CLARK
GABLE!!!
Clark Gable was born William Clark Gable on February 1, 1901 in Cadiz, Ohio. He left home at fourteen to work in a tire factory in nearby Akron. He saw his first play there are began working evening backstage as a call boy for no pay. He was just beginning to play bit parts with the stock company when his father took him along to the Oklahoma oil fields. When he reached 21 he left his father and joined a traveling troupe. the troupe was headed by a veteran actress, Josephine Dillon, who took a personal interest in coaching the young Gable, 14 years her junior. Late in 1924 they were married and settled in Hollywood, where Clark was able to get occasional extra jobs in films. Unable to get any further in movies, they separated and went on the road with touring stage companies. He was in a few Broadway plays and he and his wife divorced in 1930. Lionel Barrymore, with whom Clark had played on the road, arranged for a screen test at MGM but the studio turned him down. As did Warner Brothers.
Eventually he was signed at MGM and he begam a major star with Red Dust and Strange Interlude. Then in 1934 he was loaned to Columbia to make It Happened One Night which he won an Oscar for. By the end of the '30s he was known as "The King" by his adoring fans. In 1939 he had the role that was the most important role of his career--Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind. That year he had also married Carole Lombard and they were considered one of the happiest couples in Hollywood. But tragedy struck in 1942 when the place on which Carole was returning from a war Born drive crashed into a mountain and everyone on the plane was killed. Shortly after he joined the Air Force and received the Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Medal for flying several bombing missions over Germany. His return to the screen was a bomb because he had gained weight and his age was beginning to show. His nerves were shattered, his popularity was slowly fading away, and he took to drinking. Over the next few years he married two
women that looked like his late wife and in 1954 his MGM contract expired and wasn't renewed. He made an effort with a few more films but his days were over. Then on November 16, 1960, he suffered a heart attck and died. He didn't live to see his first and only child, John Clark, born ot Kay Gable shortly after his death. Here are five of Clark Gable's most famous films: Red Dust (1931), It Happened One Night (1933), Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), Gone With the Wind (1939), and Band of Angels (1957).
My Classic Movie Stars
Classic Movie Stars:
