Live Internet Television

“The trail may be cold, but the stories are hot!”

By ivi blog Guest Contributor Dr. Rob Moore

Of all the stars of the silver screen, a score or so have been acclaimed by the public and critics alike as representative of the ideal American male, the masculine archetype.

Names so labeled include performers such as  Rudolph Valentino,  John Wayne, Errol Flynn, Robert Taylor, and Cary Grant. More recently, cases are made for Clint Eastwood, Bruce Willis (called by some “the last real man in Hollywood”), John Travolta and Vin Diesel.

However, in the end, there is but one personality who, during his lifetime, was billed as the King of Hollywood (a moniker he despised). That personality was Clark Gable.

Public domain image from the film trailer for It Happened One Night, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

During the “studio era,” fortunes were spent advancing the careers of a limited number of screen stars. The concentration of wealth spent on supporting the image of  this small cadre of individuals may never be equaled. Independent film companies, and the diversification of studio investment today make it unlikely that we will ever again see one individual cornering the market in a particular film genre.

The Gable on-screen persona was at once rough yet capable of the gentle; outrageous yet possessor of great sensitivity; rude yet often demonstrably refined; sober in times of danger yet playful, even childlike at others; world-wise yet surprisingly innocent; perpetrator of high violence yet marvelously understated. This was Gable, the King.

The qualities that make up the Gable legend still hover over Hollywood, reinforced by the occasional signed restaurant photograph, film cameo, and, of course, the  Lombard/Gable Forest Lawn mausoleum.

But, who was Clark Gable? What were his values? Who was he as an individual? Where did he come from?

To begin, William Clark Gable, born in 1901, came from hard working stock. His father, William H. Gable, labored in the oil fields as a driller. Gable lost his mother, the former Adeline Hershelman, a devout Catholic, when he was ten months old. Before her death, Adeline had Gable baptized a Roman Catholic.

For the first two years of his life, Gable was raised by his father’s parents. After his father remarried the former Jennie Dunlap, Gable was brought into his new mother’s  home. Jennie doted on the young Gable teaching him to play piano. He later said of her that she was “one of the most tender human beings I have ever known.”

The first real drama in which William Clark Gable was involved resulted as a consequence  of his mother’s death. Gable’s father, a casual Protestant, refused to raise Gable as a Catholic, even though a condition of his marriage to Adeline had been that any children born of the marriage would be raised in the Catholic church. This created a rift in the family only to be resolved when Gable was allowed to spend significant time with his mother’s family.

In addition to the religious squabbles, Gable’s father was often harsh with his son. The young Gable was tall and shy, and his father frequently challenged him, calling Gable a sissy. As a result of his father’s criticism’s as well as downturns in the family’s fortunes, Gable quit school at the age of sixteen, going to work in nearby Akron in a tire factory.

It doesn’t appear as though his family’s early struggle to make Gable a strong Christian paid many dividends, although in many respects Gable was an honorable person, as was demonstrated during World War II. More on that later.

Gable had a limited number of loves, including tobacco, alcohol, women and the theater, in constantly fluctuating orders of importance.

While working in Akron, Gable one evening attended the showing of a stage play entitled The Bird of Paradise.

From that time forward, Gable was hooked. He knew his destiny would be the stage.  He took bit parts in stock theater while working in a variety of jobs to support himself, among them oil field worker and men’s tie salesman, working his way to Portland, Oregon.

After have moved to Portland, Gable came under the influence of his first wife-to-be, Josephine Dillon, who was a theater manager there. Josephine was significantly older than Gable, but she was an accomplished acting coach, and was willing, along with the coaching, to serve as Gable’s manager and agent as well.

Josephine moved Gable to Hollywood and walked the pavement for him approaching studios and live performance managers. She was able to launch Gable’s career landing him silent film parts, and several talkie film cameos, usually as a villain.

Not to put too fine a point on it, when Josephine ran out of contacts and ideas, Gable felt it was time to exit their relationship. Gable married his second wife, Maria Langham, only days after his divorce from Josephine.

Maria “Ria” Langham was  a well connected woman of means from Texas. She seems to have been responsible for Gable being offered an MGM contract.  One must not look too closely at Gable’s sincerity in relationships with women. Gable by reputation never let the opportunity of a romantic liaison pass him by, especially if such a liaison had the potential of  bolstering his career.

Through MGM, Gable starred with Norma Shearer, Claudette Colbert, Joan Crawford, and Carole Lombard.

Both on and off the screen, Gable was close to many of his female co-stars, defining “close” in as many ways as one can find through the use of a competent thesaurus.

Joan Crawford and Gable were especially fond of each other with passions barely contained to the satisfaction of MGM studio management who were always protective of the public image of their contracted talent.

When Gable met Carole Lombard, it is said that for the first time he fell in love, even though the relationship went through periods of turmoil.

The heavy drinking, somber, and argumentative Gable was tamed by Lombard in many ways. Lombard often gave Gable a feeling of personal security, a security that he had never felt before. She also knew how to handle him when the inevitable drunken arguments escalated to relationship threatening episodes.

For example, after one particularly nasty exchange while Gable was staying at a luxury hotel, he awoke  the next morning with both a terrible hangover and a room full of doves as symbols of peace. It was difficult for Gable to get to the bathroom to be sick having to wade through hundreds of the disoriented birds.

Lombard and Gable set up homemaking in Encino. He often told Lombard that he now had everything, a peaceful place to live, a wonderful wife and two good jobs.

Unfortunately, Carole Lombard was killed in a plane crash coming back from a war bond drive. Her manager begged Lombard to take a train back to her and Gable’s Encino ranch. But, Lombard was impatient to get back to her lover. That impatience led to Lombard’s demise when her plane didn’t clear a mountain near Las Vegas. Her mother was killed in the crash as well.

Gable never moved from their Encino ranch, although he married twice after Lombard’s death.

In 1942, seven months after losing Carole, Gable, at 41 (well past draft age) enlisted in the Army Air Corps. What caused Gable to enlist — grief, a suicidal death wish, patriotism, or a combination of these?

What is clear is that he was asked by the War Department to coordinate the making of a film showing aircraft gunnery personnel at work. For some inexplicable reason, the War Department was having difficulty recruiting young men to sit exposed in the belly of aircraft as German 8.8-cm Flak 41 shells came at them at 3000 feet per second, exploding around them at  heights sometimes as great as 45,000 feet.

Gable volunteered for combat duty and made five B-17 bombing missions over Germany earning the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal, as well as the questionable honor of having the Nazi Air Minister, Hermann Goering, offer a reward for Gable’s capture. Attaining the rank of major, Gable was discharged in June 1944.

At that time, computer special effects were not what they are today. In order to tell the story properly, Gable felt that he had to have real combat film. So he chose to fly into combat aboard bombers over Germany. This is not the chosen activity of a fading violet or, as his father might have charged, “a sissy.”

On several occasions, Gable came very close to being killed in making the PR film, and, in predictable military fashion, by the time the film was completed, Gable was informed by the military that they had solved the gunnery recruitment problem another way, and the film would not be needed.

Gable returned to movies after his military service.

However, as he aged, he never enjoyed the success he had garnered earlier in his career.

Four years after his flights over Germany, Gable married his fourth wife, Sylvia Ashley, the widow of Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.  Both Ashley and Gable had had poor luck in marriage. The marriage lasted three years.  (After Gable, Ashley went on to marry Prince Dimitri Djorjadze, a story for another day)

Then, after an uneven romance with Kay (Kathleen) Williams, Gable married for the fifth and final time.

His and Marilyn Monroe’s last film, The Misfits, released in 1961, put on display the significant acting talents of both performers, talent that all two soon was to be silenced.

Gable died of a massive heart attack in mid November 1960.

His wife Kay gave birth to a son (John Clark Gable) four months after Gable’s death. Kay made arrangements for his internment next to Carole Lombard, the wife that the public knew, and the relationship that came closest to being the one that Gable, Kay believed, he would have preferred lasting a lifetime. It was a marvelous gesture by a classy individual.

Gable the villain, Gable the hero, Gable the swashbuckler, Gable the romantic, Gable the partier, Gable the male archetype, Gable the man.

We are not likely to see another like him.