Clark Gable

Info

Role

Actor

Date of birth

02/01/1901

Date of death

11/16/1960

Place of birth

Cadiz, Ohio, USA

Awards

1 win & 4 nominations

Academy Awards, USA
Academy Awards, USA

1 win & 2 nominations

Golden Globes, USA
Golden Globes, USA

2 nominations

Clark Gable

Biography

William Clark Gable was born on February 1, 1901 in Cadiz, Ohio, to Adeline (Hershelman) and William Henry Gable, an oil-well driller. He was of German, Irish, and Swiss-German descent. When he was seven months old, his mother died, and his father sent him to live with his maternal aunt and uncle in Pennsylvania, where he stayed until he was two. His father then returned to take him back to Cadiz. At 16, he quit high school, went to work in an Akron, Ohio, 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. On December 13, 1924, he married Josephine Dillon, his acting coach and 15 years his senior. Around that time, they moved to Hollywood, so that Clark could concentrate on his acting career. In April 1930, they divorced and a year later, he married Maria Langham (a.k.a. Maria Franklin Gable), also about 17 years older than him. While Gable acted on stage, he became a lifelong friend of Lionel Barrymore. After several failed screen tests (for Barrymore and Darryl F. Zanuck), Gable was signed in 1930 by MGM's Irving Thalberg. He had a small part in The Painted Desert (1931) which starred William Boyd. Joan Crawford asked for him as co-star in Dance, Fools, Dance (1931) and the public loved him manhandling Norma Shearer in A Free Soul (1931) the same year. His unshaven lovemaking with bra-less Jean Harlow in Red Dust (1932) made him MGM's most important star. His acting career then flourished. At one point, he refused an assignment, and the studio punished him by loaning him out to (at the time) low-rent Columbia Pictures, which put him in Frank Capra's It Happened One Night (1934), which won him an Academy Award for his performance. The next year saw a starring role in Call of the Wild (1935) with Loretta Young, with whom he had an affair (resulting in the birth of a daughter, Judy Lewis). He returned to far more substantial roles at MGM, such as Fletcher Christian in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) and Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind (1939). After divorcing Maria Langham, in March 1939 Clark married Carole Lombard, but tragedy struck in January 1942 when the plane in which Carole and her mother were flying crashed into Table Rock Mountain, Nevada, killing them both. A grief-stricken Gable joined the US Army Air Force and was off the screen for three years, flying combat missions in Europe. When he returned the studio regarded his salary as excessive and did not renew his contract. He freelanced, but his films didn't do well at the box office. He married Sylvia Ashley, the widow of Douglas Fairbanks, in 1949. Unfortunately this marriage was short-lived and they divorced in 1952. In July 1955 he married a former sweetheart, Kathleen Williams Spreckles (a.k.a. Kay Williams) and became stepfather to her two children, Joan and Adolph ("Bunker") Spreckels III. On November 16, 1959, Gable became a grandfather when Judy Lewis, his daughter with Loretta Young, gave birth to a daughter, Maria. In 1960, Gable's wife Kay discovered that she was expecting their first child. In early November 1960, he had just completed filming The Misfits (1961), when he suffered a heart attack, and died later that month, on November 16, 1960. Gable was buried shortly afterwards in the shrine that he had built for Carole Lombard and her mother when they died, at Forest Lawn Cemetery. In March 1961, Kay Gable gave birth to a boy, whom she named John Clark Gable after his father.

Known For

Filmography

Sort by
Popularity
Movies

0% (You've watched 0 of 137)

Acting
Role: Rhett Butler - Visitor from Charleston
Acting
Role: Peter Warne
Acting
Role: Fletcher Christian
The Misfits

The Misfits

7.9
7.9
Acting
Role: Gay Langland
Acting
Role: Cmdr. 'Rich' Richardson
Mogambo

Mogambo

6.6
6.6
Acting
Role: Victor Marswell
San Francisco

San Francisco

7.1
7.1
Acting
Role: Blackie Norton
Acting
Role: Clip from 'Idiot's Delight' (archiveFootage)
Red Dust

Red Dust

7.2
7.2
Acting
Role: Dennis Carson
Teacher's Pet

Teacher's Pet

7.1
7.1
Acting
Role: James Gannon
Acting
Role: Blackie Gallagher
Night Nurse

Night Nurse

7.0
7.0
Acting
Role: Nick
Acting
Role: Self (uncredited) (archiveFootage)
Acting
Role: Van Stanhope
Boom Town

Boom Town

7.0
7.0
Acting
Role: Big John McMasters
The Tall Men

The Tall Men

6.7
6.7
Acting
Role: Col. Ben Allison
Acting
Role: Michael Hamilton
China Seas

China Seas

6.9
6.9
Acting
Role: Alan Gaskell
Load more
Series

0% (You've watched 0 of 4)

Shows

0% (You've watched 0 of 73)

Related content

Cine Files

Cine Files

Mogambo is a Problematic Classic

Mogambo is a 1953 MGM film directed by John Ford. It stars Clark Gable, Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly. The screenplay was written by John Lee Mahin and is based on a Wilson Collison play. The film is a remake of Red Dust, a 1932 film that also starred Gable. In the early 1950s, MGM was having financial success with colour remakes of old titles such as King Solomon’s Mines and Quo Vadis. Mogambo made

92 views
43
1
Mogambo is a Problematic Classic
Dalan

Dalan

Manuscript MagicianLocal LegendParticipant "El auge de los antihéroes"

The Classic Cinema - Tribute

The classic cinema is the most important era of all ¿Why? ¿Due to the legends there? ¿Brilliant Directors? ¿Unforgettable stories? Yes, yes and yes. Since Chaplin, Greta Garbo, and Clark Gable till Audrey Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart. Genius like Marlon Brandon and Katherine Hepburn (a great surname as we see), all them gave us a gift, a story: Their movies. The words fall short front these legends

40 views
11
10
The Classic Cinema - Tribute
Lucas.

Lucas.

Cinephile PanelParagraph ProdigyThe Film Collector

POV: You're Black in a Jim Crow Era Reform School

Nickel Boys is a painful, unenjoyable, important watch. It will not fill you with hope. It will not make you laugh. It made a few people in the theatre's predominantly white audience cry. It is brutal. It's about trauma, racism and institutional abuse, and how difficult it is to cope with traumatic memories. These themes make Nickel Boys a tough movie to talk about, although there's a lot to discu

119 views
50
15
POV: You're Black in a Jim Crow Era Reform School
Liam Aceron (AceronHouse)

Liam Aceron (AceronHouse)

Local LegendManuscript Magician

THE CEASEFIRE OF YOUR WINDED NEIGHBORS

This essay is a reflection on non-existence of a pure friendship without hate or anger. The movies you may see before or after reading this reflection are: Gone with the Wind (1939, USA), Three Colors: Red (1994, France/Poland), and Exhibiting Forgiveness (2024,USA). Here are some thoughts of life that linger as I finish a film or a book, as I remember devouring movies back in 1990s, when I was in

466 views
5
5
THE CEASEFIRE OF YOUR WINDED NEIGHBORS
RayZ

RayZ

verification Urban StarInked Explorer

Feminism Mellows to Full Flavors: A Retrospective of Some 2023 Movies

The year-end top-ten lists for movies are trickling out. And “Barbie” is not on any one of them. At least, not on the dozen lists that have come into my view. In a way, it is understandable. “Barbie” is a toy promotional gimmick turned into a blockbuster. It does not contain sufficient amounts of artsy elements to warrant a “Best of” label, that is, other than “best-selling”. However, it takes som

1487 views
7
Feminism Mellows to Full Flavors: A Retrospective of Some 2023 Movies
FAILED