with leading lady Loretta Young.  She had just ended a year-long relationship with Tracy.  She and Gable incurred the wrath of director William Wellman as he expected to be regularly visiting her trailer as he had on their three previous films together.

The devoted Catholic Young was known for her on-set romances as was Gable, so no one was surprised by their affair but he was certainly surprised when she told him she was pregnant.  Marriage was discussed but he was already (unhappily) married and an abortion was out of the question.  Young then cooked up an elaborate scheme to handle her pregnancy.  She and her mother sailed to Europe and were away for months. When she returned to the states, it was with the child, a girl, in tow and Young claimed that she had adopted her.

Gable knew the truth but he kept his distance from the child, reportedly only seeing her once ever.  There was a great deal of talk, however, because along with a few other irregularities, the girl had some awfully big ears.  Oddly, Gable and Young would make another film, Key to the City, in 1950.   Both had briefly considered not doing it but decided if one of them declined it could bring about unwanted publicity.  

Reviews were sensational for the 1935 production of Mutiny on the Bounty. The tale of the sadistic Captain Bligh who engendered the mutiny championed by first mate Fletcher Christian was perfect for Gable and Charles Laughton.  Thalberg was certain the two would dislike one another and hoped so since it would add some spark to their fictional characters.  And they certainly did dislike one another, intensely so.  Gable was a homophobe and Laughton was a flamboyant gay with his current boytoy hired on as his masseur. Laughton, on the other hand, was profoundly jealous of Gable... his looks, his fame, his power. Interestingly, Gable became friends with another costar, Franchot Tone, would would marry Joan Crawford at the end of production.

These last two films had no Harlow and the fan mail indicated the public wanted another pairing so MGM came up with the romantic-comedy Wife v.s. Secretary (1936).  Harlow was the secretary circumspect about her love for Gable, her boss. For some added allure, Loy was added as the sexiest wife she'd ever played.  Up to this film, Gable didn't particularly care for Loy but now it all changed and they remained friends forever. 

Writers sat around thinking up movie plots that would suit Gable. Someone said imagine Gable, a dame and priest against the backdrop of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.  Thirty years later he was before the cameras in San Francisco, one of my favorite Gable flicks.  It's coming up next.

I recently saw Test Pilot (1938) for the first time and was surprised how good it was... especially well-written with great sparring between Gable and a seriously vivacious Loy.   Playing a daredevil who tests planes, it was tailor-made for MGM's star product. Tracy was again aboard as his mechanic and friend.  The two men had a guarded friendship which dated back to Broadway when they were drinking buddies for a time.  In Hollywood each wanted something the other had.  Gable longed to be thought of as an actor with the same respect accorded Tracy and Tracy would have killed to have had Gable's sex appeal and fame.  

Also in 1938, Gable and Loy were elected the King and Queen of Hollywood and that is how they would forever more refer to one another.  They had come along way.  Of course, it was a bit gimmicky and had more to do with selling movie tickets than anything resembling royalty.  I am not so sure most folks would recall Loy being a recipient but with Gable, the king label would stick forever more.

Idiot's Delight (1939) is a comedy-drama-musical starring Norma Shearer, almost at the end of her career, about a group of people stranded at a posh European hotel when the borders are closed at the start of WWII.  It was the third, last and best of Gable's films with Shearer, who was the widow of Thalberg, Gable's earliest champion.  It has its moments but is best-remembered for displaying Gable's dubious singing and dancing talents.

With the love of his life, Carole Lombard

Shortly after Idiot's Delight was released and 25 days after his divorce from Langham became final, Gable married Carole Lombard.  By everyone's standards it was a great marriage.  They were opposites in many ways... especially noticeable was how quiet and easy-going he was and how outgoing if not outrageous she was.  She liked to joke about his big ears and his false teeth and she kidded to intimates that if he had one less inch, he'd been the queen of Hollywood instead of the king.  They called each other Ma and Pa.

While she was a powerful personality, she determined early on that she was Mrs. Clark Gable and that he came first.  She encouraged him to go hunting with his pals... Taylor, Cooper and MGM cronies... whenever he wanted.  He was not crazy about parties, especially hosting them, but she adored it so he gave in to her.  He claimed he'd never been so happy or so loved and he was positive that marriage number three would last forever.

During their marriage came the biggest film of his career... the really big one... Gone With the Wind (1939).  I just wrote a little about it in my last posting and of course had an earlier review of it, as well, so we'll skip outlining more here.  But there is one issue worth tackling.  You may or may not know of it.  Sit next to me here and we'll dish.

It has to do with the fact that George Cukor was fired as the director of GWTW after filming only a few scenes.  To say that caused an uproar on a film already so famous (the public craved information nearly daily and it was generally provided) is an understatement.  I believe the official word is that Gable was miffed because Cukor, known as a woman's director, was favoring Vivien Leigh over Gable, and the star threw his weight around and had the director fired.

Let's back up.  Scarlett O'Hara is the main character in GWTW. Rhett Butler is certainly a famous character from the book and film but he is not the main character.  To that degree I am surprised that Gable even took the role because so much more attention would be showered on her.  I can't think of any future Gable film where that was the case.

More likely to be the truth are two stories, woven together.  One is that Cukor and Leigh formed a mutual admiration society. Each went on about how much the other was loved, admired and respected.  At the same time, Leigh and Gable got along about as well as Rhett and Scarlett.  So Gable was feeling slighted, something which he was not used to.  He apparently knew something else.  In his quest to become an actor, apparently he visited the other side a time or two and Cukor, a sometimes loose-lipped gay man, knew of it.  Gable couldn't have him around.

Of course one might question why Cukor couldn't speak of it after being fired but that wouldn't have happened.  No one would have believed it was any more than sour grapes on Cukor's part and besides, taking on the King of Hollywood was foolhardy.

Boom Town (1940) was the last of his three costarring roles with Tracy and his second and last outing with Colbert.  It was a rousing story of oil wildcatters (no doubt that he thought of his old man) which I reviewed earlier.  It has always been one of my favorite Gable films and it produced huge profits for the studio. 

He could have had Cary Grant's part in The Philadelphia Story (1940) but turned it down because he thought it was too wordy. Damn, I would have loved to have seen him opposite Hepburn.

Gable and Lombard rarely visited one another's film sets but she was a regular on the set of Honky Tonk (1941) because a beautiful young predator named Lana Turner was his costar.  Her sexually-insatiable reputation preceded her and Mrs. Gable was taking no chances.  It was just Gable's second western but MGM had high hopes for it, even calling it Honky Tonk to somewhat resemble Boom Town, which was so successful.  I thought they made a sizzling team and this was certainly the best of their four costarring ventures.

They were together again the next year for Somewhere I'll Find You (1942). Lombard was not happy about that but she had other things on her mind, chiefly a cross-country tour to stir up public interest in buying war bonds. Lombard was gung-ho about doing something to support the war effort.  Gable would have gone with her had MGM acquiesced to his request for time off from the film.

On the final leg of her flight Lombard's plane crashed into Table Rock Mountain, 30 miles from Las Vegas.  All aboard were killed instantly, including her mother.  Gable was inconsolable and at his weakest would attempt suicide.  He was the happiest he'd ever been and could not grasp why it had to happen.  He wandered around in a stupor for some time.  Close friends would say he never recovered from her death.  

In 1948 he proposed marriage to Nancy Davis who would shortly become Nancy Reagan instead... and we know how all that worked out.  In 1949 he married Lady Sylvia Ashley, a woman he probably should have gotten to know better but after eight years of being a widower, he wanted a steady woman again. She was a Brit who had lived in and off Hollywood for years, having already been married several times, once to Douglas Fairbanks.  Gable knew a climber when he saw it... it took one to know one. He thought she spent too much money.  After a mere 18 months of marriage, he came home and told her he wanted a divorce.

I have always believed my long love for westerns began with MGM's Across the Wide Missouri (1951).  I so loved this film as a kid.  I could never forget the glorious color and in fact when I think of beautiful color films I have seen throughout my life, this is the first one I recall.  It was filmed almost entirely outdoors in Colorado and with Gable perfect as a trapper new to an area that is filled with hostile Indians who want him out.

Over time I have regarded it as a good although routine western but I have never forgotten the sense of wonder it once brought to my adventurous little mind.  I can still vividly recall the shock and sadness of seeing Gable's Indian wife murdered at a watering hole which, in turn, causes her spirited horse, with a baby in a sling attached to the saddle, to bolt.  It is a thrilling scene watching the horse in full gallop across the plains, baby crying, with Gable and a murderous Ricardo Montalban in hot pursuit.  

Mogambo (1953) is John Ford's entertaining remake of Gable's earlier Red Dust.  Gable played the same role although he was now a big game hunter in Africa. The actresses this time were Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly, both of whom would be nominated for Oscars.  This was his final film with Gardner and they were no longer undressing one another but the same could not be said of Kelly who declared her undying love for him. He was pretty smitten with her as well but imagine how different history would have played out had he not told her he thought their age difference was too great.

The same could be said of the actresses he would work with for the rest of his career. They seemed to get younger as he got older. And sadly he looked even older than he was. While his 1950's films were not his best, they were the ones I was raised on. Gable left MGM is the early fifties and while it must have caused a certain insecurity, it also brought more money than he'd previously made. Still, he and Susan Hayward had no chemistry in Soldier of Fortune (1955). He and Jane Russell did have some and enjoyed working together in the cattle-drive western, The Tall Men (1955), but it was a bit uninspiring. 

It 1955 he married Kay Spreckles, the divorced wife of a sugar heir. He first met her in the mid-40s on the MGM lot but there was no particular allure.  By the time their romance gathered steam some 10 years later, he was ready to settle down again. She was apparently a caring and supportive wife to him.  He admitted that she reminded him a bit of Lombard.  There is no doubt it was his second favorite marriage.  During their six-year union he would have several heart attacks.

Eleanor Parker was his costar in The King and Four Queens (1956), but the western was stolen from them both by character actress Jo Van Fleet. Band of Angels (1957) with Yvonne de Carlo, about racial prejudice in the south, was just plain horrid.  

Gable looked haggard in his next three films. Teacher's Pet (1958) with Doris Day, who was dying to work with him, is a typically corny Day flick and he was miscast as a newspaper editor who signs up for her journalism class. Next came a cute But Not For Me (1959) but I shudder at his love scenes with a very young Carroll Baker.  He and Lilli Palmer, however, playing his ex-wife, glitter in their scenes together.  Sophia Loren was trying to make movies with every older American star she could and the 1960 romp in It Happened in Naples was not bad but not good either.

His final movie scene, with Marilyn Monroe, in The Misfits

Then came one of the most famous films he ever made and one of his best, The Misfits (1961).  It would also be his last.  I wrote about this one earlier so we won't revisit the story part of the film now. Worth mentioning again, however, is the fact that Gable was dead before the film's release. He died in November, 1960, at age 59, of a heart attack.  Two things have often been bandied about as the cause of his death.  One was that he performed many of his own stunts and they were too grueling for a man of his age and condition.  Second was that working with Marilyn Monroe completely undid him due to her lateness and the general insanity that surrounded her.  Either of those things could have been the reason or contributed in some way to his death, but the extra piece is that Clark Gable had heart problems.  Four months after his death, Kay Gable gave birth to his son.

I find it kind of fascinating that The Misfits was the last completed movie for both Gable and Monroe, two of the biggest movie stars the world has ever known.  



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A good 30s film