Background

Ethnicity: Among Gable's ancestors were Pennsylvania Dutch (German), Belgians, Rhinelanders, and Bavarians.

William Clark Gable was born on February 1, 1901, in Cadiz, Ohio. He was the son to William Henry "Will" Gable, an oil-well driller and his wife, Adeline (née Hershelman). His father was a Protestant and his mother a Roman Catholic. Gable was named William after his father, but even in childhood, he was almost always called Clark or sometimes Billy. He was mistakenly listed as a female on his birth certificate.

His mother died when he was ten months old, possibly from a brain tumor, although the official cause of death was given as an epileptic fit. William Gable refused to raise his son Catholic, which provoked criticism from the Hershelman family. The dispute was resolved when Will Gable agreed to allow his son 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, whose family came from the small neighboring town of Hopedale. The marriage produced no children.

Gable was a tall, shy child with a loud voice. His stepmother raised him to be well-dressed and well-groomed. Jennie played the piano and gave her stepson lessons at home. Later he took up brass instruments. At 13, he was the only boy in the men's town band. He was very mechanically inclined and loved to strip down and repair cars with his father. Although his father insisted on Gable doing "manly" things, like hunting and hard physical work, Gable loved language. Among trusted company, he would recite Shakespeare, particularly the sonnets. Will decided to settle his debts and try his hand at farming, and the family moved to Ravenna, Ohio, near Akron.

Education

Will Gable agreed to buy a 72-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.

He dropped out of high school at age 16.

Career

Gable held various jobs before embarking on an acting career in his early 20s. While in Oregon, he became the protégé of veteran actress Josephine Dillon, who coached Gable in poise and elocution and paid for his orthodontic work. In 1924, he began to land small roles in silent films. His first big break came when he was cast in the lead of the Broadway play Machinal (1928).

In 1930 Gable’s performance in a Los Angeles stage production of The Last Mile brought him to the attention of Hollywood producers. Although he failed his first screen test at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer—in part because producers thought Gable’s ears were too big for a leading man’s—his supporting performance in the low-budget western The Painted Desert (1931) convinced MGM executives of Gable’s talent and screen presence. The actor garnered public attention with his aggressive masculine performances in such films as A Free Soul and Night Nurse (both 1931). This forceful persona—equal parts "man’s man" and "ladies’ man"—helped make him one of Hollywood’s top stars within a year.

Among Gable’s most successful films for MGM during this period were Red Dust (1932), Strange Interlude (1932), Dancing Lady (1933), Hold Your Man (1933), Manhattan Melodrama (1934), and Men in White (1934). Although Gable himself maintained a self-deprecating attitude toward his own talent throughout the years, he often proved himself most competent in demanding roles and was equally deft at romantic comedy and epic drama.

As punishment for refusing a role, MGM lent Gable to Columbia Pictures—a studio then known derisively as "poverty row"—for the Frank Capra comedy It Happened One Night (1934). The punishment turned out to be a coup for Gable, as the film—the story of a spoiled runaway heiress (portrayed by Claudette Colbert) and the newspaper reporter (Gable) who tries to exploit her story—swept the Academy Awards in all five major categories: best picture, actress, director, and screenplay and best actor for Gable. Many of Gable’s best films of the period were either those he resisted doing or those that were made on loan-out to other studios. He did not feel right for the role of mutineer Fletcher Christian in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), yet the film proved hugely popular and earned Gable another Oscar nomination. Also in 1935 he played Jack London’s hero in Call of the Wild for Twentieth Century Fox. He reluctantly accepted the role of rakish political boss Blackie Norton in San Francisco (1936), one of the most praised and popular films of Gable’s career. It was also the first movie in which he co-starred with Spencer Tracy; they would also team in the hit films Test Pilot (1938) and Boom Town (1940).

Wary of period films after flopping in the costume drama Parnell (1937), Gable at first declined the role of Rhett Butler in David O. Selznick’s production of the Margaret Mitchell bestseller, Gone with the Wind (1936). As the book had been the best-selling novel of all time, Gable also felt that no screen adaptation could live up to the expectations of the general public. Studio coercion and widespread public demand compelled Gable to reconsider, and the resulting film was, and remains to this day, one of the most popular movies ever made. The grand epic-scale four-hour Civil War melodrama, which was released in 1939, won the Oscar for best picture (during what many historians consider to be the benchmark year for Hollywood filmmaking), and Gable garnered his third Oscar nomination for the role with which he is most associated.

The business of making movies suddenly seemed frivolous to the devastated Gable, who walked away from his Hollywood commitments to join the Army Air Corps, even though he was well past draft age. He served as a tail gunner during the war, making him a greater hero than ever in the eyes of his fans, and attained the rank of major. Gable returned to films upon his discharge, but the joyous insouciance of his earlier performances was largely absent in the films he made after Lombard’s death.

Gable made several good films during the 1940s and ’50s, but none rank as classics. With the possible exceptions of The Hucksters (1947) and Mogambo (1953), the best of Gable’s later films were those he made near the end of his career, including Band of Angels (1957), a Civil War potboiler in which he played a plantation owner; Run Silent, Run Deep (1958), a tense submarine adventure in which Gable costarred with Burt Lancaster; and the romantic farces Teacher’s Pet (1958) with Doris Day and It Started in Naples (1960) with Sophia Loren.

Gable’s final film, John Huston’s The Misfits (1961), was his best in many years and features one of Gable’s finest performances, but it is a film clouded by tragedy. It was the final movie for both Gable and Marilyn Monroe, two of Hollywood’s most-enduring icons, and it was one of the last films for the gifted Montgomery Clift. Gable, who insisted on doing his own stunt work for grueling scenes involving the roping of wild horses, died of a heart attack within days of the film’s completion. The Misfits, in which Gable portrays a cowboy out of place in the modern world, was a fitting final movie for an actor who epitomized Hollywood’s Golden Age and who himself was something of a misfit in the era of television and method actors. Upon his death, several newspapers throughout the country displayed the same banner headline: "The King is Dead."

Achievements

• Clark Gable was one of the top Hollywood stars in the 1930s and 1940s, often referred to as "The King of Hollywood" or just simply as "The King". He is best known for his role as Rhett Butler in the epic Gone with the Wind. Having starred as a leading man in more than 60 motion pictures in a career spanning over three decades, he was the reel-life heartthrob of thousands of American women.
  
  Gable won an Academy Award for Best Actor for It Happened One Night (1934), and was nominated for leading roles in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) and for his best-known role as Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind (1939).
  
  Gable is considered one of the most consistent box-office performers in history, appearing on Quigley Publishing's annual Top Ten Money Making Stars Poll 16 times. He was named the seventh-greatest male star of classic American cinema by the American Film Institute.
  
  Gable's military awards were the Distinguished Flying Cross, Air Medal, American Campaign Medal, European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal, and World War II Victory Medal. He also qualified for and received aerial gunner wings.
  
  

Works

More photos

• movie

  • Gone with the Wind 1939
  • Mogambo 1953
  • The Painted Desert 1931
  • Key to the City 1950
  • Any Number Can Play 1949
  • Boom Town 1940
  • Homecoming 1948
  • Night Flight 1933
  • Across The Wide Missouri 1951
  • It Happened One Night 1934
  • Teacher's Pet 1958
  • Adventure 1945
  • San Francisco 1936
  • China Seas 1935
  • The Tall Men 1955
  • Dancing Lady 1933
  • Chained 1934
  • Somewhere I'll Find You 1942
  • Too Hot To Handle 1938
  • Hollywood Hobbies 1939
  • It Started in Naples 1960
  • Wife vs. Secretary 1936
  • Hold Your Man 1933
  • Lone Star 1952
  • Band of Angels 1957
  • Cain and Mabel 1936
  • But Not for Me 1959
  • The Hucksters 1947
  • Mutiny on the Bounty 1935
  • A Free Soul 1931
  • Manhattan Melodrama 1934
  • Forsaking All Others 1934
  • The Misfits 1961

Religion

When Gable was six months old, he was baptized at a Roman Catholic church in Dennison, Ohio.

Politics

Gable was a conservative Republican, though he never publicly spoke about politics. His third wife, Carole Lombard, was an activist liberal Democrat, and she cajoled him into supporting Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal.

In February 1952, he attended a televised rally in New York where he enthusiastically urged General Dwight D. Eisenhower to run for president. This was when Eisenhower was still being sought by both parties as their candidate. Despite having suffered a severe coronary thrombosis, Gable still managed to vote by mail in the 1960 presidential election for Richard Nixon.

Views

Gable has been criticized for altering critical aspects of a script when he felt that the script would not fit in with his image. Screenwriter Larry Gelbart, as quoted by James Garner once stated that Gable, "...would not go down with the submarine (referring to Run Silent Run Deep (1958), where the movie ended differently from the book on which it was based), because Gable doesn't sink."

Quotations: "The only reason they come to see me is that I know that life is great — and they know I know it."

"All this "King" stuff is pure bullshit. I eat and sleep and go to the bathroom just like anyone else. I'm just a lucky slob from Ohio who happened to be in the right place at the right time."

"I worked like a son of a bitch to learn a few tricks and I fight like a steer to avoid getting stuck with parts I can't play."

"The things a man has to have are hope and confidence in himself against odds, and sometimes he needs somebody, his pal or his mother or his wife or God, to give him that confidence. He's got to have some inner standards worth fighting for or there won't be any way to bring him into conflict. And he must be ready to choose death before dishonor without making too much song and dance about it. That's all there is to it."

"Honey, we all got to go sometime, reason or no reason. Dying's as natural as living. The man who's too afraid to die is too afraid to live."

"I never laugh until I've had my coffee."

"I am intrigued by glamorous women A vain woman is continually taking out a compact to repair her makeup. A glamorous woman knows she doesn't need to."

Membership

In 1944, Gable became an early member of the conservative Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals.

Personality

Clark Gable was known to be a womanizer. He was a well-dressed gentleman on and off the screen, he was a big fan of casual clothing, yet he always looked so elegant when wearing it. He was a bit obsessed with cleanliness. He showered several times a day and never took a bath because he was disgusted by the thought of sitting in dirty water. He also had his sheets changed every single day.

Physical Characteristics: Clark Gable had almost a full set of dentures when he was only 32. Because of a bad gum infection in 1933, he had to have most of his teeth removed and replaced by dentures, which caused him to suffer from halitosis.

Quotes from others about the person

• John Huston: "Clark Gable was the only real he-man I've ever known, of all the actors I've met."
  
  Doris Day: "He was as masculine as any man I've ever known, and as much a little boy as a grown man could be – it was this combination that had such a devastating effect on women."
  
  Robert Taylor: "Gable was a great, great guy and certainly one of the great stars of all times, if not the greatest. I think that I sincerely doubt that there will ever be another like Clark Gable; he was one of a kind."
  
  Spencer Tracy: "I know a lot of good actors who are not stars, and maybe some stars who are not good actors. Gable was a star, all right, and he put it on the line that he was not an actor…but he made an impression with what he did."

Interests

• hunting

• Politicians

  Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard Nixon

• Sport & Clubs

  playing polo

Connections

Clark Gable's first marriage was to his mentor Josephine Dillon who he married in 1924 and divorced in 1930. His second marriage to Maria Langham also ended in divorce.

In 1935, during the filming of The Call of the Wild, he impregnated the film's lead actress, Loretta Young. She hid the pregnancy from the public eye, gave birth in secret, and later presented her biological daughter to the world as her adopted child.

Gable tied the knot for the third time with Carole Lombard in 1939. She died in 1942 leaving him aggrieved. Another short-term marriage followed—he wed Sylvia Ashley in 1949 and divorced her in 1952.

His final marriage was to Kay Williams in 1955. She was pregnant at the time of Gable’s death in 1960 and gave birth to a son, John Clark Gable, a few months later.

Father:

William Henry Gable

(1870–1948)

Mother:

Adeline Hershelman Gable

(1869–1901)

ex-wife:

Josephine Dillon

(January 26, 1884 – November 11, 1971)

Josephine Dillon was an American stage and film actress and acting teacher. She is best known as Clark Gable's patron, acting coach and first wife.

ex-wife:

Maria Franklin Gable

(1884–1966)

late wife:

Carole Lombard

(October 6, 1908 – January 16, 1942)

Carole Lombard was an American film actress. She was particularly noted for her energetic, often off-beat roles in the screwball comedies of the 1930s. She was the highest-paid star in Hollywood in the late 1930s. She was the third wife of actor Clark Gable.

ex-wife:

Sylvia Ashley

(1 April 1904 – 29 June 1977)

Sylvia Ashley was an English model, actress, and socialite who was best known for her marriages to British aristocrats and American movie stars.

Wife:

Kay Williams

(August 7, 1916 – May 25, 1983)

Kay Williams was an American actress. She appeared in numerous uncredited bit parts throughout the 1940s before playing Hazel Dawn in George Cukor's The Actress (1953).

Daughter:

Judy Lewis

(November 6, 1935 – November 25, 2011)

Judy Lewis was an American actress, writer, producer, and therapist. She was the secret biological daughter of actor Clark Gable and actress Loretta Young.

Son:

John Clark Gable

(b. March 20, 1961, Los Angeles, California, United States)

Grandson:

Clark James Gable

(b. September 20, 1988 in Malibu, California)

Clark James Gable is an American actor, model, and television presenter. He is the former television host of the reality show Cheaters.

Partner:

Loretta Young

(January 6, 1913 – August 12, 2000)

Loretta Young was an American actress. Starting as a child actress, she had a long and varied career in film from 1917 to 1953.

Friend:

Lionel Barrymore

(April 28, 1878 – November 15, 1954)

Lionel Barrymore was an American actor of stage, screen and radio as well as a film director.

References

• Clark Gable: Biography, Filmography, Bibliography
• Clark Gable: A personal portrait
• Clark Gable: A Biography
  2005
• Clark Gable: Biography, Filmography, Bibliography
  2002
• Clark Gable Movie Poster Book
  2017
• Clark Gable: Tormented Star
  2007
• Clark Gable
  1974
• Clark Gable: Portrait of a Misfit
  1993
• Clark Gable: The Life Story of the King of All Movie Stars
  1961
• Clark Gable & Carole Lombard: The Golden Era of Hollywood's Star-Crossed Couple
  2013