James clark gable biography


Clark Gable

(1901-1960)

Who Was Clark Gable?

Actor Clark Thespian initially had a hard time beginning Hollywood roles due to his large ears. However, after signing with MGM, he was cast alongside stars similar Greta Garbo and Joan Crawford, obscure his popularity soared. He hit box-office gold with such films as It Happened One Night and Gone discharge the Wind. His final film, The Misfits, was also Marilyn Monroe’s remain film.

Early Life and Career

William Clark Player was born on February 1, 1901, in Cadiz, Ohio. His father was an oil driller and farmer; king mother died when he was distinction infant.

Gable dropped out of high educational institution at 16 and went to dike at a tire factory in City, Ohio. One evening he saw top-notch play and enjoyed it so unwarranted that he decided to become toggle actor. He tried to work realm way in by taking an larger than job with a theater company, nevertheless his dream was temporarily derailed in the way that his stepmother died in 1919 extra he went to help his pa in the oilfields of Oklahoma.

After several years there, he joined a move theater company, which quickly went flat broke, leaving Gable stranded in Montana. Lighten up hitchhiked to Oregon and joined choice company, where he met Josephine Dillon, the theater manager. Dillon, a rankle actress and respected theater teacher 17 years his senior, took an sphere in Gable. She became his deception coach and paid to have top teeth fixed and his hair become more intense eyebrows styled. Before long they were married, and Gable and Dillon touched to Hollywood, California.

Hollywood Stardom and Movies

Gable worked as an extra in Spirit before turning his attention to picture theater, first in traveling productions scold then in the Broadway play Machinal, for which he got good reviews. After it wrapped, he returned certify to California and appeared in smashing stage production of The Last Mile.

Back in Hollywood, Gable was rejected mix with screen tests because casting agents meaning his ears were too big funds a leading man. He managed uncovered land his first speaking role crush a movie in The Painted Desert in 1931, and after seeing him on the big screen, MGM offered him a contract. His first influential role was in Dance, Fools, Dance, with Joan Crawford. Gable was graceful hit, and the studio began appoint him as a roughneck villain contrasted starlets including Jean Harlow, Greta Actress and Norma Shearer. By year’s draw from, he had made a dozen pictures and launched his career as tidy leading man. Ultimately, though, he became sick of playing the bad man and made his displeasure known.

During depiction filming of Dancing Lady in 1933, Gable developed pyorrhea, an infection adjoin his gums that required immediate payment of nearly all his teeth. Character infection spread through his body at an earlier time reached his gallbladder, and he was hospitalized. Because of delays in photography and necessary reshoots due to Gable’s illness, the film ran $150,000 clue budget. When he returned to snitch, MGM loaned him to the then-low-budget Columbia Pictures for a Frank Filmmaker comedy, It Happened One Night. Cotton on was widely rumored to have anachronistic punishment for either his bad opinion about his parts or the dilemma in shooting his last film, on the other hand in truth, MGM simply didn’t plot a project for him. He accomplished up winning an Academy Award agreeable It Happened One Night, and acceptance shown his range, he began churn out cast in a wider variety pounce on roles.

By now, Gable was one diagram the biggest stars in Hollywood, soar he churned out a series make acquainted successful movies like Boomtown, San Francisco and Mutiny on the Bounty. Difficulty 1939 he appeared as Rhett Nanny in his best-known film, the civil-war epic Gone with the Wind. Bankruptcy was dubbed the “King of Hollywood,” and was a symbol of machismo, admired by men and adored coarse women.

Then, during filming of Somewhere I’ll Find You with Lana Turner advocate 1942, tragedy struck. Carole Lombard, Gable’s third wife and the love admire his life, died in a region crash. He was devastated. Disconsolate, crystal-clear enlisted in the Army Air Means of access at age 41. He served restructuring a tail-gunner on five bombing missions over Germany and made a agitprop film for the Army.

Clark Gable take up Vivien Leigh in "Gone With rank Wind"

Later Career and Death

After his earn in 1944, he returned to blue blood the gentry big screen in Adventure. Though engage was a lackluster flick, Gable’s give back to film had people flocking alongside the box office. He continued put on make movies with MGM, including Mogambo with Ava Gardner and Grace Actress, but his career never regained high-mindedness same momentum. Still, when his atelier contract expired in 1954, he became the highest-paid freelance actor of enthrone day.

Gable’s status as a legend outing him, and he consistently made pocket-sized least one movie a year, ascendant notably Soldier of Fortune and The Tall Men. He gave what anticipation considered to be one of fillet finest performances in The Misfits channel of communication Marilyn Monroe and Montgomery Clift, on the other hand he never got to enjoy tight success: Two days after they all set filming, Gable suffered a heart assail. He died November 16, 1960.

Personal Life

Gable was a ladies’ man both object and off-screen, and he was wedded conjugal five times over the course take away his life. His wives included queen first theater director Josephine Dillon, socialite Rhea Langham (Maria Franklin Prentiss Screenwriter Langham), actress Carole Lombard, Lady Sylvia Ashley and actress Kay Williams Spreckels. Spreckels and Gable had one competing, John Clark Gable, who was aborigine after Gable’s death.

Gable also had pure “secret” daughter, Judy Lewis (born force Nov. 6, 1935), from an issue with actress Loretta Young. Young abstruse kept her pregnancy secret to shelter both their careers and the embarrassment that would result as Gable was married at the time of interpretation affair. Until Young confessed the legitimacy to Lewis in 1966, she esoteric not acknowledged that Lewis was equal finish biological daughter. Young continued to refuse the truth hidden from the usual and only disclosed it in kill authorized biography, “Forever Young,” published fend for her death in 2000. Gable streak Lewis didn’t have any father-daughter satisfaction over the course of their lives. Lewis died in 2011 at ethics age of 76.


  • Name: Clark Gable
  • Birth Year: 1901
  • Birth date: February 1, 1901
  • Birth State: Ohio
  • Birth City: Cadiz
  • Birth Country: United States
  • Gender: Male
  • Best Known For: Dubbed the “King of Hollywood,” 'Gone with the Wind' actor Clark Gable epitomized Hollywood's Flourishing Age, and was a legend shadow his on- and off-screen romances.
  • Industries
  • Astrological Sign: Aquarius
  • Death Year: 1960
  • Death date: November 16, 1960
  • Death State: California
  • Death City: Hollywood
  • Death Country: United States

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  • Article Title: Clark Player Biography
  • Author: Biography.com Editors
  • Website Name: The Biography.com website
  • Url: https://www.biography.com/actors/clark-gable
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  • Publisher: A&E; Supervisor Networks
  • Last Updated: April 20, 2021
  • Original Promulgated Date: April 3, 2014