The handsome movie idol chartered a plane to search for his gorgeous wife who fell from the sky with her mother, press agent, 12 army pilots, three passengers and crew. While climbing through a snow-covered mountain, he found them three days later.
William Clark Gable was born Feb. 1, 1901, in Cadiz, Ohio. His frail 30-year-old mother died seven months later on Nov. 14, and while her husband was stricken with grief, little William was put into the care of his maternal grandpaprents. When William was two, his father remarried and reclaimed his child, who was pampered beyond belief. At 16, William quit school and accompanied his best friend to Akron, Ohio, where they worked in a tire factory. After seeing the play Bird Of Paradise, the highly impressed young man decided to become an actor, and took an unpaid backstage job as a call boy. When his beloved stepmother died in 1920, he accompanied his father to Tulsa, Okla., where they both worked in the oil fields. In 1924, Gable made his way to Hollywood, where he found work as a telephone repairman. There, he met theater manager and drama coach Josephine Dillon when he came to fix her phone. William dumped his fiancee and married Josephine, the first of his five wives, 14 years his senior, who groomed and coached her young husband in speech and movement, paid to have his teeth fixed, and used her contacts to find him extra work in silent films. The tough, down-to-earth type of man was being sought after for movies as a contrast to the collegiate type which was so popular in the 1920s, and William suited the bill. While Willam's career built up momentum in theater roles and as an extra in silent movies, his marriage with Josephine deteriorated.
In 1930, Clark Gable was signed by MGM's Irving Thalberg, who cast him in his first talkie role in The Painted Desert ( 1931 ) . Irving then cast him opposite his famous wife Norma Shearer in A Free Soul ( 1931 ) . That same year, Shearer's rival, Joan Crawford, asked Gable to be cast opposite her in Dance, Fools, Dance ( 1931 ) , the first of eight films they made together. Their screen chemistry continued into real life where they had an on-and-off affair for years. Also that year, the masculine, swaggering Clark began to learn the social graces of the very rich when he divorced Josephine, who bitterly and promptly revealed his shortcomings to the Hollywood press, and married his wealthy second wife, Texas socialite Rhea Langham, who was 17 years his senior.
Glowing platinum-blonde Jean Harlow, brazen and braless, was a perfect match with the rough, unshaven Clark Gable when they made love in Red Dust ( 1932 ) and Gable became a star equally admired by both male and female moviegoers. Living as a star, he insisted his hand-made Deusenberg be made one foot longer than Gary Cooper's model. Other films with Gable include Night Nurse ( 1931 ) with Barbara Stanwyck and Joan Blondell; Susan Lennox: Her Rise and Fall ( 1931 ) , with Greta Garbo; Dancing Lady ( 1933 ) with Joan Crawford; Chained ( 1934 ) with Joan Crawford; Manhattan Melodrama ( 1934 ) with Myrna Loy and Spencer Tracy; Mutiny On The Bounty ( 1935 ) with Charles Laughton; Wife Vs. Secretary ( 1936 ) with Myrna Loy; San Francisco ( 1936 ) with Jeanette McDonald; Cain and Mabel ( 1936 ) with Marion Davies; Idiot's Delight ( 1938 ) with Norma Shearer; Boom Town ( 1940 ) with Hedy LaMarr and Claudette Colbert; Strange Cargo ( 1940 ) with Joan Crawford; Saratoga ( 1937 ) with Jean Harlow in her last film; and Honky Tonk ( 1941 ) with Lana Turner.
In Call Of The Wild ( 1935 ) , Gable had an affair with his beautiful co-star Loretta Young, who became pregnant. Loretta, devoutly Catholic, retired from films for a year and later 'adopted' her own pretty baby girl who grew up to look exactly like her famous father, and who also inherited his famous ears which Loretta later paid to have surgically pinned back. Loretta claimed she had fallen in love with the child while decorating a Christmas tree at a San Diego orphange. When Loretta and Clark were recast years later in Key To The City ( 1950 ) , during its filming, Loretta was rushed to a hospital, suffering a miscarriage.
Once, refusing an assignment, MGM punished Clark by farming him out to the lesser Columbia Studios to acccept a role they thought would demean him in It Happened One Night ( 1934 ) , opposite Claudette Colbert. The picture turned out to be a phenomenal success, winning the Oscar for Best Picture, and earning Clark his first and only Oscar for Best Actor.
His popular and obvious casting as Rhett Butler in Gone With The Wind ( 1939 ) made him forever legendary, and he was often referred to as 'The King Of Hollywood.' It is reported that Clark was responsible for the firing of the first director of Gone With The Wind, George Cukor, because Cukor knew Gable had let himself be sexually serviced by Cukor's friend, handsome star William Haines, when Gable was still climbing the ladder early in his career. During the making of Gone With The Wind, Clark divorced Rhea and married movie star Carole Lombard. Clark Gable was the most popular star in the world, and was highly regarded and loved by his fellow actors and associates.
Shortly after the United States entered World War II, Gable, chairman of the Hollywood Victory Committee, reneged on a bond-selling tour, and appointed his beautiful, popular wife to take his place. On Jan. 16, 1942, returning from a successful trip in which her fame helped sell $2,107,513 in bonds, Carole's plane crashed into deep snow on the Table Rock Mountains, only 30 minutes after a refueling stop in Las Vegas. Devastated and dismayed, Gable joined the Army Air Corps as a buck private, and soon served as a tailgunner in fighter planes. Gable was also the favorite film star of Adolph Hitler, and the German madman offered his troops a hefty reward to capture the actor and bring him back alive and unscathed.
After the war, Gable returned to Hollywood to star in Adventure ( 1946 ) with Greer Garson, and The Hucksters ( 1947 ) with Deborah Kerr. In 1949, he married a woman who resembled Carole Lombard, the widow of Douglas Fairbanks Sr., Lady Sylvia Ashley, who soon tired of living under the shadow of her famous husband, and divorced him in 1952. Clark reprised his own role, 20 years later, in the remake of Red Dust, called Mogambo ( 1953 ) , this time co-starring Ava Gardner. Clark continued his film career with Soldier of Fortune ( 1955 ) , The Tall Men ( 1955 ) , and Teacher's Pet ( 1958 ) , opposite Doris Day.
Marilyn Monroe was thrilled when she learned she would work opposite her childhood idol Clark Gable, who was equally thrilled to play her aging cowboy lover in The Misfits ( 1960 ) , a prestigious production written by her famous playwright husband, Arthur Miller. Clark worked vigorously to lose weight on a crash diet. He also worked dilligently in his stressful role alongside the younger Montgomery Clift, and the eternally late for work and very trying Monroe who was feuding with Miller. Gable insisted on doing his own stunts, which included his being dragged through the dust by a horse in the scorching Nevada heat. Several re-takes left him badly bruised and bloody. When the movie was completed, he returned home to his fifth wife, former fashion model, stock actress and socialite Kathleen Spreckles, who was pregnant with Clark's first legitimate child. Clark told an associate, 'Christ, I'm glad this picture's finished. She ( Marilyn ) damn near gave me a heart attack.' Two days later, while Clark was looking forward to a calm and peaceful future, he suffered a mild coronary thrombosis as he changed a tractor tire. While seeming to recover in a hospital, he suffered a second attack and died Nov. 16, 1960. Marilyn always blamed herself for his demise. Five months later, Kay Gable gave birth to John Clark Gable, who grew up to be a race-car driver and sometime movie actor. The Misfits also turned out to be Marilyn Monroe's last film. She died two years later.
Clark Gable's last words on a movie screen, uttered in The Misfits, were, 'Just head for the big star straight on. The highways under it take us right home.'
Sources The Movie Stars Story by Robyn Karney; Hollywood Land and Legend by Zelda Cini and Bob Crane; Gods and Goddesses of the Movies by John Kobal; The Great Movie Stars by David Shipman; The Hollywood Book of Death by James Robert Parish; Hollywood Hunks by Jacqueline Nicholson; Gable Web sites.
Steve Star is the author of Picture Perfect-Art Deco Photo Frames 1926-1946, published by Rizzoli International. A designer, artist, and movie star historian, Starr is the owner of Steve Starr Studios, specializing in Art Deco photo frames and artifacts, and celebrating its 38th anniversary in 2005. His collection of over 950 gorgeous, original frames is filled with photos of Hollywood's most elegant stars.
Starr's column about movie stars of the 1920's, 1930's, and 1940's, STARRLIGHT, appears in various publications, including the Windy City Times the first week of each month.
You may email Steve at SSSChicago@ameritech.net, and can visit www.SteveStarrStudios.com where you can view his collection, read many of his STARRLIGHTstories, and see many of the letters, photos, and autographs he has received.
In Chicago, visit the Steve Starr Satellite Studio in the Edgewater Antique Mall, 6314 North Broadway Avenue, open daily 11-6, phone 773-262-2525. Phone Steve Starr Studios at 773-463-8017.
