Actor, born in Cadiz, Ohio, USA. Leaving school at age 14 he worked at various jobs, from oilfield handyman to telephone repairman. In 1918 he was drawn to the stage and for several years he acted in productions from New York City to Oregon. In 1924 he entered Hollywood films as an extra, then enjoyed a hit on Broadway in Machinal (1928). He launched his film career in 1931 when he became a hit in The Painted Desert and made 11 further films that year. Although his large ears made some doubt if he would ever be a romantic lead, he combined his rugged masculinity with a casual charm that allowed him to play both bad guys and heroes, and after he won an Academy Award for It Happened One Night (1934), he became King of Hollywood and first choice for Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind (1939). After his third wife, Carole Lombard, died in a plane crash (1942), he joined the air force and flew bombing missions. On returning to Hollywood, he never quite regained his former glory but he remained popular with older fans. His final film was The Misfits (1961).
| Clark Gable | |
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Clark Gable: A Biography by Warren G. |
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| Birth name | William Clark Gable |
| Born |
February 1, 1901 Cadiz, Ohio, USA |
| Died |
November 16, 1960 Los Angeles, California, USA |
William Clark Gable (February 1, 1901 – November 16, 1960) was an Academy Award-winning American film actor and the biggest box office star of the early sound film era.
In 1999, the American Film Institute named Gable among the Greatest Male Stars of All Time, ranking at No.
Early life
Clark Gable was born in Cadiz, Ohio, on February 1, 1901 to William H. Contrary to popular belief, Gable never had a middle name but was registered simply as Clark Gable. Following her death, Gable's father's family refused to countenance any notion of raising the child a Catholic, provoking an enmity with his late mother's side of the family. The dispute was resolved when the Protestant side agreed to allow young William Clark Gable to spend more time with his mother's Catholic relatives.
In April 1903, Gable's father, Will Gable, married Jennie Dunlap, whose family came from the small neighboring Ohio town of Hopedale.
Gable was inspired to be an actor after seeing a life-impressing play, but he was not able to make a real start until he turned 21 and could inherit money that had been left to him. Although he found work as an extra and bit player in such silent films as The Plastic Age starring Clara Bow, Gable was not offered any major roles and so returned to the stage. Gable's first role in a sound picture was as the villain in a low-budget William Boyd western called The Painted Desert (1931).
He worked mainly in supporting roles, often as the "heavy", building his fame and public visibility during 1931 in such important movies as A Free Soul, in which he played a gangster who slapped Norma Shearer (Gable never played a supporting role again as long as he lived after that slap), Susan Lennox: Her Rise and Fall with Greta Garbo and Possessed in which he and Joan Crawford steamed up the screen with some of the passion they were sharing in real life. An enormously popular combo, Gable and Harlow were paired together in six films, the most notable being Red Dust and Saratoga, during production of which Harlow would die of kidney failure. Mayer decided that Gable was getting difficult and ungrateful, he got a brilliant idea: loan Gable out to the lower-rank Columbia studio; The result: Gable won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his 1934 performance in the film It Happened One Night.
Most Famous Roles
Despite his reluctance at the time to appear in the role, Gable is best known for his performance as Rhett Butler in the 1939 classic Gone with the Wind, which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.
A few years before, Gable had also earned an Academy Award nomination for his role as Fletcher Christian in 1935's Mutiny on the Bounty. In addition, Gable was one of the few actors to play the lead in three films that won an Academy Award for Best Picture. Decades later, Gable would say that whenever his career would start to fade, a re-release of Gone With the Wind would instantly revive everything, and he continued as a top leading man for the rest of his life.
Marriage to Carole Lombard and World War II
Gable's marriage in 1939 to his third wife, successful actress Carole Lombard, was reportedly the happiest period of his personal life.
Devastated and inconsolable by the loss of Lombard, Gable soon joined the U.S. Army Air Forces. As Captain Clark Gable he trained with and accompanied the 351st Heavy Bomb Group as head of a 6-man motion picture unit making a gunnery training film. It was a critical and commercial failure and, despite some subsequent popular successes such as Mogambo (a remake of Red Dust, which he had made two decades earlier), Gable became increasingly unhappy with the mediocre roles offered him by MGM as a mature actor. She was the mother of Gable's son, John Clark Gable, born on March 20, 1961, four months after Clark's death.
Gable also had a daughter, Judy Lewis (b.
According to Lewis, Gable visited her home once, but he didn't tell her that he was her father.
Death
Gable's last film was The Misfits (written by Arthur Miller and directed by John Huston), which co-starred Marilyn Monroe and Montgomery Clift. The Misfits would prove not only to be Gable's swan song, but it would also mark the final completed performance by Marilyn Monroe. Many critics regard Gable's performance in his final film to be his finest.
There was much speculation about Gable's physically demanding Misfits role (which required yanking on and being dragged by horses) having contributed to his sudden death soon afterward. Support for Monroe's claim may be found in that Kathleen Gable specifically invited Marilyn to Gable's funeral and the two of them sat together in the church during the service, as shown in contemporary newsreels. Others have blamed Gable's crash diet before filming began; for years, Gable's head would sometimes shake from the diet pills he would take to strip off pounds before making a film, a practice which may have contributed to his early death. It should be noted that Gable was in poor health when filming began from years of heavy smoking and drinking, and in the previous decade had suffered two seizures which may have been heart attacks.
Clark Gable is interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California, beside his beloved Carole Lombard.
Filmography
Feature films
White Man (1924) Forbidden Paradise (1924) Declassee (1925) The Merry Widow (1925) The Plastic Age (1925) North Star (1925) The Johnstown Flood (1926) One Minute to Play (1926) The Painted Desert (1931) The Easiest Way (1931) Dance, Fools, Dance (1931) The Finger Points (1931) The Secret Six (1931) Laughing Sinners (1931) A Free Soul (1931) Night Nurse (1931) Sporting Blood (1931) Susan Lenox (Her Fall and Rise) (1931) Possessed (1931) Hell Divers (1931) Polly of the Circus (1932) Red Dust (1932) No Man of Her Own (1932) Strange Interlude (1932) The White Sister (1933) Hold Your Man (1933) Night Flight (1933) Dancing Lady (1933) It Happened One Night (1934) Men in White (1934) Manhattan Melodrama (1934) Chained (1934) Forsaking All Others (1934) After Office Hours (1935) China Seas (1935) The Call of the Wild (1935) Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) Wife vs. Secretary (1936) San Francisco (1936) Cain and Mabel (1936) Love on the Run (1936) Parnell (1937) Saratoga (1937) Test Pilot (1938) Too Hot to Handle (1938) Idiot's Delight (1939) Gone with the Wind (1939) Strange Cargo (1940) Boom Town (1940) Comrade X (1940) They Met in Bombay (1941) Honky Tonk (1941) Somewhere I'll Find You (1942) Adventure (1945) The Hucksters (1947) Homecoming (1948) Command Decision (1948) Any Number Can Play (1949) Key to the City (1950) To Please a Lady (1950) Across the Wide Missouri (1951) Callaway Went Thataway (1951) (cameo) Lone Star (1952) Never Let Me Go (1953) Mogambo (1953) Betrayed (1954) Soldier of Fortune (1955) The Tall Men (1955) The King and Four Queens (1956) Band of Angels (1957) Run Silent, Run Deep (1958) Teacher's Pet (1958) But Not for Me (1959) It Started in Naples (1960) The Misfits (1961)Documentaries and short subjects
The Pacemakers (1925) (short subject) The Merry Kiddo (1925) (short subject) What Price Gloria? (1925) (short subject) The Christmas Party (1931) (short subject) Jackie Cooper's Birthday Party (1931) (short subject) Screen Snapshots (1932) (short subject) Hollywood on Parade No. 9 (1933) (short subject) Hollywood Hobbies (1935) (short subject) Starlit Days at the Lido (1935) (short subject) Hollywood Party (1937) (short subject) The Candid Camera Story (Very Candid) of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures 1937 Convention (1937) (short subject) Hollywood Goes to Town (1938) (short subject) Screen Snapshots: Stars on Horseback (1939) (short subject) Hollywood Hobbies (1939) (short subject) Northward, Ho! (1940) (short subject) You Can't Fool a Camera (1941) (short subject) Combat America (1943) (documentary) Show Business at War (1943) (short subject) Wings Up (1943) (short subject) Screen Snapshots: Hollywood in Uniform (1943) (short subject) Screen Actors (1950) (short subject)|
Preceded by: Charles Laughton for The Private Life of Henry VIII |
Academy Award for Best Actor 1934 for It Happened One Night |
Succeeded by: Victor McLaglen for The Informer |
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