A Who would have thought to spend 500 dollars to portray that chimpanzee? ”, shouted Jack Warner, president of the Warner Bros studios, indignantly when he saw that the people of the study dedicated a photo session to a clumsy boy with huge and detached ears.
That ‘chimpanzee’ became a captivating man, owner of an elegant virility and an ironic and scathing look that glared at women. That ‘hicko from Ohio’ —as they saw him in Hollywood—, long-eared, without studies or manners became Clark Gable, one of the immortal gallants of cinema, an actor who still falls in love with viewers almost 62 years after the death of the.
As Terenci Moix said, “many others slapped trashy vampires without anyone flinching in their seats. There was no more elegant flagellator. In 1938, the Hollywood chroniclers baptized it as The king. It was customary to designate the sovereign of each season, but Gable kept the title forever. How did he do it? “Kings take their secrets to the grave,” Moix said.
William Clark Gable was born in 1901 in Cadiz, Ohio, United States. His father worked in oil wells and he barely knew her mother: she died when he was a six-month-old baby. So he was raised by his paternal grandparents during the early years; then, when his father settled down and married Lennie Dunlap, the boy went to live with them. Jennie is his first mentor: he had several, good women who divined his potential and shaped him into a handsome seducer. To him, Jennie was “one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met.”
Jennie taught him how to play the piano and encouraged him when Clark showed an interest in the theater. Clark dropped out of high school, started working at a refinery, and upon leaving he was rehearsing with an Akron theater group. But when he was 17 years old, his stepmother died.
Then the protective shield disappeared. It seemed to Mr. Gable that this theater business was not for men. The father-son confrontation was bitter; at age 21, Clark collected the meager inheritance from his grandparents and left. That escapade meant ten years without father and son speaking to each other.
He went to Portland, Oregon and continued doing odd jobs and performing in amateur companies. He did not have a hard or a clear future. His girlfriend left him: she didn’t see a future for him. More eye had Josephine Dillon, the second decisive woman in his artistic career. Josephine was a drama teacher, 15 years older than him. She was the one who taught him how to act.
road to success
He took it to Hollywood. It was his Pygmalion. He transformed that rough midwestern kid into a Hollywood actor. He taught her manners. He changed the way he dressed, the way he moved, changed his hairstyle, took him to a dentist to have a nice smile carved for him, and dropped his first name, William. He invented Clark Gable.
Also, she married him. Gable always acknowledged a debt of gratitude to Josephine. She was always in love with her, defending him when the press painted him as a climber who took advantage of her. Josephine acknowledged that the marriage was never consummated, but when they parted ways and stopped seeing each other, a bond of affection remained. In his will, Clark stipulated that his estate pay off Josephine’s mortgage.
Gable was always grateful to his first wife and stipulated in his will that with his assets he would finish paying the mortgage on her house.
Their marriage broke down because Clark wanted more than supporting roles in second-rate movies, so he moved to New York, where he befriended Lionel Barrymore and married Ria Langham, his third teacher. She was also older than him (she was 17 years older than him) and also boosted his career. She had contacts.
They went to live in Hollywood. Little by little, with theatrical roles, Gable was being seen, and one day the long-awaited contract with Metro Goldwyn Mayer arrived, which was on the hunt for male stars. MGM decided to promote it by putting the beauties of the house in its arms, Norma Shearer in Free Soulto Greta Garbo in susan lenox…
It was repeated throughout his career. Half a firmament passed through her enveloping arms: Carole Lombard; Barbara Stanwyck; Claudette Colbert; MyrnaLoy; Loretta Young; Rosalind Russell; Deborah Kerr; Grace Kelly; Susan Hayward; Yvonne deCarlo; Doris Day and Sophia Loren, among others.
He disregarded his daughter
Rough, sardonic, passionate and also refined and tender, Gable represented a man who made women fall in love. And he loved that. He was an inveterate womanizer who was not always well behaved. Loretta Young took many years to tell that he forced her to have sex. She got pregnant and went off with her mother to hide it. She gave the girl – Judy – up for adoption and later adopted her herself. Clark Gable just handed her a handful of dollars and brushed her off.
Appearances mattered a lot in Hollywood. And Clark Gable’s was that of the virile, macho man. But he showed that he was also good at comedy by winning an Oscar (the only one) for his role in it happened one nighta film that did a lot of damage to the manufacturers of undershirts: sales fell by 99 percent because when he took off his shirt in one scene, it was seen that he was not wearing that garment.
He was already a star. The big titles with stellar casts came, like rebellion on board, San Francisco; and in 1939, the movie: gone With the Wind. Just as there were many doubts when it came to putting a face on Scarlett O’Hara, producer David O. Selznick knew from the beginning that Rhett Butler was him and knew how to convince him to accept the role. gone With the Wind turned it into an indestructible myth, but did not give it an Oscar (the film won ten): that year it was won by actor Robert Donat for Goodbye Mr Chips.
shattered by tragedy
Then came tragedy: Carole Lombard, the love of his life, died in a plane crash in 1942 while touring the country to sell war bonds. Clark Gable, devastated, then decided to park the cinema, enlisted in the Air Force and went to fight in Europe.
The return of The king It was like a roller coaster of successes and disappointments: it was wrong in Adventureexcelled in Mogambo… There he coincided with Ava Gardner, who – like everyone who worked with him – extolled his bonhomie: “He was very sweet and, at the same time, very big and virile, with a lot of personality,” said Ava.
But Gable was already deep into the twilight. He insisted on playing the gallant despite his age. He wanted a cache commensurate with his fame, and they did not pay him, despite the fact that among the 25 highest-grossing films of the Metro in the 30s, eight were starring him.
His twilight was also that of Marilyn Monroe: they got along very well on the set of rebellious lives, the last film of both. John Huston tells in his memoirs that Gable had infinite patience with the blonde: “He never complained about his delays.” Marilyn also praised him: “He represented everything that I could idealize. I’m sorry he didn’t get critical acclaim for his acting work,” Marilyn said.
Clark Gable died before it was released rebellious livesalso months before his only legitimate son, John Clark Gable, was born.
The final recognition got it. Remains The king.
Rhett Butler was him
The realization of gone With the Wind It is one of the most excessive epics in the history of cinema. Clark Gable did not want to accept the role of Rhett Butler because he believed that the thousands of readers of Margaret Mitchell’s novel already had an image of the character in their heads. David O. Selznick, the producer, was very clear that Rhett Butler was him, so he deployed his cunning to convince him: he told him that if he accepted, he could pay for the divorce of his second wife, Ria Langham, and would be free to marry Carole Lombard , the woman of his life.
It was a crucial decision. Clark Gable acted in 65 films, many of them very successful (it happened one night, rebellion on board, Mogambo…), but gone With the Wind is a stratospheric phenomenon: it has grossed an estimated $4 billion and was the highest-grossing film for 34 years. Rhett Butler was definitely him.
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Clark Gable, a sweeping ‘chimpanzee’ | XLWeekly