From the early 1930's until his death in 1960, the undisputed king of the silver screen was jug-eared rogue, Clark Gable. Before the birth of the Method and the death of the studio system, Gable ruled the Hollywood roost. His presence in a movie was, for a time, a surefire guarantee to send ticket sales soaring. Women wanted to be hauled up a staircase by him, and men hoped to achieve his mastery of masculinity so they could haul their own women. Even
little Judy Garland crooned him a love song. His romances on and off the screen were fodder for the gossip columns. He is believed to have
fathered a love child with Loretta Young out of wedlock, had a long-standing affair with co-star Joan Crawford, and married his match in Hollywood beauty Carole Lombard. Her death in a plane accident in 1942 devastated Gable, and added mourning widower to the Gable persona. His life became even more like one of his Hollywood movies when he enlisted in the Air Force and flew missions in World War II, becoming a real-life American hero.
While Gable was a male ideal in the golden era of Hollywood, his masculinity was different from those of his cowboy contemporaries. Gable seemed equally at home in a tux or a pair of a dungarees, moving easily between the two classes. He was like a mixture of John Wayne and William Powell. His real talent seemed to be to mesh so well with some of the strongest actresses of the period- in fact, it's hard to think of Gable without his leading ladies. Where the more solitary men like Wayne and Spencer Tracy came off as images of singular manhood, Gable was masculine because he went toe-to-toe with feisty, powerful women, and came out as their equal.
On what would have been his 115th birthday, here is a list of some of my favorite Clark Gable films:
Night Nurse (1931)
Gable's breakout role was as Nick, a dick-y chauffeur for a messed-up rich family (a role James Cagney turned down due to his rising stardom). Nick's not terribly lovable in this- he knocks out Barbara Stanwyck for chrissakes. But there was something about him that stood out, and after this picture, MGM groomed Gable for stardom. The film is dark with drunks and attempted infanticide- and Pre-Code Stanwyck is always a treat.
Red Dust (1932)
The pairing of Gable with MGM blonde bombshell Jean Harlow is cinema magic. Gable is rubber plantation manager Dennis Carson who willingly hosts smartmouth hooker, Vantine (Harlow) during the rainy season. Vantine has hopes of keeping Dennis' attentions until married goody-goody, Barbara Willis (the beautifully uptight Mary Astor) shows up and piques Dennis' libido. The sexual tension is palpable in this love triangle and as the typhoon rages so do these lovers. Gable and Harlow became good friends on this film and he was co-starring with Harlow when she died suddenly during the making of
Saratoga (1937). For those of you who recoil at Asian stereotypes, watch out for Willie Fung as an inane, cackling functionary.
It Happened One Night (1934)
Winner of five Oscars including the only win for Gable,
It Happened One Night is an iconic Hollywood comedy that lives up to the hype. Claudette Colbert and Gable are evenly matched as a runaway heiress and a newspaperman who is desperate to get the story. Directed by cinematic master Frank Capra, the movie blends a comedy of classes, a road movie, and a screwball romance. Who can forget Colbert hiking up her skirt to grab a ride on a country road? Or Gable wearing no undershirt in a hotel room divided by a sheet? Legend has it that the scene killed the undershirt industry because men everywhere went undershirt-less like Gable- but that's probably a lot of PR puffing.
Gone with the Wind (1939)
While the earnest search for the actress to play Scarlett O'Hara filled every possible newspaper column and radio minute, the search for Rhett Butler was much easier. Producer David O. Selznick wanted Gable from the beginning so all he had to do was convince his father-in-law Louis B. Mayer to loan out his biggest star to play the role. Mayer acquiesced for a high price and the rest, as they say, is history. The making of
GWTW is as much an epic as the movie itself. Books have been written on the subject and the legends have been proved and disproved time and time again.
I'll only say this- Gable seems flawlessly comfortable in the role and with his formidable co-star, Vivien Leigh. It's probably a combination of his acting talent and the director. Gable was keen to get Victor Fleming to replace "women's director" George Cukor. Maybe he was worried the women's performances would overshadow him under Cukor's guidance (he'd acted with strong women before to no complaint), maybe he was uncomfortable working with a "fag" director (the most swishy item of gossip suggested that Gable was once a callboy and Cukor knew it), or maybe he was just very comfortable with Victor Fleming, having already worked with him on the wildly successful
Red Dust. Whatever the reason, it is impossible to imagine anyone else saying,
"Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn", as he exits one of the
greatest screen romances ever made.
Strange Cargo (1940)
Strange is the operative word. This film is about a bunch of prisoners who escape a French penal colony and brave a jungle and the ocean to find freedom. Seems like a typical action film, right? Well what if one of the escapees turns out to be Jesus? And what if the prisoners bring along Joan Crawford? Can Jesus and Joan sit in the same boat? In their eighth and final film together, Crawford and Gable spark wonderfully with verbal barbs and slaps to the face before clinching embraces. Crawford said that Gable was the greatest actor because he had balls. And she should know. Crawford claimed that when Carole Lombard died, Gable turned to her for comfort. Watching Gable and Crawford on-screen you can sense that there was indeed a deep bond between these two "tough-guys."
The Misfits (1961)
Marilyn Monroe used to fantasize when she was a child that Clark Gable was her father. So it must have been a titch surreal for Monroe when Gable was cast as her lover in her husband, Arthur Miller's movie. Monroe was ecstatic to work with Gable, but it didn't take long for Monroe's demons, drug abuse, and disintegrating marriage to overwhelm the production. Gable is rumored to have said, "Working with Marilyn on
The Misfits nearly gave me a heart attack." He died twelve days after shooting ended of a heart attack.
This is the last completed film of both Gable and Monroe who died in August of 1962 of a drug overdose. For that reason alone, it is a memorable piece of film history. But there is something more to the picture. There is an ethereal quality to it- almost as if these two huge stars were already entering the dreamland of their posthumous legends. At the end they drive into the desert night towards the star-filled horizon- right where they belonged.
