Clark Gable Biography |
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William Clark Gable was born on February 1, 1901 in Cadiz, Ohio. His mother died when he was seven months old. At sixteen he quit high school, went to work in an Akron tire factory, and decided to become an actor after seeing the play "The Bird of Paradise". He toured in stock companies, worked oil fields and sold ties. | |
| In 1924 he reached Hollywood with the help of
Portland OR theatre manager Josephine Dillon, who coached and (twelve years
older) married him. After bit parts he returned to theatre, becoming lifelong
friends with Lionel
Barrymore. After several failed screen tests (Barrymore and Zanuck) he was
signed in 1930 by MGM's Irving
Thalberg. Joan Crawford
asked for him as co-star in Dance,
Fools, Dance (1931) and the public loved him manhandling Norma
Shearer in Free Soul (1931)
the same year.
His unshaven love-making with braless Jean Harlow in Red Dust (1932) made him MGM's most important star. The studio punished him for refusing an assignment; he was farmed out to Columbia where he won an Oscar for It Happened One Night (1934). He returned to substantial roles at MGM, winning nominations for Fletcher Christian in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) and Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind (1939). Gable was the people's choice to play Rhett Butler, but he was against playing the role at first. When his third wife Carol Lombard died in a plane crash returning from a War Bond drive, a grief-stricken Gable joined the Army Air Corps, out of movies for three years. When he returned the studio regarded his salary as excessive and did not renew his contract. He free-lanced, but his films didn't do well at the box office. He announced during filming The Misfits (1961), that, for the first time, he was to become a father. On November 16, 1960, he died of a heart attack. He was laid to rest beside Carole Lombard at Forest Lawn Cemetery.
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