The Full Biography
Clark Gable. Actor. The Cadiz, Ohio, oil-field kid who became the King of Hollywood and then learned that a crown does not stop a plane from going down.
This is his story.
The image most people still carry is Rhett Butler, a mustache, and a line about not giving a damn that the Production Code almost swallowed. The year was 1939. The picture was Gone with the Wind. What the still cannot show is William Clark Gable of Cadiz and Hopedale, a mother dead before he was a year old, a wildcatter’s apprentice who had his teeth fixed for the camera, and a second life defined by Carole Lombard’s crash, a B-17 war, and a last picture with Marilyn Monroe that ended, for him, days after the wrap.
He was born on February 1, 1901, in Cadiz, Ohio. His mother died when he was an infant. His father worked oil and coal and did not dream of a son in greasepaint. The boy knocked around: Akron, the fields, stock companies. Josephine Dillon, an acting coach older than he was, married him, remade the voice, and sent him toward Hollywood. MGM eventually signed the face. The ears were a joke until they were a trademark. A Free Soul (1931) made him a shock: a man who handled Norma Shearer roughly and made the audience complicit. It Happened One Night (1934), on loan to Columbia, won him the Oscar and taught America that a bare-chested hitchhiker could sell more undershirts by taking one off. That last story is half publicity and half true, which is the Gable ratio.
MGM called him the King. He played the King: Mutiny on the Bounty, San Francisco, Red Dust, then Rhett. Vivien Leigh was Scarlett. Olivia de Havilland was Melanie. Gable was the thing the war and the Depression wanted a man to be — not good, exactly, but game. He was uncomfortable in the costume drama and better when the script let him sweat. The public did not mind the sweat. It photographed as honesty.
The pre-Code shock was the door. In A Free Soul he handled Norma Shearer in a way 1931 audiences had not been asked to enjoy. In Red Dust (1932) he was a rubber-plantation foreman opposite Jean Harlow, sweat and gin, the kind of picture he trusted. It Happened One Night (1934), the loan-out to Frank Capra at Columbia he did not want, put him on the road with Claudette Colbert: a bus, a hitchhike, an undershirt scene that became folklore. He won the Oscar. MGM had thought the loan a punishment. It made him unshelvable. Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) with Charles Laughton. San Francisco (1936) with Jeanette MacDonald and an earthquake. Wife vs. Secretary, Saratoga, Test Pilot — the Metro machine used the mustache as a product line. Then David O. Selznick and Gone with the Wind. Gable did not want the period clothes. He took the part. “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn” had to fight the Production Code for the word damn. The fight is a footnote. The line is the century. He was uneasy as Rhett. The public was not uneasy at all.
He had married Josephine Dillon, the coach, in 1924; they divorced. He married the Texas socialite Maria “Rhea” Langham in 1931; that marriage was more career than home and ended as Lombard became the fact. He and Carole Lombard married in 1939, in Kingman, Arizona, and lived on a ranch in Encino that was closer to a working farm than a star compound. She was the equal, the comic, the woman who could tell the King to sit down. On January 16, 1942, the DC-3 carrying her back from a war-bond tour went into Potosi Mountain, Nevada. She was thirty-three. Gable went to the mountain. Then he went into the Army Air Forces. He trained, shipped to England with the 351st Bomb Group at Molesworth, flew as an observer-gunner on B-17 missions over Europe, and came home thinner, older, and less interested in the joke of being King. The studio tried to make the service a publicity still. He had asked for combat. He got it. The pictures after the war — Adventure, The Hucksters, Mogambo (1953) with Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly, Teacher’s Pet, Run Silent Run Deep — are a man doing the job with a hole in it. He drank more. He hunted. He married Lady Sylvia Ashley in 1949; that union did not hold. In 1955 he married Kay Williams, a model and actress. In 1960 John Huston took him to Nevada for The Misfits, with Marilyn Monroe and Montgomery Clift, a cowboy rounding up horses in a West that had already ended. He did his own stunts. He died of a heart attack on November 16, 1960, at Hollywood Presbyterian, shortly after the wrap. He was fifty-nine. A son, John Clark, was born the next March, after the funeral.
The war pictures MGM wanted and the war he flew were not the same assignment. He shot footage that became the short Combat America. He came back to a lot that still needed the King and to a ranch that still had Lombard’s horses. He finished the contract. He did not finish the grief. Friends from the commissary years said the laugh was shorter. The mustache stayed. The job stayed. The man inside the job had already flown the missions he had asked for and had already buried the one wife who could tell him to sit down.
The only reason they come to see me is that I know that life is great — and they know I know it.Clark Gable
The turn is Lombard’s death. Everything after is a man finishing a contract with a hole in it. He drank more. He hunted. He did not remarry in the same key. The war was not a publicity still, though the studio tried to make it one. He had asked for combat. He got it. The King came back a veteran who still had to play the King.
The Encino ranch with Lombard was the closest the King came to a private grammar: horses, a working farm, a wife who could tell him the crown was a hat. After the crash he kept the place longer than the laugh. MGM put him back in front of the camera in Somewhere I’ll Find You and the pictures that followed, a product line that needed the mustache even when the man inside it had flown combat. He shot Combat America as a service film, not a star vehicle. The 351st at Molesworth used the face and he used the missions. Five combat sorties as an observer-gunner is the number the Army file holds. He came home in 1944. The lot wanted Rhett. He gave them the job. Adventure with Greer Garson, The Hucksters with Deborah Kerr, Homecoming, Command Decision — competent Metro work. Mogambo in 1953, back in heat with Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly for John Ford, is the one that still looks like a picture he trusted. In 1954 he left MGM after twenty-three years. The King was freelance.
Sylvia Ashley, the English widow of Douglas Fairbanks, was the 1949 marriage that did not hold. Kay Williams, in 1955, was the last attempt at a house. He hunted. He drank. He took Teacher’s Pet and Run Silent Run Deep and It Started in Naples because a freelance star takes the work. Then Huston and Miller and Monroe and the Nevada horses. He wanted The Misfits to be honest about a West that had become a scrap business. He ran the horses himself. He was fifty-nine. The heart that had been a publicity still quit sixteen days after he left the desert. John Clark was born into a name that was already a museum. Cadiz kept the birthplace. Hollywood kept the mustache. The ranch did not survive as a ranch.
Six things most people never knew
- The teeth and the voice were built. Dillon’s coaching, studio dentistry. The natural man was a construction.
- It Happened One Night was a loan-out he did not want. Capra, Colbert, an Oscar. MGM had thought it a punishment.
- He was uneasy as Rhett. The part that defined him was not the one he trusted. The sweat pictures were.
- Lombard died on a bond tour, not a pleasure flight. 1942. The war enlistment is grief with a uniform.
- He flew combat in B-17s. Not a handshake tour only. The Army used the face and he used the missions.
- The last child was born after the funeral. John Clark Gable, 1961. The Misfits is the last work. The son is the last fact.
Kay Williams was the last wife, a model and actress who kept the Encino house and then the next one. Friends describe a man who liked the outdoors more than the commissary, who was generous on a set and lost when the cameras were off after 1942. The King title was Louella Parsons’s and the public’s. He wore it like a hat he could not put down in a restaurant.
The later years
Home, after the war, was still California: the Encino ranch at first, then a life with Kay that tried to be quieter than the commissary years. He hunted. He fished. He showed up for the pictures Metro and, after he left the lot in 1954, the independents still wanted from the mustache. Mogambo, shot in Africa for John Ford, is the one postwar hit that still looks like a Gable picture — heat, a triangle, a man too old for the joke and still good at it. Teacher’s Pet (1958) with Doris Day let him be a newspaperman who could still land a line. Run Silent Run Deep (1958) with Burt Lancaster put him in a submarine and asked for command, not charm. He was a freelance star now. The King title did not come with a dressing room on the Metro lot anymore.
In 1960 Huston took him to the Nevada desert for The Misfits, from an Arthur Miller script written in the weather of Miller’s marriage to Monroe. Monroe was late, fragile, often not on the call sheet when the call sheet said she would be. Clift was a wrecked instrument who could still hit a note. Gable was the professional in the middle. He did the horse work a fifty-nine-year-old star did not have to do — running, roping, the physical grammar of a cowboy whose West was already a scrap business. He wanted the picture to be honest. He paid for the honesty with his body. The company wrapped. He came home to Los Angeles. On November 6 he was taken to Hollywood Presbyterian with a heart attack. He died on November 16. There was no long public illness. There was a King who had already, in the last picture, played a man whose West was over.
Kay was pregnant. John Clark Gable was born on March 20, 1961, four months after the funeral. The son is the last fact. The last work is The Misfits, released in 1961 to reviews that have grown kinder as the picture has aged into the ending it always was. Friends from the 351st and friends from the lot came to the funeral. Lombard had been gone nineteen years. He had not remarried in the same key. He had kept working because working was the only public language he trusted after 1942.
Those last fifteen years were not a reign. They were a job: pictures of uneven quality, a third and fourth marriage, a ranch, a bottle, a uniform in the closet, and a last location that asked him to be a tired man on a horse instead of Rhett. He accepted the ask. He did not live to see the release. Cadiz, Ohio, kept the birthplace. Encino kept the ranch until it could not. Hollywood kept the mustache. The man who had been built by Dillon’s coaching and studio dentistry spent the last chapter trying to do work that did not need the crown, and died when the horse work was done.
What remains of those years is not a fade. It is a veteran finishing a contract, a husband waiting on a child he would not meet, and a last film that looks, now, like an ending the art required. He had been the King because Louella and the public said so. He spent the last years being a hired man in heat, which is closer to Cadiz than to Tara. The heart quit. The picture stayed.
After he was gone
Rhett still owns the first search. The undershirt story still owns the trivia night. Lombard’s crash still owns the paragraph after the crown. The Misfits still looks like an ending the art, not only the body, required. Cadiz has a museum. Hollywood has a king it cannot recast.
He came out of Ohio oil country, let a coach rebuild the sound, took a loan-out that made him, said a line the Code hated, married the one equal, buried her, flew over Germany, and died after rounding up horses for Huston. If you only remember the mustache, you have the King. If you remember Dillon, Lombard’s plane, the B-17, and the Nevada horses, you have him.
Portrait: New York Daily News Color Studio (Harry Warnecke) · Public Domain · via Wikimedia Commons