Home> Facts and Trivia > Stars > Clark Gable
Clark Gable Facts
| Sign | Aquarius |
| Born |
Feb 1, 1901 Cadiz, OH |
| Died |
Nov 16, 1960 Los Angeles, CA |
| Age | Died at 59 |
| Total Facts | 106 |
He liked westerns, and once expressed his regret that he didn't make more of them.
He separated from wife Maria ('Ria') in October, 1935.
He served as a pallbearer and usher at Jean Harlow's funeral in 1937.
He was a conservative Republican, although his third wife Carole Lombard, a liberal Democrat, encouraged him to support President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal reforms. In February 1952 Gable addressed a televised rally at Madison Square Gardens in New York in support of the Republican candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower, and a few days before his death he voted by post for Richard Nixon in the 1960 presidential election.
He was an early member of the right-wing Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals.
He was baptized as a Catholic, but raised as a Protestant. However, he did not practice any religion as an adult.
He was highly patriotic, a staunch anti-communist and a firm believer in military intervention. Among the political leaders he admired were President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Sir Winston Churchill and King George VI. Until John Wayne's stardom eclipsed Gable's in the late 1940s, many Americans thought of Gable as THE American star.
He was seriously considered to play Tarzan in Tarzan the Ape Man (1932), but he was deemed an unknown and Johnny Weissmuller was chosen instead.
He was so disappointed by the critical and commercial failure of Adventure (1945) that he did not agree to make another film until more than a year had passed. Fortunately, The Hucksters (1947) proved to be a success and his performance was acclaimed.
He was voted the 21st Greatest Movie Star of all time by Premiere Magazine.
He was voted the 8th Greatest Movie Star of all time by Entertainment Weekly.
He worked as a lumberman in the Willamette Valley of Oregon in the early 1920s. After a couple of months of doing that, he quit, saying that "the work was too hard" and he would rather act instead. He then left to go to Hollywood, where he began his acting career.
His father always opposed his decision to become an actor, and even after Gable became a major star he still denounced acting as a "sissy" occupation. Gable became a Freemason in 1933 just to please his father. However, he showed no grief when his father died aged 78 from a heart attack on 4 August 1948, having outlived his three wives.
His favorite drink was whiskey.
His private funeral service at the Church of the Recessional in Forest Lawn Park was attended by 200 mourners including Spencer Tracy, Robert Taylor, James Stewart, Norma Shearer, Ann Sothern, Marion Davies, Frank Capra, Robert Stack, Jack Oakie, Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, Van Johnson and Howard Strickling, Gable's longtime publicity man at MGM. There was no eulogy. The closed casket was adorned with yellow roses shaped like a crown, befitting the one-time King of Hollywood.
His two step-children from wife Ria were George Anna "Jana" (b. circa 1913) and Alfred Lucas (b. circa 1919).
His widow, Kay Williams, was born August 7, 1917, and died in May of 1983.
His wife Sylvia Ashley was born Edith Louise Sylvia Hawkes in 1904. She was the widow of Douglas Fairbanks. Her first husband was Lord Anthony Ashley (they divorced November 28, 1934), her third was Lord Stanley of Alderney, and her fifth was Prince Dimitri Djordjadze (whom she married in 1954 and stayed married to until her death). She died June 29, 1977. Her grave stone refers to her as "Princess Sylvia Djordjadze."
In 1949 he served as a pallbearer at the funeral of director Victor Fleming, whom he considered something of a father figure.
In 1955, he formed a production company with Jane Russell and her husband Bob Waterfield, and they produced The King and Four Queens (1956), the star's one and only production. The stress of making the film took such a toll on his health that Gable decided not to produce again.
In order to expedite divorce from his second wife Ria in order to marry Carole Lombard, Gable paid his ex-wife a $500,000 settlement in 1939, nearly everything he had at the time.
In order to hide that she and Gable had an illegitimate child, fearing that it would ruin both of their careers, Loretta Young secretly gave birth to her daughter Judy Lewis pretending she was vacationing in Europe. When she returned to Hollywood, she claimed that Judy was adopted. Gable met Judy only once when she was a teenager.
In some radio interviews at the end of his life, his voice has a haunting similarity to Walt Disney's.
In the 1950s Gable joined Walt Disney, John Wayne, James Stewart and other politically conservative entertainers to "assist" the House Un-American Activities Committee in its efforts to find alleged Communist infiltration in the film industry.
In the 2001 film Bandits, Joe Blake (Bruce Willis) erects a blanket partition between motel room beds out of respect for Kate Wheeler's (Cate Blanchett's) privacy. He remarks that he saw them do the same thing in an old movie (Clark Gable's character, Peter Warne, did this in It Happened One Night).
In the film Broadway Melody of 1938 (1937) 15-year-old Judy Garland sings "You Made Me Love You" while looking at a composite picture of Clark Gable. The opening lines are: "Dear Mr. Gable, I am writing this to you, and I hope that you will read it so you'll know, my heart beats like a hammer, and I stutter and I stammer, every time I see you at the picture show, I guess I'm just another fan of yours, and I thought I'd write and tell you so. You made me love you, I didn't want to do it, I didn't want to do it..."
In the mid-1950s he started to receive television offers but rejected them outright, even though some of his peers, like his old flame Loretta Young, were flourishing in the new medium.
Interred at Forest Lawn, Glendale, California, USA, in the Great Mausoleum, Sanctuary of Trust, on the left hand side, next to Carole Lombard.
Is portrayed by James Brolin in Gable and Lombard (1976), Bruce Hughes and Shayne Greenman in "Blonde" (2001), Charles Unwin in Lucy (2003) (TV), Larry Pennell in Marilyn: The Untold Story (1980) (TV), Edward Winter in The Scarlett O'Hara War (1980) (TV), Boyd Holister in Grace Kelly (1983) (TV) and Gary Wayne in Malice in Wonderland (1985) (TV).
Is the subject of the song "Clark Gable" by The Postal Service.
It Happened One Night was the first to win all five major Academy Awards (Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Screenplay), a feat that would not be matched until One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and later by The Silence of the Lambs (1991).
It was at Gable's 36th birthday that Judy Garland sang "Dear Mr. Gable: You Made Me Love You."
Joined the Army Air Corps during the Second World War, and was commissioned an officer with service number 565390. Rose to the rank of captain and served primarily in Public Affairs, making training films and performing public relations visits to soldiers and airmen in Europe.
June 2004: As a native of Cadiz, OH, he was inducted into the Lou Holtz Museum/Upper Ohio Valley Hall of Fame (www.LouHoltzHallOfFame.com).
Met his second wife Ria when he was in a play. Her brother, actor Booth Franklin, brought her backstage and introduced them.
Military records on celebrities released by the Pentagon in 2005 reveal that Gable, upon enlistment, was described as a "motion picture specialist" and his weekly wage was listed as $7,500. A movie cameraman, Andrew J. McIntyre, enlisted along with Gable and trained with him, the documents showed. "In order to have something definite to describe and some tangible evidence of his experiences, it is proposed that there be enlisted his cameraman to be trained as an aerial gunner also who may make pictures of Gable in various theaters of operations," one Army memo said.
Named the #7 greatest actor on The 50 Greatest Screen Legends List by the American Film Institute
On Easter weekend, 1935, Gable flew to Houston to give away step-daughter Jana in her marriage to Dr. Thomas Burke.
Once named Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) as his favorite of his movies, despite the fact that he did not like his co-star Charles Laughton. He was also initially disappointed by the casting of Franchot Tone as Midshipman Byam since the two actors had been bitter rivals for the affections of Joan Crawford. However, during filming they became close friends.
Originally the image of Gable as an outdoors man was an invention of the studios, designed to bolster his masculine screen image during the early 1930s. However, he soon discovered that he enjoyed hunting, shooting and fishing, so the image swiftly became the reality.
Pictured on one of four 25¢ US commemorative postage stamps issued on 23 March 1990 honoring classic films released in 1939. The stamp features Gable and Vivien Leigh as Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara from Gone with the Wind (1939). The other films honored were Beau Geste (1939), Stagecoach (1939) and The Wizard of Oz (1939).
Playing a cowboy in his last film, The Misfits (1961), which was also the final film for co-star Marilyn Monroe, the aging Gable diligently performed his own stunts, taking its toll on his already guarded health. He died from a heart attack before the film was released.
Prior to making The Misfits (1961), he crash-dieted from a bloated 230 lbs. to 195 lbs. Twice in the previous decade he had suffered seizures that might have been heart attacks; once, ten years earlier, while driving along a freeway he had chest pains so severe that he had to pull off the road and lie down on the ground until he felt well enough to continue on.
Proposed his headstone should read: "Back to silents." It was not used by his widow though.
Served as a Captain in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II making training films. Also trained as an aerial gunner, he flew 5 combat missions with the 8th Air Force's 351st Bombardment Group (Heavy) while making his films and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Medal.
So durable, he could play the same role in both an original (Red Dust (1932)) with Jean Harlow and Mary Astor, and its remake (Mogambo (1953)) with Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly.
Some sources say he turned down the role of Colonel William Travis in The Alamo (1960) because he didn't want to be directed by John Wayne. However this seems unlikely, since Travis was 26 at the time of the battle, and Gable would have been 58 when the movie was filmed.
Turned down Robert Mitchum's role in Home from the Hill (1960).
Turned down Cary Grant's role in The Philadelphia Story (1940) because he thought the film was too wordy.
Warner Bros. cartoons sometimes caricatured Clark Gable. Examples include Have You Got Any Castles? (in which his face appears seven times from inside the novel The House of the Seven Gables), The Coo-Coo Nut Grove (in which his ears flap on their own), Hollywood Steps Out (in which he follows an enigmatic woman), and Cats Don't Dance in which he appears on a billboard promotion for Gone With The Wind.