Clark Gable is regarded as one of the most handsome actors in Hollywood history,
but there was one thing about him that his romantic co-stars just couldn't stand.
Keep watching to discover all the secrets of this silver screen legend.
Clark Gable truly came from humble beginnings. He was born on February 1,
1901, in Cadiz, Ohio, to his father William Henry, an oil driller and farmer, and his mother Adeline.
Addie, as she was known, suffered from some form of sickness for the majority of her life,
and when she became pregnant with Clark, doctors advised her that giving birth would be fatal.
Nevertheless, she proceeded to give birth in their duplex clapboard house,
and she paid ten dollars for a doctor to come while also receiving help from a
downstairs neighbor. While it's not exactly clear what sort of sickness plagued Addie,
the doctor who delivered Clark believed that she was suffering from a progressive brain tumor.
Sadly, she had a mere ten months with her baby boy before her untimely death at the age of 31.
After Addie's passing, Clark was shipped off to his aunt and
uncle from his mother's side while his father looked for a new home and bride.
When William remarried in 1903, the future star moved back in with his father and new stepmother.
As a teenager, Clark Gable was involved in technical jobs,
as he worked at a tire factory in Ohio after dropping out of school at age 16.
The job made sense, as he enjoyed fixing cars in his youth. But that's not to say he was only
a tradesman, as he blended his love for technical work with intellectual pursuits as well, including
reciting Shakespeare for his friends. And when he was 13, he was his town's youngest band member.
Surprisingly enough, Gable's most influential moment came while he was employed at the tire
factory. He just so happened to see a production of the play The Bird of
Paradise and loved it so much that he suddenly knew what his long-term profession would be.
"Bird is the word."
Clark Gable's rise to fame was an interesting one, mainly because of the connections he forged.
In 1924, when he was 23, he moved to Hollywood to pursue his dreams. His resume wasn't much
to speak of at that point, as he'd only acted in a few Oregon-based theatrical productions.
Thankfully, Gable had his biggest fan by his side: his wife Josephine Dillon, who was 18
years his senior. They originally met in Oregon, where she was working as a theater manager.
In a sort of My Fair Lady scenario, or "My Fair Gentleman" in this case, Dillon used her money to
fix Gable's unflattering teeth and hairstyle, while also lowering his speaking register and
helping him with his body language. When he was finally ready, they headed to Los Angeles.
Dillon also acted as her husband's manager, as she managed to land him a few bit parts
while also using her connections to snag him a role on Broadway in 1928.
His star only rose on the stage, although it came at the cost of his marriage.
He left Dillon for the incredibly wealthy ​​Ria Langham, who became his second wife in 1931.
His star power then continued to rise, thanks to Langham's high society connections in New York.
The likes of Cary Grant, Gregory Peck, and Errol Flynn were all considered conventionally handsome.
But Clark Gable, on the other hand, was a manufactured Tinseltown star,
who changed his appearance at the behest of his first two wives.
But alas, not everyone fell for Gable's facade. MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer once told the
budding star that he was "too elephant-eared and unattractive" to reign as a silver screen icon.
So in the early 1930s, Gable was stuck playing minor roles as thugs or villains,
though his female fans responded with rave reviews.
Eventually, MGM realized Gable's potential profitability and began
to groom him to become a leading man by styling his hair and eyebrows,
giving him dentures, and forcing him to go to the gym. As biographer E.J. Fleming put it to OZY,
"Gable was a complete studio creation."
Clark Gable commanded the camera's attention with his rugged good looks
and nonchalant persona, but what was he like when the cameras stopped rolling?
As it turns out, he was reportedly a notorious womanizer. Perhaps one of the most shocking
stories about him was the one shared by fellow Old Hollywood icon Loretta Young in her memoir.
Gable and Young crossed paths as co-stars in the 1935 film Call of the Wild,
where they began flirting instantly. Once production wrapped on location and the cast
and crew boarded a train headed back to Hollywood, Young recalled Gable entering
her compartment, where he allegedly raped her, resulting in a pregnancy.
At the time, Gable was married to Ria Langham, and Young didn't tell a soul what had happened until
years after the incident, as she instead hid her pregnancy for as long as she could.
She eventually gave birth to a girl named Judy and shipped her off to be raised by nuns until
she cleverly took her back two years later and disguised the entire ordeal as a mere adoption.
"It wasn't until I was 31 that I finally did
ask my mother and did hear the truth from her, but by that time my father had died."
Clark Gable was exactly the ideal sort of masculine hunk that the Golden Age
of Hollywood required out of its leading men. But that doesn't mean that he had the rugged,
musky scent that you might associate with that image. As detailed in Warren G. Harris'
Clark Gable: A Biography, while the future star was still a young boy, his stepmother Jeannie
instilled in him a love of cleanliness, while also dressing him in fine clothing
and ensuring that he was perfectly groomed. One female fan even once observed of Gable,
"He was so clean you could eat off him."
This acute obsession with hygiene lasted into Gable's adult life,
which screenwriter John Mahin observed when he served in the Army with Gable during World War
II. As he recalled in Clark Gable: A Biography,
"He shaved his chest and armpits. […] And he said, 'Yeah, I can't stand hair.'"
Gable was also repulsed at the thought of Mahin taking a bath,
opting instead for showers so that he wouldn't sit in dirty bathwater. Weirdly enough,
even though Gable was hypersensitive to hygiene, his co-stars didn't enjoy kissing him,
as he was reportedly known for his bad breath due to his dentures. His Gone with the Wind co-star
Vivian Leigh even reportedly made a stink about their particularly passionate onscreen moments.
"Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."
Clark Gable was married five times over the course of his life, but no woman truly captured his heart
as much as his third wife, Carole Lombard. The two of them met in 1932 on the set of the movie
No Man of Her Own. Lombard was a married woman at the time, but she nevertheless felt sparks
flying between herself and her co-star, although no moves were made immediately.
By 1936, Gable and Lombard ran into each other again and promptly started dating
before eloping three years later. Sadly, their marital bliss was cut short with the
onset of World War II. In January 1942, the Treasury Department for the Victory Committee
decided to bring the state of Indiana into America's national campaign of war bond sales.
Lombard was born in Indiana, so she was sent to Indianapolis to help with the campaign.
When it came time to head home, the Treasury Department didn't allow for commercial flying,
but Lombard nevertheless decided to take a plane back to Burbank, California. Tragically,
though, it never arrived, with everyone on board dying when it crashed into a mountain.
By August 1942, a heartbroken Gable joined the Army air force,
reportedly telling his former publicist's widow,
"I'm going in, and I don't expect to come back."
Ever since then, there's been speculation about
the idea that Gable may have wanted to die while serving in the war.
After the death of Carole Lombard in 1942,
Gable joined the Army air force during World War II with guns blazing. As Robert Matzen,
author of Mission: Jimmy Stewart and the Fight for Europe, explained to Den of Geek,
"Carole Lombard [...] wanted him to go fight and she’s killed. So he then decides,
‘Alright, I’ll go fight and hopefully I’ll be killed too.’ That’s why he wanted to
be in the Eighth Air Force, because he wanted to die in a plane crash."
In addition to that supposed death wish, there was another fear looming on the horizon:
Adolf Hitler. The German dictator was a huge fan of Gable's and even reportedly considered
him his favorite American actor. It's also been contended that Hitler had bootlegged a theater
copy of Gone with the Wind before it was even released in the United Kingdom. Furthermore,
Hitler considered Gable to be a highly valuable war criminal among the Allied Forces, and he
even offered up some generous incentive for any soldier that could deliver the actor to him alive.
Gable was reportedly acutely aware of this terrifying reality,
and he once even declared to a friend,
"If Hitler catches me, the son of a b---- will put me in a cage like a gorilla and
send me on a tour of Germany. If a plane that I’m in ever gets hit, I’m not bailing out."
"Nobody knows it better than the sucker who started it: little Adolf."
Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe were two of the biggest stars during the Golden Age of Hollywood,
both international icons in their own right. They didn't cross paths on screen too often, though,
as they only starred in one movie together, 1961's The Misfits. Interestingly enough,
that film proved to be the final finished project for both stars before their untimely deaths.
"There's no better place to be, and you couldn't find better company either.”
“All right."
Gable never even had a chance to see The Misfits on the big screen,
having suffered a fatal heart attack two days after filming had wrapped.
Monroe, meanwhile, began shooting Something's Got to Give alongside Dean Martin in 1962,
but that project was ultimately shelved after she died of a drug overdose that same year.
While many consider Gable's role in The Misfits to be one of his greatest performances,
it turns out that shooting the Western was anything but easy.
At the time, Monroe was going through a breakup with the movie's screenwriter, Arthur Miller,
while also fighting an alcohol addiction and various psychological issues. With all that
going on, filming would be delayed on days that she appeared late or didn't show up altogether.
After Gable's death, Monroe's condition only spiraled further. She reportedly felt immense
guilt for how she acted while on set, believing she may have contributed to her co-star's demise.
Kay Gable, Clark's widow, extended an olive branch to Monroe after the birth of their son John Clark,
as she invited Monroe to his christening, which she attended.
By the time the 1960s rolled around, Clark Gable had starred in an impressive 82 films,
having begun his onscreen acting journey back in the early 20s.
As The New York Times put it in their obituary, he was the undisputed "King
of Hollywood" for over two decades and had such a powerful box office draw that some
movie theaters would simply announce on their marquees: "This week: Clark Gable."
It was in November 1960 when a tragedy occurred, as Gable was hospitalized for a heart attack.
As the Los Angeles Times reported, he was rushed to Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital,
where doctors believed he would make it out alive, noting he was "doing fine."
Sadly, though, he died on November 16, ten days after being admitted.
Gable remained humble about his success until the very end. As The New York Times noted,
even when he was bringing in $7,500 a week, he had reminders littered throughout his dressing
rooms citing his lower-class upbringing. On some of them, he wrote the simple but powerful message,
"Just to remind you, Gable."
If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault,
help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network
website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).