Clark Gable

Clark Gable (born February 1, 1901, Cadiz, Ohio, U.S.—died November 16, 1960, Los Angeles, California) was an American film actor who epitomized the American ideal of masculinity and virility for three decades. An enormously popular star during his lifetime, Gable was dubbed the “King of Hollywood.”

Early life and career

Gable was the only son of an itinerant oil-field worker, and his mother died when he was not yet 10 months old. He grew up in Ohio and reportedly dropped out of high school at age 16. Gable held various jobs before embarking on an acting career in his early 20s. While in Oregon, he became the protégé of veteran actress Josephine Dillon, who coached Gable in poise and elocution and paid for his orthodontic work. Although 17 years her junior, Gable married Dillon in 1924, about the same time he began to land small roles in silent films. His first big break came when he was cast in the lead of the Broadway play Machinal (1928).

Stardom: It Happened One Night, Mutiny on the Bounty, and San Francisco

In 1930 Gable’s performance in a Los Angeles stage production of The Last Mile brought him to the attention of Hollywood producers. Although he failed his first screen test at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer—in part because producers thought Gable’s ears were too big for a leading man’s—his supporting performance in the low-budget western The Painted Desert (1931) convinced MGM executives of Gable’s talent and screen presence. The actor garnered public attention with his aggressive masculine performances in such films as A Free Soul and Night Nurse (both 1931). This forceful persona—equal parts “man’s man” and “ladies’ man”—helped make him one of Hollywood’s top stars within a year.

Among Gable’s most successful films for MGM during this period were Red Dust (1932), Strange Interlude (1932), Dancing Lady (1933), Hold Your Man (1933), Manhattan Melodrama (1934), and Men in White (1934). Despite his macho persona in such films, Gable’s screen presence was largely nonthreatening: his magnetic smile and playful winks rendered him a charming rogue who did not take himself too seriously. Although Gable himself maintained a self-deprecating attitude toward his own talent throughout the years, he often proved himself most competent in demanding roles and was equally deft at romantic comedy and epic drama.

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As punishment for refusing a role, MGM lent Gable to Columbia Pictures—a studio then known derisively as “poverty row”—for the Frank Capra comedy It Happened One Night (1934). The punishment turned out to be a coup for Gable, as the film—the story of a spoiled runaway heiress (portrayed by Claudette Colbert) and the newspaper reporter (Gable) who tries to exploit her story—swept the Academy Awards in all five major categories: best picture, actress, director, and screenplay and best actor for Gable. Many of Gable’s best films of the period were either those he resisted doing or those that were made on loan-out to other studios. He did not feel himself right for the role of mutineer Fletcher Christian in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), yet the film proved hugely popular and earned Gable another Oscar nomination. Also in 1935 he played Jack London’s hero in Call of the Wild for Twentieth Century Fox; during filming he had an affair with Loretta Young, and she had a daughter later that year, though Gable was not publicly revealed as the father until well after his death. He reluctantly accepted the role of rakish political boss Blackie Norton in San Francisco (1936), one of the most praised and popular films of Gable’s career. It was also the first movie in which he costarred with Spencer Tracy; they would also team in the hit films Test Pilot (1938) and Boom Town (1940).

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