An immortal star

A DAY in 1940 in Atlanta City, USA. A high-comfort hotel. A fur- coated bejewelled lady walked to the reception and asked for a room. The clerk requested her to wait a while as a room just vacated by an actor's was being cleaned. When she heard the actor's name she raced to the room without bothering to register at the counter, ``Hey! Don't you change the sheets. I want to sleep on them!'' She screamed as she flew over the ornate winding stairs. The actor was Clark Gable. He was then sailing along the silvery moon after the phenomenal success of the David Selznick mega buck bonanza, ``Gone With The Wind'' (1939).

During the decades 1930-1940s he was a top draw of Hollywood and in a popularity poll conducted in 1938 by a newspaper, he was crowned the ``King of Hollywood'' and a glitzy mock ceremony was held to mark the regal occasion. In a single year - 1931 - he made a dozen movies and not long ago he was a mere extra with his jug-handle - jutting ears, whom the genius of Hollywood, and MGM top guy, Irving Thalberg thought was ugly! And he was not very keen on hiring the actor for the studio. But Gable proved the genius wrong with his spectacular track record of the decade - ``A Free Soul'' (1931)... ``Red Dust'' (1932, it made him a star and macho symbol of the movies. The scene in which Jean Harlow, and Clark Gable bathe together in a small wooden cask, created movie history), ``No Man Of Her Own'' (1932), ``It Happened One Night'' (1934, the Frank Capra classic and one of the biggest hits of the decade, it took a rich harvest of `Oscar' Awards including the `Best Actor' for Clark Gable), ``Mutiny On The Bounty'' (1935, another memorable milestone movie), and the history-making ``Gone With The Wind'' (1939).

Clark Gable was no great actor. Once he commented, ``I can't emote worth a damn!'' It was his handsome lady-killer looks, marauding macho male virility, seductive smile and a voice that charmed both women and men alike. In his heyday in the 1930s strutting vain men were deflated with the famous pin-pricking wisecrack, ``Who do you think you are, Clark Gable?'' In one of his lesser-known movies, ``Command Decision'' (1949) there was a scene in which his heart-beat was heard. When the dub-dub-dub- sounds came on the sound track female hearts in movie houses went `thump- thump-thump' with excitement! That was Clark Gable.

He was so popular that Adolf Hitler wished to kidnap him to Germany and exhibit him as role model of the ``Aryan Male Man''! Before he got involved in the Second World War in 1939, he loved to watch the Gable movie at private screenings.

He played the lead role with all top stars of his day and the glamour-roster includes Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Claudette Colbert, Jean Harlow, Rosalind Russell, Norma Shearer, Ava Gardner, Grace Kelly, Vivien Leigh, Barbara Stanwyck, Loretta Young and Marilyn Monroe. Many of them, like Joan Crawford openly declared that they had affairs with him!

William Clark Gable was born in Cadiz, Ohio, USA on February 1, 1901. His mother died early when he was an infant and he grew up on his own into a tough kid who dropped out of school to make a living. He worked at many jobs, sold tyres and ties and at oil wells.

An evening at a play drew him to and he went on stage where he was helped by a lady theatre manager whom he married, the first of his five wives. She was twelve years older but he was not unduly worried for he realised that women were drawn to him like flies to a honey-pot! His wife took him to Hollywood where he did `also-seen' roles in some forgettable films. Thanks to her he met the fine actor and star, Lionel Barrymore, who saw much potential in him and worked hard to promote his newfound bottle-buddy.

His career teed off in 1931 as a villain in a Western, ``The Painted Desert''. The Norma Shearer starrer of 1931 as a rich lawyer's daughter who falls for a gangster and kills him, ``A Free Soul'' made folks sit up when the screen sizzled with the love scenes between Norma Shearer and the newcomer, Clark Gable, as the virile gangster. The same body chemistry exploded in another film of 1931, ``Susan Lenox, Her Fall and Rise'', the moth being Greta Garbo. And ``Red Dust'' (1932) with the `Blonde Bombshell', Jean Harlow, made Clark Gable a star. The rest, as they say, is history... (This film was remade in 1954 as ``Mogambo'' with Clark Gable, Grace Kelly and Ava Gardner).

When MGM suspended Clark Gable for indiscipline connected with drinking bouts, Frank Capra approached him for the lead role in a film about a `Night Bus'. Gable accepted it without even bothering to look at the script. MGM gave the nod to work for Capra only as punishment! The film, ``It Happened One Night'' (1934) created history at many levels winning an Oscar for Gable!

One of his wives was the Hollywood star, Carole Lombard and the two made a lovey-dovey couple and her sudden and sad death in an air crash in 1942 shattered Gable. He was never the same again. Indeed he opted for war service at once to forget his trauma. Even though he acted in many movies after the war, the old charm and Gable magic seemed to be missing and faded...

``The Misfits'' (1961), his last film with Marilyn Monroe directed by John Huston showed some of the old magic but he died on November 16, 1960, before the film was released. His fifth wife, Kay Spreckels, pregnant at that time, gave birth later to a son.

Two secrets of his life were kept under the wraps for long in that prudish 1930s when there was a `Morality clause' in artistes' contracts in Hollywood. Clark Gable was of German descent and the original surname was `Goebel'. As it was uncomfortably close to the infamous Nazi propaganda chief, Joseph Goebbels, the name was changed to Gable!

The other was his affair with the Roman Catholic star, Loretta Young which resulted in a daughter. She too had the same jug- ears! Young kept it a secret even from her girl and told her only in the later years. The star hid her ears under the hair and insisted on the daughter wearing a hat pressed down!

The girl met Gable often at the Loretta Young home but she was not aware that he was her father. Clark Gable's role as Rhett Butler in ``Gone With The Wind'' was his best making him a movie immortal. When the script was given to him for studying the role of Butler he exclaimed, ``What a role for Ronald Colman!'' His legendary exit line spoken to Scarlet O'Hara (Vivien Leigh), ``Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn!'' shall live forever...

RANDOR GUY

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