Clark Gable

Clark Gable gave his Oscar for It Happened One Night (1934) to a boy who idolized him, telling him that what mattered was not owning the statuette but winning it. After Gable's death, the boy returned the Oscar to the Gable family.

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On June 11, 1933, a day before he was to begin shooting Dancing Lady (1933), Clark Gable was hospitalized with pyorrhea, a gum infection. After several days in the hospital most of his teeth were extracted, and the infection could have killed him had he not been taken to a private hospital for treatment. He then went on vacation to Alaska and Canada with his wife, since his gums would need several weeks to heal enough for dentures; MGM shot around him until he returned and was fitted with a dental plate, but on July 30, after a day of shooting, the infection struck him again. In the days before antibiotics the infection was so serious that his gallbladder was removed, the film, due a month later, had to be shut down, and the budget exceeded $150,000. MGM boss Louis B. Mayer docked him two weeks' pay, causing bad feeling between studio and star even though his illness was real and he was not malingering. To teach him a lesson, Mayer loaned him to Columbia Pictures, then a "Poverty Row" studio, to make a comedy. Frank Capra's masterpiece It Happened One Night (1934) swept the Academy Awards the following year and won Gable his only Oscar.

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Clark Gable was known for smoking a pipe and went through at least two bowlfuls a day. Pipes still bearing his name exist today.

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After the tragic and untimely death of his wife Carole Lombard, Clark Gable was reported to have attempted suicide with a high-powered motorcycle.

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Before they made Gone with the Wind (1939) together, Clark Gable was already a good friend of Hattie McDaniel and wanted her to play the role of "Mammy," but it was her showing up fully dressed and completing the role that won her the coveted part. By the time of the December 15, 1939 premiere, producer David O. Selznick tried to bring McDaniel along with him. MGM advised him against it because of Georgia's strict segregation laws, which barred McDaniel from attending the same function as whites on an equal basis. Gable was so furious that he told MGM he would not attend the premiere unless she was allowed to attend as well. In the end she persuaded him to go without her.

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Clark Gable played a cowboy in The Misfits (1961), his last film and also the last film of its co-star Marilyn Monroe. The aging Gable performed some of his own stunts, which damaged his already failing health. He died of a heart attack before the film was released.

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To speed up his divorce from his second wife, Ria, so that he could marry Carole Lombard, Clark Gable paid her $500,000 in 1939, which was nearly everything he owned at the time.

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As chairman of the actors' division of the Hollywood Victory Committee, Clark Gable sent his wife Carole Lombard in January 1942 to her home state of Indiana for one of the first bond tours, where she sold $2 million worth of bonds. On the flight back to Hollywood the plane crashed and Lombard and her mother were killed. Gable drank heavily for six months before enlisting as a private in the Army Air Forces. He served in Britain as a combat cameraman, rose to the rank of major, and was eventually given leave to work at Hal Roach Studios ("Fort Roach"), known as the headquarters of the First Motion Picture Unit. His discharge papers were signed by Captain Ronald Reagan.

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Adolf Hitler valued the film star more than any other actor and during the war offered a large reward to anyone who could capture and bring back Gable, who had joined the Army Air Forces and was flying combat missions over Germany, without harming him.

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Clark Gable was dyslexic, a fact that only came to light several years after his death.

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In his youth Clark Gable's voice was very high-pitched, but with voice training he managed to lower it over time. His voice later proved a great asset in his rise to fame.

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Although Clark Gable was discharged from the U.S. Army Air Forces in early 1944, he refused to make another film until the war ended.

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Baptized Catholic but raised Protestant, Clark Gable practiced no religion as an adult. About 200 people attended the private funeral at the Church of the Recessional in Forest Lawn Park, among them Spencer Tracy, Robert Taylor, James Stewart, Norma Shearer, Ann Sothern, Marion Davies, Frank Capra, Robert Stack, Jack Oakie, Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, Van Johnson and Howard Strickling, Gable's longtime publicity man at MGM. There was no eulogy. The closed coffin was adorned with crown-shaped yellow roses befitting the one-time King of Hollywood.

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In 1939 Clark Gable and Carole Lombard spent part of their honeymoon at the Willows Inn in Palm Springs, California. The inn still operates today and anyone can stay in the same room, which has changed little since then.

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Before making The Misfits (1961), Clark Gable went on a crash diet, dropping from 230 lb to 195 lb. Over the previous decade he had suffered two episodes that may have been heart attacks; once, ten years earlier, while driving on the highway, he had such severe chest pain that he had to pull off the road and lie down until he felt well enough to continue.

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Clark Gable disliked Greta Garbo, and the feeling was mutual. He considered her a snob, while she thought his acting was wooden.

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Clark Gable was afraid of flying and made all long journeys in America by train.

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Clark Gable's father always opposed his decision to become an actor and, even after he became a major star, condemned acting as a "sissy" profession. In 1933 Gable became a Mason purely to please his father. Yet on August 4, 1948, when his father, who outlived three of Gable's wives, died of a heart attack at the age of 78, he showed no grief.

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In 1937 Clark Gable served as a pallbearer and an usher at Jean Harlow's funeral.

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A few months after his death, Clark Gable's widow, Kay (1917-1983), gave birth to John Clark Gable, a race car driver and occasional actor.

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Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were the inspiration for half of Clark Kent, Superman's alter ego ("Kent" came from Kent Taylor).

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As a mature actor, Clark Gable grew increasingly unhappy with the mediocre roles MGM offered him. In 1953 he refused to renew his contract with the studio and began working independently.

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Despite his dyslexia, Clark Gable became an avid reader. Because he feared it would weaken his macho screen image, he never allowed himself to be photographed reading a book on a film set.

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Clark Gable's outdoorsman image was initially a studio invention designed in the early 1930s to support his masculine screen persona. He soon discovered, however, that he genuinely loved hunting, shooting and fishing, and the image quickly became reality.

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On November 5, 1960, Clark Gable suffered his first heart attack while changing a tire on his jeep. His close friend President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent him a message of support wishing him a speedy recovery.

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Although Clark Gable disliked his co-star Charles Laughton, he once named Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) as his favorite of his own films. He was also initially disappointed that Franchot Tone was cast as Midshipman Byam, since the two actors were relentless rivals for Joan Crawford's affections. During the shoot, however, they became close friends.

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Clark Gable loved Westerns and once expressed regret that he had not made more of them.

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Clark Gable was so durable that he could play the same role both in the original film with Jean Harlow and Mary Astor (Red Dust, 1932) and in its remake with Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly (Mogambo, 1953).

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Clark Gable was named the 21st Greatest Movie Star of All Time by "Premiere Magazine".

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Clark Gable's first two wives, Josephine Dillon and Maria Franklin Gable (also known as Ria Langham), were 14 and 17 years older than him, respectively.

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At the time of Clark Gable's death, his gun collection was worth $500,000. His home had a private gun room filled with gold-inlaid pistols, shotguns and rifles.

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In 1949, Clark Gable served as a pallbearer at the funeral of director Victor Fleming, whom he regarded as a father figure.

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Clark Gable was buried at Forest Lawn, Glendale, CA, in the Great Mausoleum, Sanctuary of Trust, on the left side, next to Carole Lombard.

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Clark Gable's first screen test was conducted for Warner Bros by director Mervyn LeRoy. When studio president Jack L. Warner and production chief Darryl F. Zanuck saw the test, they were furious at LeRoy for spending their money on that big "ape" with "huge floppy taxi-cab ears". Years later, when Gable became a huge success, LeRoy would tease Warner, saying: "How would you like to have him and those huge floppy ears now?".

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In the mid-1950s Clark Gable began receiving television offers, but he turned them down outright, even though some of his peers, such as his former lover Loretta Young, went on to thrive in the new medium.

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In the 1970s Clark Gable's property in Encino, CA was subdivided and turned into a very luxurious real estate development called "Clark Gable Estates".

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During his time on Broadway, Clark Gable worked as a stage gigolo, providing stud services to actresses considerably older than himself, such as Pauline Frederick and Laura Hope Crews. (Crews would later play "Aunt Pittypat" in Gone with the Wind (1939).) His much older first wife served as his first acting coach and paid for his false teeth. He later married a woman 17 years his senior, the Texas heiress Maria Franklin Gable, who bankrolled his successful assault on Hollywood.

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At Clark Gable's birth, he was mistakenly listed as female on his birth certificate.

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Although his third wife, Carole Lombard, a liberal Democrat, encouraged him to support President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal reforms, Clark Gable was a conservative Republican. In February 1952 he spoke at a televised rally at Madison Square Gardens in New York in support of the Republican candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower, and a few days before his death he voted by mail for Richard Nixon in the 1960 presidential election.

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Discouraged by his failure to advance in films, Clark Gable tried the stage and became a steadily employed actor in stock and eventually on Broadway before achieving real fame. When he returned to Hollywood in 1930 for another attempt at screen acting, his rugged looks, powerful voice and charisma made him an overnight sensation as the villain Rance Brett in his first sound film, The Painted Desert (1931). He initially burst onto the screen in small parts in a dozen films released in 1931, but by the end of the year he was a recognized star.

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Clark Gable's father was German, with some Swiss-German and distant Irish ancestry. His mother was half German and half Irish.

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Military records about celebrities released by the Pentagon in 2005 show that after being drafted, Gable was classified as a "motion picture specialist" and listed with a weekly pay of $7,500. The documents show that film cameraman Andrew J. McIntyre was drafted alongside Gable and trained with him. An Army note said, "In order to obtain something definite to explain and some tangible evidence of his experiences, it was proposed that his cameraman be assigned to be trained as an aerial gunner who could take pictures of Gable in various operational areas."

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On 15.03.46 Gable was injured in a traffic accident at an intersection on Sunset Boulevard. According to a press release from MGM, he was driving east on Sunset Boulevard in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Brentwood, at Bristol Ave. As he entered the southern half of the intersection, another car whose driver had been confused by the "roundabout" and was traveling west on the same arc of the circle struck him. To avoid hitting the other car, Gable drove his car over the curb, and the car hit a tree, throwing him against the steering wheel. He was treated at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital for bruising on his chest and a cut on his right leg that required stitches. The driver of the other car left the scene without checking on Gable or reporting the accident. The hit-and-run accident gave rise to the urban legend that Gable, while driving drunk, struck and killed a pedestrian and that the incident was covered up by MGM. Although it appears in various biographies, the claims have no basis in fact.

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Despite his growing popularity, Clark Gable resisted playing gangsters and overtly unsympathetic characters, and for that reason he was very happy to take the role in Red Dust (1932) that came to define his stardom.

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Clark Gable turned down Cary Grant's role in The Philadelphia Story (1940) because he felt the film had too much dialogue.

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On July 12, 1942, during World War II, Gable enlisted in the Army Air Forces in honor of his late wife Carole Lombard, who had been killed earlier that year in a plane crash while on a war bond selling tour (with her own mother). He was commissioned as an officer with service number 565390. He rose to the rank of captain and served primarily in public relations, making training films and carrying out public relations visits to soldiers and airmen in Europe. He also trained as an aerial gunner and, while filming his movies, flew five combat missions with the 8th Air Force's 351st Bombardment Group (Heavy), and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal. He was discharged from the Air Forces on June 12, 1944. Captain Ronald Reagan of the Army Air Forces First Motion Picture Unit signed Gable's discharge papers.

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When Clark Gable first appeared with Claudette Colbert in It Happened One Night (1934), he told director Frank Capra that he would give the role a chance but would leave the production if things did not go well after a few days.

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Clark Gable appeared in five films nominated for the Best Picture Oscar: It Happened One Night (1934), Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), San Francisco (1936), Test Pilot (1938) and Gone with the Wind (1939). It Happened One Night, Mutiny on the Bounty and Gone with the Wind won the award in the category.

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In 1955, Clark Gable founded a production company with Jane Russell and her husband Robert Waterfield, and produced The King and Four Queens (1956), the star's only production. The stress of making the film damaged his health so much that he decided never to produce again.

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In 1995, Clark Gable was chosen by Empire magazine as one of the 100 sexiest stars in film history (#36).

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Clark Gable appears on one of four 25-cent US commemorative postage stamps issued on March 23, 1990, to honor classic films released in 1939. The stamp shows Gable and Vivien Leigh as Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939). The other films honored were Beau Geste (1939), Stagecoach (1939) and The Wizard of Oz (1939).

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The critical and commercial failure of Adventure (1945) disappointed Clark Gable so much that he did not agree to make another film for more than a year. Fortunately, The Hucksters (1947) was a success and his performance was widely praised.

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Contrary to popular belief, Clark Gable did not perform his own stunts in The Misfits (1961). He was used only for close-ups, while a stunt double stood in for him in long shots. His heart attack was caused by his lifestyle: 30 years of heavy smoking and drinking and his increasing weight in later years. It is also believed that the intense diet he followed before filming began may have been a contributing factor.

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Clark Gable was seriously considered to play Tarzan in Tarzan the Ape Man (1932), but he was thought to be too unknown, and Johnny Weissmuller was chosen instead.

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The recovering alcoholic Spencer Tracy tried to avoid Clark Gable while trying to quit drinking, since Gable was always surrounded by alcohol.

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On February 8, 1960, Clark Gable received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1608 Vine St. for his work in motion pictures.

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Clark Gable met his second wife while acting in a play. Booth Franklin brought his sister Maria ("Ria") backstage and introduced them. Gable had two stepchildren from this marriage, Jana and Alfred. In 1935, Gable flew to Houston, Texas, to give Jana away at her marriage to Dr. Thomas Burke. Clark and Ria separated later that same year, in October 1935.

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Apart from boxing matches, Clark Gable watched very little television.

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Clark Gable, one of the first members of the right-wing Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, joined the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in the 1950s alongside Walt Disney, John Wayne, James Stewart and other politically conservative entertainers in efforts to "assist" investigations into alleged communist infiltration of the film industry.

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Clark Gable was played by James Brolin in Gable and Lombard (1976), by Bruce Hughes and Shayne Greenman in Blonde (2001), by Gene Daily in The Rocketeer (1991), by Charles Unwin in Lucy (2003), by Larry Pennell in Marilyn: The Untold Story (1980), by Edward Winter in The Scarlett O'Hara War (1980), and by Robert Palmer and Gary Wayne in Grace Kelly (1983), as well as in Malice in Wonderland (1985).

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Across nine films, Clark Gable played a newspaper reporter more often than any other type of role.

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Clark Gable died on his granddaughter Maria's first birthday.

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Clark Gable was the grandfather of Clark Gable III, the first child of his son John Clark Gable and his former wife Tracy Yarro. Clark James Gable was born on 10 September 1988, weighing 10 lb.

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Clark Gable was Carole Lombard's second husband, while her first husband was William Powell, his co-star in Manhattan Melodrama (1934).

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In some radio interviews near the end of his life, Clark Gable's voice bore an uncanny resemblance to Walt Disney's.

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On 18 August 2018, Clark Gable was honored with a day of his films at TCM's Summer Under the Stars event.

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Director John Huston initially planned to make the film The Man Who Would Be King with Clark Gable and Humphrey Bogart in the lead roles, but Bogie's death put an end to that.

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By the age of 16, Clark Gable was smoking constantly. As an adult, he was known to smoke three or four packs of cigarettes a day.

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Clark Gable was named the 8th Greatest Movie Star of All Time by Entertainment Weekly.

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Director Howard Hawks had long considered making Hatari! (1962) with Clark Gable and John Wayne. By the time shooting began, however, Gable had already died.

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In 2004, Clark Gable was inducted into the Lou Holtz/Upper Ohio Valley Hall of Fame.

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Clark Gable was ranked the 7th best actor on the American Film Institute's list of the Top 50 Screen Legends.

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In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Clark Gable 7th among the Greatest Male Stars of All Time.

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Sources say Clark Gable turned down the role of Colonel William Travis in The Alamo (1960) because he did not want John Wayne to direct him. This seems unlikely, however, since Travis was 26 during the battle and Gable would have been 58 when the film was made.

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Clark Gable was considered for the role of Bick Benedict in Giant (1956), but he was thought to be too old for the part.

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Clark Gable's fourth wife, Lady Sylvia Ashley, was born Edith Louise Sylvia Hawkes in 1904. She was the widow of Douglas Fairbanks. Her first husband was Lord Anthony Ashley (they divorced on 28 November 1934), her third was Lord Stanley of Alderney, and her fifth was Prince Dimitri Djordjadze (they married in 1954 and remained married until his death). She died on 29 June 1977. Her gravestone refers to her as "Princess Sylvia Djordjadze."

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Clark Gable turned down an offer to make a film with Errol Flynn, reportedly because Flynn was eight years younger than he was.

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Clark Gable is the subject of The Postal Service's song "Clark Gable."

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Clark Gable was the only child of William (1870-1948) and Adeline (née Hershelman) Gable (1869-1901); both were born in Pennsylvania.

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Before entering the film world, Clark Gable worked a variety of jobs, including salesman, lumberjack, reporter and truck driver.

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In 1952 his widow, Kay Williams, divorced her previous husband, Adolph Spreckels Jr., heir to the Spreckels Sugar Co. fortune. In the divorce papers she claimed he beat her with one of her slippers.

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Clark Gable turned down the role in Home from the Hill (1960) that went to Robert Mitchum.

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Clark Gable was considered for Gregory Peck's roles in Twelve O'Clock High (1949) and The Gunfighter (1950).

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In the late 1940s MGM wanted him to star opposite Angela Lansbury in a project titled "Angel's Flight", but he disliked the story and the studio cancelled the film.

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Clark Gable was the maternal great-grandson of Philip (1799-1888) and Anna (née Werner) Herschelman (1792-1892). Both were born in Germany and emigrated to Pennsylvania.

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In 1943 Clark Gable was awarded the DFC for actual combat heroism.

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Clark Gable was the grandfather of Kayley Gable.

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Clark Gable was the paternal grandson of Charles (1830-98) and Nancy (née Steinbrook) Gable (1837-1927). Both were born and raised in Pennsylvania.

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Clark Gable was the second cousin of film producer Thomas R. Bond II, president of the motion picture and entertainment company American Mutscope & Biograph.

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After completing Somewhere I'll Find You (1942), Clark Gable enlisted as a private in the United States Army Air Forces.

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Clark Gable was the maternal grandson of John (1833-1921), born in New York, and Rosetta (née Clark) Herschelman (1847-86), born in Pennsylvania.

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Clark Gable was the maternal great-grandson of Timothy (1805-83) and Jane (née Bullock) Clark (1810-80). Both were born in Antrim, Northern Ireland, and emigrated to Pennsylvania.

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Clark Gable was the cousin of William B. Hawks.

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Clark Gable was caricatured in Hollywood Steps Out (1941).

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Clark Gable was the paternal great-grandson of Jacob (1792-1885) and Rebecca (née McFadden) Steinbrook (1806-1877). Both were born and raised in Pennsylvania.

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Clark Gable enjoyed vacationing in Williamsburg, Virginia.

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