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Clark Gable ~ 27 Films

William Clark Gable was born on 1 February 1901 in Cadiz, Ohio, to William Henry and Adeline Gable. When he was seven months old, his mother died and his father, an oil-well driller, sent him to live with his maternal aunt and uncle in Pennsylvania, where he stayed until he was two, after which his father fetched him back to Cadiz. At 16, Gable quit school and worked at an Akron, Ohio, tyre factory until, after seeing the play The Bird of Paradise, he decided to become an actor. He toured in stock companies, worked oil fields and sold neckties. In December 1924, he married his acting coach Josephine Dillon, fifteen years his senior. The pair moved to Hollywood so Gable could further his acting career. A number of small silent film and stage roles followed. In April 1930, the marriage ended in divorce. A year later, Gable married Maria Langham, also about seventeen years his senior. While working in the theatre, Gable became a lifelong friend of prominent and influential thespian Lionel Barrymore. Despite several failed screen tests for Barrymore and Darryl Zanuck, in 1930 Gable was signed by MGM. After a small part in The Painted Desert (1931), Joan Crawford asked for him as co-star with her in Dance, Fools, Dance (also 1931). In the same year, the public loved his

manhandling of Norma Shearer in A Free Soul. His unshaven lovemaking with Jean Harlow in Red Dust (1932) made him MGM's most important star, after which his acting career flourished. At one point, by way of punishment after he refused an assignment, the studio loaned him out to Poverty Row outfit Columbia Pictures, who put him in Frank Capra's It Happened One Night (1934). His performance opposite Claudette Colbert earned both leads Best Actor Academy Awards. (Though nominated twice more, for his Mr. Christian in Mutiny On the Bounty and Rhett Butler in Gone With The Wind, this would be Gable's only Oscar.) The next year saw him star in The Call Of The Wild with Loretta Young, with whom he had an affair, resulting in the birth of a daughter, Judy Lewis, who only learned the identity of her father when she was 31 years old and Gable five years dead. After a second divorce in March 1939, Clark married Carole Lombard, but tragedy struck in January 1942 when the plane in which she and her mother were flying crashed into Table Rock Mountain, Nevada, killing them both. A grief-stricken Gable joined the US Army Air Force, in which, during three years of service in the USA and Europe, he made recruiting films and flew five combat missions. After the war he returned to the screen, but his films did not do well at the box office. In 1953, MGM terminated his contract and Gable began to work freelance. In 1949 Silvia Ashley, the widow of Douglas Fairbanks, had become Gable's fourth wife. The couple divorced in 1952. In July 1955 he married a former sweetheart, Kathleen Williams Spreckles and became stepfather to her two children. In November 1959, Gable unknowingly became a grandfather when Judy Lewis, his unacknowledged daughter with Loretta Young, gave birth to a daughter, Maria. In the late summer of 1960, Gable's wife Kay discovered that she was expecting their first child. In early November of that year, just after he had completed filming The Misfits, his last film, released in 1961, Gable suffered a heart attack. He died on 16 November 1960, four months before the birth of his first son, John Clark Gable. Gable appeared opposite some of the most popular actresses of the time: Joan Crawford, who was his favourite actress to work with, was partnered with Gable in eight films, Myrna Loy worked with him seven times, and he was paired with Jean Harlow (who died aged 26) in six productions. He also starred with Lana Turner in four features, and with Norma Shearer and Ava Gardner in three each. Gable's final film, The Misfits, paired him for the first time with Marilyn Monroe (also in her last screen appearance). Gable is considered one of the most consistent box-office performers in history, featuring on Quigley Publishing's annual Top Ten Money Making Stars poll sixteen times. He was named the seventh greatest male American screen legend by the American Film Institute. In Hollywood through most of the '30s, he was "The King".

THE PAINTED DESERT (1931)

After its release in 1931, and presumably having earned enough money to pay its way, The Painted Desert was pulled from circulation and cannibalised - i.e. four featured action sequences (a cattle stampede, two ore wagon hijackings and an explosion and landslide) were removed for re-use as stock footage in other, later films. That's how it went in cost-conscious early '30s Hollywood and what remained might have been left to fade into oblivion, except for one thing - the presence in the cast of a then unknown but soon to be very well known Clark Gable. Unfortunately, no print of the complete film survives, either as originally released or in restored form. The "holes" in the residue detract from what was probably an above-average Western in its day, though it plays satisfactorily still, with a robust plot effectively delivered. Rudimentary and rough but well worthwhile. Gable, by the way, makes a wholly convincing cowboy, both ahorse and afoot. 75 minutes. Surprisingly good. IMDb: Even complete, The Painted Desert would still suffer from many of the same problems that make it so hard to take today, only less so. Howard Higgin's direction is of that burdensome, ponderous style often described as creaky. William Boyd displays all the positive and natural characteristics that made him popular with audiences five years later as Hopalong Cassidy. We hear too often about the handful of silent players who did not make the transition into sound: Boyd was one of the greater number who did. As for Gable, in his first speaking role, it's all there. When he's on the screen, you know you've got something, and the rest, as they say, is history / A good, coherent plot and excellent performances ... Enjoyable / Helen Twelvetrees, the heroine, seems like she's stepped right out of silent films into talkies without realising the difference / One of the better early sound Westerns / The final showdown scene is entirely original and one I've never seen before. Realistic too / Gable, in a dynamic credited debut, acts just about everyone else off the screen / Harmed by the carve-up but still worth a go.

A FREE SOUL (1931)

This spunky little pre-Code shocker looks at alcoholism, an unhealthily close father-daughter relationship, mobsters, sex, murder and the capricious meting out of "justice" via trial by jury. Gable is strong in an allegedly star-making turn. Shearer (above, left) is a clothes-horse, perhaps, window-dressing to some degree, but more than that too. Lionel Barrymore's bravura performance was showy enough to win a coveted Best Actor Academy Award. Howard (above, right) in a fourth-billed, relatively minor part, comes through with customary suave élan. His path will cross Gable's again in 1939's Gone With The Wind. As for A Free Soul, there's little to sniff at other than the ridiculous though utterly predictable, only-in-Hollywood trial verdict. 93 minutes. Recommended. IMDb: Some movies are theatrical in the sense that all their values and methods are derived from stage values. This is one. Some, made in that sweet spot after talkies got going but before the Code kicked in, have a vitality that would be sadly lacking for a few decades to come. A Free Soul fits these two overlapping pockets / Howard gives an understated but effective performance. However, with the sexual fireworks between Gable and Shearer he quickly fades into the background / This was one of Gable's breakthrough performances. Sans moustache and looking very young, his persona is fitting into place - when he slaps Jan, he packs a wallop, and he kisses a woman like he means it. A Free Soul is a turgid melodrama and some of the acting may seem a little over the top, but it's still recommended for the performances and especially for the young Gable, who would be packing a wallop and kissing like he meant it for another thirty years / Gable slaps Shearer [actually, he doesn't] and becomes a star! / Some nice location work for an early talkie / Holds up well for today's audience / I loved it!

NIGHT NURSE (1931)

Director William Wellman came to Night Nurse from The Public Enemy (see Cagney / Harlow). Its plot could be written on a postage stamp - bent doctor and evil chauffeur (Gable, with too much screen presence for his small part) conspire to lay hands on dipso mother's kids' trust fund - but Blondell and Stanwyck (above) make an engaging double act. A tame though different pre-Code drama, described by Ella Smith as "ahead of its time." Good. IMDb: It helps to be an actual pediatric night nurse to understand this movie fully. Its camp is both intentional and unintentional. It has a rebel flair with the nurses mouthing off to authority and even befriending a bootlegger - one of the heroes of the film. It is pretty spicy for its time with several scenes of Barbara and Joan in their skivvies. The medical lingo is amusing (Stanwyck's blood type is "4h") and two pudgy kids play the starving children / Gable, sans tash and as yet unknown, is very effective as a menacing chauffeur / Gritty depression era flick showing why Warner Bros was the studio of record. It's tough broads here that get the leads: Stanwyck, before her teeth were fixed, and Blondell, gum-popping her way through the Nurse's Oath, struggle to survive grabby interns, unscrupulous doctors, murderous families and no money. No, this isn't Young Doctor Kildare. Just compare Night Nurse with that sappy 1940s series for insight into what the Hayes Code did to social realism. Yes, it's contrived melodrama but there are elements of the real world here that, courtesy of the PC, would disappear from the screen for 35 years. Also included are gamey one-liners, mild strip scenes and a really sardonic look at motherhood, together with a very scary Clark Gable.

"What a Man!"

"It's a lot of hooey!" he says when they rave over him as "The second Valentino." Here's the sort of guy he is:

Clark Gable himself gets a huge laugh out of being called "the second Valentino" - or the "It" man of the movies. "Aw," he comments, "It's a lot of hooey! But as long as they spell my name right, what the hell?" Around the studio the men he works with razz him unmercifully about his sudden eminence as the sex appeal champion. "What-A-Man Gable" is what Wally Beery calls him. Cliff Edwards calls him things, too, but you couldn't print ‘em! But they like Gable tremendously. He's that sort of man—the sort of man men like. As for the women… Well, every time a group of Hollywood's prettiest get together these days, they say it's a Gable Club. They're all gabbling about Gable. It seems the lad has captured the fancy, not alone the screen fanettes, but also of the loveliest of the screen stars themselves. It is a remarkable thing, but typical of Hollywood, that a few years ago Gable was working in inconspicuous and unpublicised parts at the same studio where he is now the sensation of the lot. Even the waitresses in the commissary wouldn't give him a tumble then. He was just another ham actor. Now the feminine stars who wouldn't give him a nod are using their coyest come-hither glances to get him to play as their leading man. The parts he has played have brought him the popularity that caused the hysterical writers to proclaim him as another Valentino. That is all applause and no discredit to Gable. Soon some fan magazine will come out with a story on "The Love Life of Clark Gable." It will tell of his great lure and all that sort of rot. He never had it until he played sex-appeal parts in pictures, and up to that time he was about as deadly as the nice lad who measures out your gasoline at the filling station. Hollywood never made a fuss over Rudy [Valentino] either until he got those great roles in The Four Horsemen and The Sheik. Through all this fluttering of feminine hearts, Clark Gable himself remains comparatively unimpressed by it all. Not that pretty women don't interest him - on the contrary, Gable has a keen appreciation of a pretty young girl, of a neatly turned feminine figure, of a lithely lovely leg, of a vivacious young face. Impersonally and objectively, he liked them. But he doesn't marry them. When Clark Gable marries, he marries women quite a bit older than himself. The current Mrs. Gable is more than a decade older than he. She's in her forties, while Gable is thirty or thirty-one. She's got a daughter old enough to be Gable's wife. There's also in Hollywood an ex-Mrs. Gable. Her name is Josephine Dillon. She's a voice culture expert, and insists she did much to train Clark for the talkie fame that he's achieved. Josephine Dillon, too, is in her forties - more than a decade older than the lad who divorced her a few years

ago. When she was Mrs. Gable, Clark was just another actor trying to get a job in Hollywood. And there's another ex-Mrs. Gable in existence somewhere, although the facts are a bit vague. Close friends of Clark tell of how, on his birthdays, for instance, he gets telegrams from a nine or ten year old son of his, in school somewhere. But whether he's been married three times, or three hundred, that indefinable quality called sex appeal certainly does currently belong to Gable. It's manifest off-screen as well as on, those women who have met and talked to him admit. It's as synthetic quality in Gable, compounded by a number of ingredients. There is, for instance, a sort of confidential "just-between-you-and-me" way he has of talking to girls he's just been introduced to. It makes them feel, somehow, that here's a man who understands them deeply. Besides, he's got two of the most intriguing dimples women ever laid their eyes on. He has a strangely frank, disarming smile, that's appealingly ingenuous. He has an air of sincerity which women suspect isn't true, so they're interested in finding out what he's covering up with that air of sincerity. His personality is a strangely paradoxical combination of the "lady-killer" women ought to run away from, and the "little boy" type women love to mother, as they call it. He's not handsome, in the conventional meaning of the word, but he challenges a woman's interest at sight. Hedda Hopper, for instance, put it neatly when she saw a photo of Gable astride a splendid thoroughbred steed. "When you can look at a man on a thoroughbred," she remarked, "and not say ‘What a good-looking horse,' then the man has ‘It!'" Clark Gable hasn't got a swelled head by all this excitement about Clark Gable. At least, not yet - and those who think they know the man feel sure he won't ever get one. He's been through too many hard knocks on his way to where he is today. He was born in Cadiz, Ohio, three decades ago. His stock is that lusty, sturdy clan known as Pennsylvania Dutch. His father was an oil-field contractor, and Clark - they called him Bill then, because William is his real first name - put in his licks at oil wells himself. He worked on Oklahoma derricks, but always wanted to be something more than an oil well worker. He says it's just luck -just one of the breaks - that he's a screen star today. As a matter of fact, Gable worked unceasingly toward it. The story of how he joined a barn-storming stock company to get away from oil fields is already an oft-told tale, and there's no sense in boring you with it here. You know, too, probably of how he froze his hand to get to the Coast - riding blind baggage on a freight train in midwinter. He knew what he wanted, and he aimed at it. With the first $2,000 he saved from his stock experience, he went to New York and polished himself up. He spent the whole $2,000 - and more - on voice culture, English training, diction correction. Gable has never had much schooling, beneath his carefully cultivated exterior, there's still much of the oil-derrick worker. His manners are polite, but they're studiedly so. His language is excellent, but he watches it carefully. Clark Gable, as you meet him today, is the Clark Gable that Bill Gable has learned to be. As has been remarked before, Gable isn't handsome. But

he's considerably less unhandsome than Nature originally made him. One of the things people notice about him when he smiles that dimply smile of his are his exquisite teeth. They ought to be - they cost him enough. It was Pauline Frederick's personal dentist who made Gable's dental equipment what it is today. Gable played a small part in one of Pauline's companies some years ago, when he became aware that his teeth would certainly be a handicap against screen close-ups, so Polly arranged to have her own dentist fix them up. Gable's ears used to stick out a great deal more than they do today - like Eddie Cantor's. But that's been overcome, too. It was easy. Gable may not be hand-some, but he's a beauty compared with the Gable as was. He's a worthwhile lesson to any man or woman who is ambitious enough to overcome facial defects. He has a noticeable measure of self-consciousness. His hands, for example, are rather large. He is patently worried about what to do with them. He is keenly clothes-conscious, and always dresses well. He likes to dress up. The biggest surprise that ever hit one of his acquaintances who "knew him when" came on Broadway one evening when Gable had just gotten out of the press-your-suit-while-you-wait ranks. The acquaintance beheld Gable resplendent in full evening dress - not tuxedo, but tails - with all the trimmings; high silk hat, white gloves, silver flask (filled) and even a cane. The acquaintance will never be the same. Now that he's making his money, Gable buys clothes in quantities. He's fair game for the haberdashers of Hollywood. Clark may go unto a store with the intention of buying nothing but a necktie; when the salesmen get done with him, he's probably bought three or four hundred dollars' worth of clothes. On the other hand, when things weren't breaking well for Gable, he paid no attention to his appearance. It's a manifestation of a chameleon-like trait in the man - he fits his mood and his self to circumstances. By reason of that, he appears at home in whatever gathering he finds himself. When he's shooting craps with a gang of studio juicers and grips, you couldn't pick him out of the crowd, he's so much one of them. Set him down in a society drawing room, and he can bow and scrape and broad-A with any of them. He always reflects, in his apparent personality, the group of which he's currently a part. He's childlike in his reactions and enthusiasms. He has no definite hobby, but goes through a steady and rapid succession of passing fancies, like a kid with toys. He may be crazy about this game, or some new possession, for a week or two, say. Then, like a kid grown tired of a new plaything, he forgets it completely. He sticks to golf, though. He loves it. And he rides a lot, but, more to keep his figure than because he likes it. He really has a splendid body - broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted. He's an inch better than six feet tall, weighs 190, and is as healthy as a young steer. He smokes, and drinks, but neither to any

excessive extent. Food is no problem - there's nothing in the line of foods he won't eat. He drinks great quantities of coffee. And late at night, he likes to go into a restaurant and order eggs and bacon and hashed-brown potatoes. He has all the usual actor-superstitions - won't light three smokes on one match, won't let people whistle in his dressing room, and goes crazy when a mirror is broken. He wants to own an airplane now. The first time he flew - it was from New York to California - he climbed out of the plane pretty sick and vowed he'd never like airplanes. Then he went to the San Diego naval flying base on a picture, went up with some of the Navy's best flyers, did all the stunts they could think of, and came down wanting to own an airplane. His big ambition is to stay on top of the heap, now, for about ten years and make a lot of money. Then he wants to quit working and spend the rest of his life travelling. You're a grand guy, Clark. Good luck to you. Harry Lang, Photoplay, October 1931 Rosalind Russell: The only man who could make a love scene comfortable was Clark Gable. He was born graceful, he knew what to do with his feet and when he took hold of you, there was no fooling around. Director Mervyn Leroy: The tough thing about describing Clark Gable is that there's nothing bad to say. Loretta Young: I think every woman he ever met was in love with him. Joan Blondell: I never considered Clark a typical movie actor. That's a bad profession for men. They become picky and fussy and spend a lot of time talking to mirrors. Clark wasn't like that, ever... He was a fine old teddy bear ... very unactorly. Doris Day: No actor I ever performed with had such public appeal. He was as masculine as any man I've ever known and as much a little boy as a grown man could be. It was this combination that had such a devastating effect on women. But there was nothing of 'the King' about his personality. Just the opposite. Utter simplicity. Uncomplicated. A man who lived on a simple, down-to-earth scale. Tyrone Power: I guess there isn't anybody else like him. I don't mean I want to be like him on the screen, because we're so different. But I wish I knew how he manages to make every single soul he ever meets think he's the absolute tops. I wish I knew how he makes newspapermen, every single one of them, think everything he does is just right. Why, that guy can say no, and make people like it better than anyone else can when they say yes. Director Frank Capra: He was very shy but fun with people he knew. He was very sensitive about those goddamned ears, but he'd make jokes about them. After a shot, he'd ask, 'What'd they get, an ear?' He didn't look like anyone else. It was not only physical. He had mannerisms all his own: ways of standing, smoking, and a great flair for clothes. Whatever came natural to him, I let him do it.

NO MAN OF HER OWN (1932)

In January 1942, less than three years after her March 1939 wedding to Clark Gable, Carole Lombard (33) and her mother were killed in a plane crash. Though he was married five times, it was Lombard that Gable considered the love of his life. No Man Of Her Own (which bears no connection to the 1950 Stanwyck film of the same name) is the couple's only co-credit. At the time of its making, Lombard was wed to William Thin Man Powell and Gable no more than her handsome, animal leading man. (Powell and Lombard, by then divorced - all part of the Hollywood merry-go-round - would later co-star in 1936 hit My Man Godfrey.) Prurient or historical interest aside, however, No Man Of Her Own is very poor. Its characters are personable enough, but the story is paper-thin. In 81 long minutes, the film never once stutters out of a pedestrian first gear. Avoid. IMDb: Has its charms, but not many. Lightweight / A thoroughly enjoyable piece of fluff, worth watching for more than just the one-off pairing of its stars / Not on the top ten list of either star / A pretty ordinary and forgettable film ... Formulaic / The plot is near utter nonsense. Only Lombard's luminous and magnetic beauty saves the day for the entire ensemble / The plot is silly and the ending too cute. Gable voluntarily spends time in jail in order to wash his sins from his conscience and fix himself up for family life with Lombard? Yeah, okay / Sexy, classy and has a touch of humour that had me rooting for a happy ending. Gable, without moustache, plays well with Lombard who is really beautiful and a first rate actress / Not convincing / The transparently thin plot never goes anywhere / Fairly ordinary. Don't expect fireworks and you'll be fine.

RED DUST (1932)

Stormy days and steamy nights on the rubber plantation. Passions rise, bullets fly, but all survive. Gable, Harlow (above) and Mary Astor act out a mildly engaging but lukewarm yarn of love and lust in the jungle. Fails to grip because both Gable and Harlow have their tongues too obviously in their cheeks. From a play that probably crackled with tension and angst to a film that, more's the pity, never does once. Gable is good, though. 83 minutes. IMDb: Red Dust, with Gable and Harlow in top form, offers the perfect balance of sexuality and restraint, but is marred by the racist depiction of Asian characters / The chemistry between Gable and Harlow beats all / Harlow is dynamite. No other blonde bombshell comes close to this original / Terrific. Gable is virile as anything and Harlow full of strength and sass / This important piece of pre-war Hollywood history is still a viewer-grabbing flick / Harlow completely dominates this rather tepid story with her crackling crisp dialogue. Watching her controlled exuberance is just great / Those hoping to see Astor at her best should look elsewhere / As performers, Gable and Harlow get 10 out of 10. For commitment to the cause of racial justice, they pull zeroes / This movie left me mad and sad for Harlow's character and very disappointed with this famous pre-Code classic, supposedly so great. What a dumb story! / A grade B melodrama, weighed down by the colonialist subtext, the incredibly annoying notion that a tall, handsome, arrogant, misogynistic brute is the ultimate in sex appeal, and the utterly predictable love-triangle plot - though Harlow brightens every scene she's in / A soap opera that compels, thanks to script, actors and director. Who could ask for more? / Unadulterated pre-Code sleaze. Fine entertainment of an unsophisticated kind / Gable consolidated his newly won fame with this film, and its not hard to see why.

HOLD YOUR MAN (1933)

Gable plays a con man, all cheekbones and roguish glint, to Harlow's familiar grifter with a heart of gold (this their third film of six together). But what starts out as a breezy hustle flick takes a swerve halfway into a women's reformatory, at which point Gable disappears, two become three and a more sombre mood prevails. All is finally resolved with the most unlikely of weddings and new job, new family, happy-ever-after wrap-up. Good old Al! 86 minutes. Fair. IMDb: The two leads show their mettle as actors, adding telling nuances and quirks to their characters that send them beyond typical Gable and Harlow / Takes one wrong turn, and then another. Enjoy the first half, then be ready for a letdown / Harlow's character is multi-dimensional beyond the traditional 1930s moll. She starts in one place and travels an arduous journey to end up on the other side of life. I loved her tough exterior. I loved her smile. I loved her song at the piano. My God, she was stupendous - as real as unreal gets / One of the very worst films Gable made. Leonard Maltin says "The stars are at their best here." Gimme a break! / Witty, watchable and utterly touching. And how often do you get to see Jean Harlow sock another woman in the jaw? / The ending is very dramatic and contains a beautiful message that comes across very well / One of the finest examples of Depression era cinema / Harlow and Gable at their best / Bad-to-mediocre confusion unworthy of all the ballyhoo. There is no real conflict and all of the supposed fringe society characters turn out to be saints - especially the unbelievable Al / Corny, clichéd and predictable - but Gable and Harlow pull it off / Gable plays a jerk and is perfectly cast - a rather sad note for his fans. Harlow comes across as a more slender Mae West. Some of her cynical, throwaway lines even sound like her / A top-hole script. Enjoy those sassy verbals!

NIGHT FLIGHT (1933)

Night Flight is an 85 minute documentary about the establishment of a pan-South American air mail service with limp dramatic elements inserted to give it cinematic credibility. Gable takes the part of the pilot flying the southern route up from Tierra Del Fuego to Buenos Aires. The service manager has a must-fly-at-all-costs, safety-last attitude that stretches credibility to the limit, although the script, developed from a book written by a flier who experienced first hand what we're shown, must presumably reflect some version of "truth". In any event, Night Flight, though lauded in its day, flies poorly now. Leave it be. IMDb: This may be the least known and seen all-star film in cinema history - but with good reason. Its simple story of flyers delivering mail across South America at top speed, through treacherous conditions, whipped onward by company boss John Barry-more, is very dated now. He is strong, as usual, but his older brother Lionel, hunched over and drab, brings the picture down each time he appears. And the disconnectedness of the characters is noticeably bad for a major studio film. Gable and Hayes are married, but never have a scene together. In fact, Gable is never seen outside his airplane cockpit! Montgomery's part is even smaller. A shocking waste of talent / Not nearly as good as Only Angels Have Wings / If you don't like this film you just don't like or understand early 1930s films. This is big budget, state-of-the-art filmmaking in every department. Elements that may seem conventional today - the use of silence, a ticking clock at a dramatic moment - were new in 1933. The score is wonderful and the photography, both in the air and on the ground, exceptional. It's easy to laugh, but these were days when pilots were allowed to bring alcohol along in the cockpit. This was little understood, risky and dangerous work, and not shown here from only one perspective. Each character has his own. Set aside modern day aesthetics and discover an amazing film. You know, they're not making its like anymore!

IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT (1934)

A smart little film with no agenda, no message and no axes to grind (its mild class-divide satire doesn't seek to score points so much as spice the plot). 101 minutes of good, clean, top-notch, old school entertainment. IMDb: Clark Gable (above) is witty and charming. Claudette Colbert (also above) is feisty from beginning to end / This movie defined the romantic comedy genre and 80 years after it was filmed, its charm has never been surpassed - the lesson in hitchhiking, the walls of Jericho, The Man On The Flying Trapeze. As well as being great fun, the film puts me in mind of a time machine. Daily life as depicted in this movie is close enough to our time to seem familiar, yet far enough removed to seem exotic. It Happened One Night provides a delightful glimpse into everyday life in the early 1930s. Soon there will be nobody left alive who will have known that world and yet, thanks to this wonderful film, it will continue to sparkle with life / No monsters, no aliens, no explosions, no car crashes and no colour, so why watch? Because they don't make them any better / Exceptionally fresh considering its a "classic" - in fact, it feels odd at times when you realise that the movie you're enjoying so much is more than eighty years old! / The witty dialogue and fantastic storyline just drew me in, and Clark Gable is really magnificent. Do his movies ever get old? / Everyone knows that the hero and heroine of romantic comedies are bound to get hitched in the end - in most cases it's simply a question of staying awake. But Capra makes us feel the contingency of it all. I was convinced that, right up until the final moment, it could have gone either way. How did Capra manage this? Was it because he was a complete innocent, or was it because he was remarkably sophisticated? I don't suppose it matters: it's results that count, isn't it? / Funny, clever, fabulous! / The first screwball comedy, and still ranks up alongside the very best / If there's a better romantic comedy, I haven't seen it.

MEN IN WHITE (1934)

The King and Queen of the Movies bring a Pulitzer Prize-winning play to the screen - success assured, surely? Sadly not. The story seems to be that over-worked young Dr. Gable gets a student nurse pregnant. She gets a backstreet abortion that goes wrong and, despite the best efforts of the hospital surgery team, dies in suitably maudlin style. Gable and flighty fiancée Loy (above) are brought grudgingly to accept that a doctor's primary obligation is not to him or herself and dependants, but to "humanity". But, since the Code won't allow the immoral aspect of this tale to be portrayed, you need to read closely between the lines to pick it up. (All we're actually shown of the interaction between Gable and the nurse is one passionless kiss - so, that's how babies are made!) Poor material overzealously edited combined with a good deal of wooden acting from the support results in uninspired and shamelessly manipulative dross. Running just 73 minutes, it's soon done, at least. Avoid. IMDb: See Gable as a real actor, before he became crusted over / This is one of several Gable-Loy pairings: in Wife vs. Secretary, Manhattan Melodrama and Men In White, their romances are compulsively watchable but obviously headed for turbulence. You could boil it down to tension between his brusque, "salt of the earth" masculinity and Loy's caring, but slightly petulant "uptown girl" persona. If the Gable type and the Loy type in these films made a go of it, it would not be a marriage made in heaven. That's telegraphed from the first reel. But it's fun to watch / Uncannily like ER. Ahead of its time! / Too earnest and preachy / My mother could have sat through it and had no idea what happened. Talk about subtle / A potentially good film ruined by the Hays Code.

MANHATTAN MELODRAMA (1934)

Gable and Powell (above, right) play friends who grow up on opposite sides of the law. The careers of both men prosper until the inevitable day when State Governor Powell is requested to commute the death sentence of murderer Gable. Will duty prevail over friendship and obligation? Gable could play these wryly amoral rogue parts in his sleep and Powell shows once more what a fine actor he was. Myrna Loy moves with conviction from the moll of one to the wife of the other. All familiar ground, perhaps, that Angels With Dirty Faces will prospect more memorably than this, but 90 entertaining minutes still. IMDb: "Melodrama" is right. Inside the first eight minutes we get a riverboat disaster, a communist riot and young Blackie Gallagher losing two sets of parents! This isn't one to watch for the tight plotting or realism. Watch it for the spectacular cast. Powell is dapper and urbane, Gable dangerous and charming, Loy knocks 'em dead and Mickey Rooney is a riot as the young Gable. By the way, this is the movie that gangster John Dillinger was walking out of when he was gunned down by the police. Also of note, you'll immediately say "Oh - it's that guy" when Nat Pendleton shows up as Spud. He played either a cop or crook in half the gangster pictures ever made / A film of dubious and rather interesting morals. Who's the hero? Who's the villain? Not the most exciting I've ever seen, but one of the most interesting I've seen in quite a while / Though the plot is now all too familiar, it was unusual enough back in 1934 to win a Best Original Story Oscar. This movie could have been a real howler but a great cast, tight script and wonderful direction really put it over. Well worth catching, especially for the powerful climatic scene between Powell and Gable. A classic of its type / Cuts no convenient corners in the description of the governor's sad plight. Recommended.

THE CALL OF THE WILD (1935)

Just as the back-story to No Man Of Her Own raises that film's profile, so too here. Co-stars Gable and Loretta Young (above) had an affair during shooting. A pregnancy resulted. A baby girl, Judy, was born, who never learned the identity of her father until she was 31 and he was five years dead. But none of this should detract from the fact that (in contrast to No Man ...) The Call Of The Wild, a less than faithful adaptation of Jack London's famous novel, is excellent from start to finish, with plenty of artful location shooting and a more or less strong showing from all the cast (Jack Oakie as Hoolihan the weakest link - even Buck was better). Director Bill "Wild Man" Wellman deserves praise for a job well done - Gable too, for that matter. 92 minutes. Recommended. IMDb: If you're looking for Jack London's novel on the screen, this will disappoint. The crucial Buck plot is sidelined and made cute and there is little sense of nature as devouring or malevolent. This Call Of The Wild is too tame / Re-working the plot to include Young is patently ludicrous / Gable is wonderful in showing his tough side but the film also allows him to be quite gentle, especially in the scenes with the dog / Along with Mutiny On The Bounty and Boom Town, Gable's most enjoyable role. In all three he comes across as rakish - part hero, part scoundrel - but never dull / A nice mix of adventure, villainy, romance and some comedy that makes for a mostly good time, though the ending is weak / Enjoyable and agreeable / A lot of fun / If you let go of your preconceptions and just watch it just for the fun of it, you'll find, provided you don't teach Literature, a wonderful film / Not long, it's packed with action, and if you pay attention it raises some interesting moral and philosophical questions / Misses the mark / A pretty good shaggy dog story, as adaptations go / Whooooooooo!

Loretta Young on Clark Gable:

Just Call Him King

The years have brought changes within Clark Gable. He's a better actor now than ever, and a wiser human being.

I first met Clark Gable about twelve years ago when we co-starred in a woodsy drama entitled The Call Of The Wild. Although we were given top billing, the real star of the picture was a massive dog named Buck. The rest of us, compared to the instant attention Buck's slightest bark commanded, were no more impressive than a chorus of gnats. Buck lived in a steam-heated trailer; the rest of us shivered in the Summer quarters of a rustic hotel whose Winter quarters had burned the previous year. When our picture company was marooned for nine days by twenty-one feet of snow, Buck was accorded the steaks our larder afforded whereas the rest of us were reduced to crackers, scrambled eggs and breakfast cereal. After the storm had abated, we went to work in temperatures which ranged from ten to thirty degrees below zero. This is the way the scenes were worked out: the human members of the company were sent for, rehearsed, and stationed in their places. Then the word would be sent out for Buck to be rushed from his cosy quarters into camera range. He would do his bit. The instant the camera stopped turning, Buck would be hurried back to his plush apartment while we chilblained actors flailed ourselves with our arms to keep from congealing. We also smiled wanly in Buck's direction just to keep our facial muscles from freezing. Throughout this murderous situation, the only person who never lost his temper, and who never looked at Buck and wondered how huskie steaks would taste, was Clark Gable. No matter how trying the working and living conditions became, he was always the affable gentleman, who made no demands upon his fellow workers. He expected no favours - although he was a big star even then - and when tempers flared he would say peaceably, "We won't remember what this was all about in a hundred years. Let's get going and get this thing finished." I remember that he had brought along a supply of books and magazines, adventure stories, sports stories, Westerns and the like, and that he served as a one-man library. At the end of nine days of enforced inactivity and imprisonment we would all have had what is known as "Cabin Fever" (the urge to kill) if it hasn't been for that reading matter. He could also be depended upon to start a card game when people became short-tempered and restless. He would play anything, could win when he wanted to, could lose when it seemed diplomatic. Although I was only a careless youngster at the time, spending most of the time at the window waiting for the messenger boy, on snowshoes, to bring the mail in which I thought there might be a letter from a lad in Los Angeles in whom I was deeply interested, I was aware of the great diplomatic ability and keen sportsmanship of Clark Gable.

During the intervening years between the making of The Call Of The Wild and the rolling of cameras for Key To The City, the comedy which Clark and I have just completed for MGM, I saw very little of him. I know this will seem odd to people in other parts of the country, but the fact is that distances in Southern California are great, and one's most-frequently-seen friends are likely to be those living in the same vicinity. For many years, Clark has lived on a ranch in Encino (in the San Fernando Valley) whereas Tom and I have always lived in Beverly Hills. Also, we have worked at different studios. The result has been that our only exchange through the years has been a mutually-tossed greeting across a crowded room at a big party. Of course I had seen most of the Gable pictures in the meanwhile, so I knew that he had gained steadily in stature as an actor. Rumour told me that he had increased in wisdom and worth as a human being. Even so, when I went to MGM and during the first day of shooting Key To The City heard someone call him "King," I thought at first it was a type of kidding. I smiled and looked at Clark, waiting for him to react. He grinned back at me and shrugged slightly in a gesture which said, "Look, Loretta, people are wonderful to me around here. I'm grateful for it, even though it is sometimes embarrassing." As the weeks went by, Tom and I had Clark as a guest in our home several times. We discovered what everyone who knows Clark well has known for years: the man now called "King" at one of the most powerful studios in town, is still the easy-going, unpretentious, sports-minded, real human being who, twelve years ago, found it funny instead of infuriating to be playing second lead to a huskie dog. Another thing I discovered about Clark is that he is a man of tradition. On the first day of the picture, he sent me, as he sends each of his co-stars, a magnificent arrangement of red roses. He enclosed a card on which he had written, "Good Luck to My Leading Lady." This line derives from Clark's stage training. In a theatrical company, the leading lady is always the person of first importance. Clark has made it a habit for several years, since he became supreme on his own lot, to send this card with roses to those actresses who have been cast opposite him. It is his way of paying a high compliment; his way of tacitly describing himself as a supporting player! Such humorous humility is a rare thing in any profession, but it is particularly rare among theatrical folk who usually must fight for every possible professional advancement. When I was in the hospital (in the midst of the picture schedule) Clark sent another arrangement of red roses; when I returned to the studio I received red roses, and whenever Clark has been a guest in our home he has sent red roses the following day with a thank-you note. It goes without saying, of course, that Clark has always been tremendously popular with women (both those in audiences and those he meets in private life), but he is also that rare creature, a "matinee idol" who is a favourite with men. It is easy to understand why. Another ingratiating Gable quality is that he is always willing to do what a friend, or a crowd, wants to do. He is supremely the good scout. At our house

one evening, a group of guests were gathered around the pool enjoying a cocktail before dinner. One of the men who had just arrived from a blistering day on location, suggested that everyone pop into bathing suits and have a quick dip in the pool before the buffet table was ready. This ambitious swimmer was laughingly refused by all the other guests until he turned to Clark. "Sure, I'll go in with you if it's company you want," said that amiable gentleman. Although I have read occasionally about the charities of other actors, I don't believe I have ever read more than a brief paragraph or two about Clark's kindnesses. He always does a friend a favour as if it were disgraceful. During the making of our picture, I learned in a roundabout way that one of the technicians had suffered two tragedies in succession. We were planning to do something helpful when we were told that need for aid no longer existed. "It's already been taken care of," we were told. No names were given. Being the curious type (my sex gives me the right) I inquired among those who seemed to know what had been going on. Eventually I learned that Clark had passed the man on the set and had slipped a generous sum of money into the man's shirt pocket, then had rushed away as if he, Clark, had committed a crime. This past year has been, in many ways, a sad one for Clark. Although he is always in perfect control of himself, he has suffered some serious losses. In January, Victor Fleming passes away. Mr. Fleming was the director who guided Clark through Gone With The Wind and many other outstanding successes. He and Clark were not only comfortable co-workers, but understanding friends. The loss of Frank Morgan was another severe blow. I remember that I came home from a radio broadcast, bubbling about some of the minor miscues that sometimes occur over the air. Clark and several others were to be our dinner guests that night, so Clark was sitting on the terrace with Tom (my husband) and one or two others. At first I was so busy telling the story of my day that I didn't notice their air of restrained dejection. They tried to enter into the spirit of my recital. Finally, when I had dropped into a chair with a long sigh, Tom said, "Clark has something to tell you, dear." Clark said, "I'm afraid this is going to be a terrible shock. Do you feel all right?" Even at that moment, when he was torn up inside, he had the natural chivalry to be thoughtful of me. "Tell me," I insisted. "I'd rather know quickly." "Frank died this afternoon," he said quietly. I simply stared at him. "Frank who?" I asked. Not for an instant did it occur to me that it was Frank Morgan. I had talked to him the previous day, and he had been full of plans for the future. Having finished the picture with us, he was discussing a new script, making plans for another boat trip, keeping himself happy and busy - two of his chief characteristics. "One more," Clark said heavily. "One more gone." He served as one of the pallbearers. Three days later he served as a pallbearer for another old and beloved friend, Sam Wood. According to a friend who knows Clark well, he still carries a locket in which there is a soft, blonde curl - Carole Lombard's.

The years have brought changes around Clark Gable, and they have brought changes within him. He is a better actor now than ever, and a wiser human being. Before we started the picture, I had a print of that wonderful old picture, It Happened One Night, run for me so that I could study Clark's comedy technique. He was impressive. However, when I saw the rushes of Key To The City I realised that he was even better than ever in the first comedy role he has assayed since It Happened One Night. In closing, I would like to say that the Clark Gable who is called "King" in his studio is something far more important than a king to his fellow Americans: he is a real man. Screenland, February 1950 Myrna Loy: [My relationship with Gable] was curious. We became devoted to each other. We weren't lovers - he was in love with Carole Lombard. We eventually became more like siblings. Nobody believes that and you can understand why, but our relationship was unique. Oh, he sometimes gave me the macho routine when people were watching, but he changed when we were alone. Jean Harlow: He razzes me every minute in hopes of getting my goat, and sometimes he does. In a big, hot love scene the other day he whispered, "Jean, you've got your eyebrows on upside down." Joan Crawford: Clark and I had an affair, a glorious affair and it went on a lot longer than anybody knows. He was a wonderful man. Very simple, pretty much the way he's been painted, forever the virile, ballsy hero ... I adored him. Just adored him. I don't believe any woman is telling the truth if she ever worked with Gable and did not feel twinges of a sexual urge beyond belief. I would call her a liar. Katharine Hepburn: I would have liked to work with him, yes, that would have been something. He was one of the few men at MGM - hell, in Hollywood period - that had the reputation of being an all-around nice guy. Rare thing, that. David Niven: He was the best babysitter we ever had. Odd to say, but true. He always arrived loaded with goodies for the children and played with them for hours. Gary Cooper: A sharp-shooter if there ever was one. Writer Adela Rogers St. Johns: I've met, in my business, a lot of the great men of our time. I've met several presidents of the United States and Colonel Lindbergh and Jack London and Captain Eddie Rickenbacker and I knew Valentino, and, well, anyway, most of the famous ones. But I think Clark Gable is the only completely natural human being I have ever met in my life. And that's something to say about an actor. That's why he's always on balance, that's why he always does the right thing at the right time for the right people, because he's natural. David O. Selznick (at Gable's funeral): He was a fellow you were sure would live for a hundred years.

CHINA SEAS (1935)

Gable and Harlow again, in 87 minutes of overcooked, under-seasoned B movie hokum. Less salacious than Red Dust (thanks presumably to the Hayes Code) with more plot and Boy's Own action - smuggled gold, pirates and all - tossed in as unsatisfactory makeweight. Harlow again plays Miss Brassy No Classee, but with considerably more confidence now. Just about worthwhile, even though, within a week, you'll have forgotten all about it. Wife vs. Secretary is better. IMDb: Rollicking, unprofound fun with something for everyone: romance, adventure, tragedy, comedy, pirates, torture and a largely studio-bound but remarkably effective typhoon. No sense ... Pure escapism. Gable, Harlow (above), Rosalind Russell, Wally Beery (above), Lewis Stone and a believably inebriated Robert Benchley make it livelier and more entertaining to watch than most films. The constant movement of the ship is well conveyed. Uncredited Hattie Gone With The Wind McDaniel plays Harlow's maid / Harlow and Gable are a knockout A-class pairing and their character roles are well handled. Juicy dialogue and gory action are additional plusses / A fine film that probably served as one source of inspiration for Spielberg's Indiana Jones series / A gem. Don't pass it up / A lively mix of comedy and tragedy / Great entertainment with all the stops pulled out / A post-Code Red Dust on the Hong Kong-Shanghai run. Harlow, rehashing her brassy platinum blonde act for the umpteenth time, is not at her best / Rugged action-adventure entertainment / Derivative but very enjoyable / A really enjoyable film hindered by an ending that makes no sense! / One of my favourite films with a lot of plot, some - the gold in the steam engine (Kipling) and the "fake" pearls (Somerset Maugham) - lifted from other sources / Shallow ... This star vehicle lemon is mostly a cacophony of yelling. Man the lifeboats! / Not crucial, but well-constructed with plenty of action, humour and salty dialogue / Dashing Gable is excellent.

MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY (1935)

This third and most celebrated of the five screen renderings (to date) of the true story of the 1789 mutiny on HMS Bounty stars Gable as prime mover Fletcher Christian, Charles Laughton (above, right) as martinet Captain Bligh and Franchot Tone as Midshipman Byam, with all three turning in exemplary performances. Len Maltin gives it a full four stars and, while inevitably, 80 years on, a little dated (cue some overacting, racial stereotyping, abbreviation of and economy with the truth), MOTB still stands as an example of epic filmmaking at its confident, swaggering best. A 132 minute MGM / Old Hollywood dream. IMDb: 1935 Best Picture winner. 86th best film of the 20th century (AFI). With such a pedigree, I expected great things from MOTB. But, while never less than entertaining, it fell short of greatness / Good, yes, outstanding, no / MOTB remains the third and last film to win the Best Picture Oscar but no others ... I would recommend it to anyone and to film buffs in particular / First-rate commercial filmmaking by any standard / A movie of three images - Laughton being small and mean, Gable being heroic and empa-thetic and virgin natives in softly-lit close-up - continually, which is a shame because some of the more interesting imagery and storylines get lost behind such demeaning narrative ... It's a classic, harking back to the days when, by golly, people knew how to make movies, and is sure to stay that way for a while. It's just not very good / Gable: just one more of those over-hyped Gollywood "dreamboats" of yore / Shows just how good a film can be / Hollywood propaganda at its finest / The sailing and deck scenes are fabulous by 1930s standards / Laughton is magnificent and Gable surprisingly good / Long but never dull, this is an old-fashioned movie that delivers: action, intrigue, adventure, costumes, a trial and even a love story. Pop some corn and enjoy.

SAN FRANCISCO (1936)

San Francisco, New Year's Eve, 1905: it takes an earthquake to bring amiably profane music hall owner Gable to God. We're told in the film's opening moments not only that one is coming, but precisely, to the minute, when, and then spend the next hour and a half in nervous anticipation. When it finally hits, San Francisco - formerly part musical, part romance, part drama - clicks seamlessly into full-on disaster movie mode, making it, surely, one of the first. No CGI or multi-million dollar budget, of course - nonetheless, very good it is too. Jeanette MacDonald, not the most dynamic or charismatic of leading ladies, is arguably the film's weakest link. As a singer - the principle require-ment of her role - she does her stuff, although some viewers are likely to feel that a touch less caterwauling wouldn't have gone amiss. But there's so much else to enjoy - not least the performances of Gable and Spencer Tracy (Oscar nominated) - that it would be churlish to carp. 115 minutes. Top notch. IMDb: Gable carries this movie with sheer nerve and charisma. Spencer Tracy is good in a minor role, giving his one-dimensional priest a second dimension. McDonald I could have done without. She doesn't seem to know what to do with Gable when they're together. She has a nice voice, but her naif ingenue is just dull / The hard-hitting script and its crisp dialogue, the recreation of a turn-of-the-century San Francisco, the great acting, the music, and the fabulous earthquake sequences make this a classic. Enjoy and re-enjoy / Good history, great acting, superb special effects, a stellar cast and a great story line. You get so wrapped up in the lives of these people that you even forget that there's an earthquake a'comin' - until it hits, right in the middle of the human drama. The timing is so good. It's a jaw-dropper / A ground-breaking, earth-shattering drama / Outstanding cinematic artistry, of this era or any other / One of a kind.

WIFE vs. SECRETARY (1936)

A heavyweight cast - Jean Harlow (above, left), Myrna Loy (right) and Gable, with young James Stewart on the undercard - tell a tale that smoulders promisingly without ever quite catching fire. Gable plays his dashing, charming, usual self, this time as a magazine publisher with Harlow his secretary and Loy his wife. This knockabout look at the corrosive influence of suspicion and jealously eats up 87 minutes in bland though easily digestible style. IMDb: Not much of a story, but with such a cast, who cares? / A sophisticated and intelligent film that belies its silly title. If not for the slightly forced happy ending, it would be perfection / Dated but satisfying / Not the best film Gable did with Harlow or Loy, but good fun / Dreary ... Where's the comedy? Even the title is bad! / The ending is not happy, but very bittersweet / No classic but entertaining still. Loy's sensitive portrayal raises it a cut above / A well-rounded and exquisite gem, beautifully scripted, intelligently directed, ebulliently acted. Gable is a joy to watch and Loy has to be the most sophisticated creature ever filmed / Star power undermined by mediocre script / A superior 1930s "women's picture" / Harlow without fizz is rather like a soda gone flat - tolerable but disconcerting / Loy was never lovelier / Interesting though in parts desperately old fashioned / Though the rest are good, Harlow steals the show / Note that the title has a subtle double meaning, since Gable's character's initials and nickname are V.S. / A memorable experience, and very sexy for its time / An excellent film featuring one of Gable's best performances. Harlow and Loy are perfect, as are mother-in-law May Robson and young Jimmie Stewart / Kind of a fairy tale for the (then) modern woman, still attractive today / Close to perfect / Great / What a treat!

A Heart to Heart Letter to Carole Lombard and Clark Gable

How these two found a rare friendship - and how they can keep it

Dear Carole and Clark Lately I've been thinking about the two of you and even envying you in an impersonal sort of way. For I know you both well enough to have a pretty good idea of the splendid kind of friendship you have found together. For years I've watched Hollywood couples go places and do things, their hearts shining in their eyes. For the most part I've never given any of them much thought. With you two it's different. When I hear about you turning up at a premiere with berets pulled down over your heads, having arrived in Clark's roadster, eating peanuts and laughing at the circus clowns, well, I enjoy a vicarious excitement. So do a lot of other people. I wonder if you have any idea how incessantly and romantically Hollywood talks about you, how they tell of the way you, Carole, went to the broadcasting station with Clark and sat, patient as a lamb, while he rehearsed his program? How they pretty well go to town when they relate how every once in a while during that rehearsal Clark would turn to give you a quick look, not meant for anyone else to see? How, on a recent Sunday, even before the last match had been played on your courts, the film colony knew that Clark, tennis crazy as he is, had spent most of the afternoon as a spectator because you were playing such a swell game. There are a dozen love stories being lived in Hollywood these days, but it's the two of you that people talk about. Even those who've never met either of you personally sense the fact that you have something special. Now there's only one way that any two people ever achieve something special and that's by being special themselves. Which you two most definitely are. And that's what I want to talk about. It's several years since I wrote the first open letters to stars that ever appeared in any motion picture magazine, and in a magazine published under the same editorship as this is. Then, almost always, those letters were written to stars who were believed to have gotten off on the wrong foot. This letter is being written for the very opposite reason, because the two of you have shown such a swell attitude to this relationship, accepting it and enjoying it like two regular human beings, not handicapping it by being surreptitious and cagey for fear of publicity or, on the other hand, warping and distorting it for the sake of publicity. You know, Carole, for a long time now whenever a girl or a woman has come to me weeping or bitter because some love affair has ended I've always thought of you. And wished the girl or woman in question might have a little of the swell, healthy philosophy which marks you in these matters. So often you've said to me, "When I feel a love affair is drawing to close I end it - and remain friends with the guy!" And when I've questioned you as to how you've been able to tell when a love affair was about to end you've given me

one of your square looks, laughed, and said: "We women with our sensitive antennae always can tell about such things, you know we can. It's just that we're romantic and that we hope against hope and - hang on!" And you don't merely spout those fine sounding sentiments, you actually practice them. And you do remain friends with the guy. Even Bill Powell to whom you were married - and that's the acid test - would sign an affidavit that you're One in a Million. Another thing about you - I hope all of this doesn't embarrass you for I'm building up to the reason that Clark, the catch of Hollywood, sought you when a dozen charming ladies were ready and willing to have him seek them - is that you never are possessive about men. Let a man so much as look at a gun and you say to him: "Why don't you go off on a hunting trip? You haven't had one in ages." So that he either decides he doesn't want to go off on any old hunting trip or he does go, has a fine time, and comes back grateful to you for being a good sport. Whichever way it works out, it's better than if he had wanted to go but remained resentfully at home, satisfied no trip in the world would be worth the recriminations and tears. Besides, neither during a love affair nor following one has anyone heard you wail about the time-out-of-your-life or the affection you gave any man. Instead you manage to be healthily mindful of some of the things the man gave you, of the pleasure you had with him to have spent so much time with him, and of other things, too, depending upon the man. I've told you, you know, that you are the inspiration for a short story I'm going to write in which a glamorous woman traces her individual development - her interest in books, her feeling for music, her appreciation of good food and wine, her keen zest in sports, and so on - to the different men who have been important in her life. For, because of your attitude to men, invariably you are enriched by your association with them and not impoverished by being made over-sentimental and depressed and maudlin. However, in spite of the fact that you never talk of what you have given a man, it seems to me that you give them the greatest gift there is, laughter. Take you and Clark, for instance. You began with a laugh and you're laughing still. I remember a few years ago which you and Clark played together in No Man Of Her Own. Clark was married then and you were interested in someone else. But it amused you to see the way some of the girls on your lot acted about them. They manoeuvred to leave their cars near his in the parking space. If he lunched in the studio commissary they were there. If he went across the street to Lucey's, famous for its spaghetti and tête-à-tête booths, they followed. Not you. You overreacted, as a matter of fact. Clark saw you on the set and on the set only. There you ribbed him. I remember the big ham you sent him with his picture on it. And before the love sequence you presented him with a large bottle of Lavoris [mouthwash]. He used it too, before every love scene, with an absolutely dead pan. And that time he seemed a little nervous about your

gags, probably wondering if they weren't part of a game which hadn't been tried on him before, you put him right. After which you got on handsomely. Men trust you, you know. They consider you very much straight from the shoulder. As they should. For more than once you've helped a man out when he found himself in a tight spot. That's still another reason I rate you special, even extra special, and that men, calling you a good fellow, give you their highest praise. And now, Clark, I want to put you on the spot. Amazingly enough, considering your opportunities and the great advantages your romantic reputation gives you, you've never become what in the Gay Nineties they called a Lady Killer. Women are human beings to you before they are women. Another nice thing about you, you don't take yourself seriously. During the making of No Man Of Her Own, when Carole ribbed you, you didn't go stuffed shirt. You met her ribbing with good humour and more ribbing. You were glad to be able to be as warm and friendly as it is your nature to be without fear of being misunderstood. Which makes you pretty special, as human beings go, and no fooling. I hope you won't object to my saying that for personal and professional reasons it was advisable, immediately after you and Mrs. Gable separated, that you become involved with no one, not even by gossip. This demanded that you become something of a recluse. When you reached the Beverly Wilshire at night you went directly to your rooms. You didn't even stop at the bar for a scotch and soda and the good masculine talk you enjoy. You knew better. In the first place the fans who waited outside of the hotel, aware you lived there, would have swarmed in to make any such casual camaraderie impossible. In the second place, the Hollywood grapevine being telegraphic in its speed, more than a few famous ladies soon would have taken to dropping in for a glass of sherry and a biscuit or, less elegantly, for a daiquiri or a martini. I know how night after night during those difficult months you had dinner with Phil Berg, your agent, and Leila Berg, who used to be Leila Hyams. And when they had an engagement in the evening I know how you stayed on alone until it was time for you to drive back to your hotel and go to bed. The catch of any town is in a tough spot. In self defence he soon learns to be cagey or cautious at any rate. In Hollywood the difficulties of such a set-up are multiplied a hundred times. Therefore you were, for a long time, as lonely as only a celebrity can be when he closes his front door on his fame and finds himself an all-alone guy staring at four walls and memorising the pattern in the rug. Finally, when it was all right for you to begin going out again there were, of course, dozens of ladies eager to be sympathetic or ready to be gay on the surface and understanding underneath. All of these ladies would have humoured you and flattered you, with finesse and charm, and allowed you to be a Big Shot all the time. But you remembered Carole and the good fellowship she had offered when you had worked at Paramount together. Good fellow-ship was what you wanted above everything else and it was Carole you sought.

The laughs started again almost at once, didn't they? In other words, you and Carole began with a laugh and you're laughing still. And so the two of you have come to other things besides good fellowship, to the splendid friendship you share today. I dare say neither of you ever experienced anything just like this before. And you never will again. Any man and woman meet to forge their own emotion. And when two special people, like you two, meet the emotion you forge is bound to be special too. Hang on to what you have! Don't let the columnists with their predictions that you're headed for the altar or about to part company influence you. Don't turn self-conscious because the photo-graphers snap you every time you go anywhere together. Don't let the publicity stories you're bound to receive get under your skins. Keep on being a couple of young human beings before you're anything else. And keep on counting this thing you share as a couple of human beings more important than anything else. It won't be easy to do all of this, I know. But you two can handle it, just because you are special, both of you.

Sincerely Adele Whitely Fletcher

Screen Guide, November 1936

Gable and Lombard, 1939

SARATOGA (1937)

Gable's sixth film with Jean Harlow (above) was also her last, for, with shooting still incomplete, she collapsed on set and, within a week, was dead. MGM considered starting afresh with Virginia Bruce or Jean Arthur and scrapping the project altogether but were persuaded, so the story goes, by public support for Harlow to complete and release the film using existing footage. What's more likely, of course, is that they smelled the opportunity of parlaying her demise into serious money - and so indeed it proved, for when Saratoga was released on 23 July 1937, not quite seven weeks after Harlow's death, so many of her fans turned out to see it that it became one of the year's biggest box office hits. As for the film's completion, presumably some rewriting was done, and half a dozen additional scenes were shot using actress Mary Dees (uncredited) either with her back to the camera or with her face obscured by expansive hats or field glasses. (Gable famously said of filming with Dees that it was like being "in the arms of a ghost.") A second ringer, Paula Winslowe, mimicked a few lines of Harlow's voice and the end product was cobbled together. Sadly, even had Harlow herself finished the film, it probably wouldn't have been very good, for the story is weak. Gable plays that rare species, a bookie with a heart of gold, Lionel Barrymore is saddled with an old blowhard's part and Frank Morgan with a buffoon's. Hattie McDaniel, Una Merkel and Walter Pidgeon round out a cast that, while strong on paper, can collectively do little with such modest material. Other than a ghoulish wish to play Spot The Stand-in, there's not much reason to watch this. For more, see the Harlow file. 92 minutes.

TEST PILOT (1938)

A strong cast - Gable, Myrna Loy (above, centre), Spencer Tracy (above, right) and Lionel Barrymore - serve up a hackneyed tale that touches on the burden borne by those close to risk-takers, but at bottom is about nothing worth much caring about, since Gable's character is so irredeemably stupid. Myrna looks the part and Tracy is good, but the material is weak. 119 minutes. Dear Mr. Gable: This film is the first that comes to mind when people say they have seen the Gable basics - It Happened One Night, Gone With The Wind, The Misfits, et cetera - and ask what to try next. Why? Because Test Pilot is Gable in his '30s prime, all wrapped up in a pretty bow and presented to you on a platter. The witty script gives Clark plenty of wisecracks, he's got a fair share of white-knuckle action scenes in the air, sparring, buddy, brother-love scenes with Spencer Tracy and romantic scenes with the fabulous Myrna Loy. I consider it a Gable essential. IMDb: A good first 40 minutes, then gets very silly / Gable would do much better the following year - much better indeed / Very well done, with excellent dialogue / Least well-plotted of the Gable-Tracy films / Considering its cast, I expected more - at the very least, some decent acting. The plot was interesting but poorly executed. The internal conflict within Tracy's character is weakly projected. All he ever does is act depressed. Loy and Gable are too often over-dramatic, which becomes a turn-off after a while, especially with such contrived and ridiculous dialogue. Their only entertaining interaction was at the start, when they were flirtatious and coy with each other. Maybe this movie was considered good on release, but it hasn't worn well with time.

TOO HOT TO HANDLE (1938)

Oh, dear. Loud, brash nonsense concerning unscrupulous newsreel cameramen has a dull plot and some horribly crass dialogue that even Gable and Loy, on middling form, struggle in vain to rise above. 107 minutes to forget. Une Cinéphile, 26 May 2011

I found this film to be excellently acted by everyone, with not one performance over the top or not well done. Gable and Loy together are so fantastic. Loy wrote in her autobiography that she knew how to play against Gable - by always playing to his tough side - and you can clearly see her do so here. Alma is an edgy, fast-talking character but you can see Loy give her a little extra to play against Gable. This was Loy's third time playing a gutsy aviatrix and it never gets old. She was perfect. One of the many reasons why I adore Loy as an actress comes up in this film: Chris and Alma are talking and to play down the rapport between them he tells her the two of them as a newsreel team are pals like the comic strip Mutt and Jeff. Something comes up a few minutes later and Chris says it may be too dangerous for them to do. Alma is not afraid and she perfectly, sarcastically, coldly says to Chris: "What's the matter, Mr. Mutt? Lost your nerve?" Just the way she says that line and her expression is acting perfection. When Loy says "nerve" she gives her lip a curl

that even if she tried to do it again she probably could not. It was like a real genuine reaction. I really enjoyed Gable also. The last half hour of the film he was so great. The ending is where the film gets silly, but in a good way. I will not give away what happens but I was laughing and it was Gable who was making me laugh. Chris is a character who was not the greatest guy ever. He used people to get a good story - he even used Alma - but I liked him. I guess Gable really did have such charm that you could not help but like him even if he was a jerk.

IMDb: Okay, this isn't Shakespeare. Gable and Loy were the number one box office draws of 1938 and it seems that what made them famous was not believability but that their movies were so much fun. Gable pictures were always high on action, romance and fun while Ms. Loy became famous for her wonderful banter in the Thin Man films. So, in this case, you merge the two into a very light adventure filled with laughs, some marvellous dialogue and a romance that doesn't always work. It's certainly not the best film they did together, but nor is it the worst and it's 100% pure "1930s MGM formula". Modern viewers might not find it so magical - after all, the plot is pretty tough to believe and the characters seem pretty cartoonish. But, given my love for this genre and these actors, I don't mind terribly. Sure, it's not super-memorable, but it was more than worth the energy I spent watching / The characters aren't too convincing or realistic, but since this is a romantic action film, that doesn't really matter. The dialogue is fun and Conway's direction smooth. The most impressive photography is the aerial footage of the burning ship. Overall, a pleasing though not too memorable adventure film / The epitome of the madcap comedy-adventure genre. Maybe a little simplistic for today's taste and certainly far fetched but a good, rip-roaring yarn nonetheless / Gable, Loy, and Walter Pidgeon all act well - kudos too to character actor Walter Connolly who turns in a heck of a performance as Gable's newsreel company boss - but the script is pathetically foolish, and why ever is the Amazon jungle peopled by African natives? / The strands of the story are woven uneasily into a mixture of comedy and drama that doesn't always work. Gable has the pivotal role as one of the world's most conniving newsreel photographers. He has one hilarious scene where he's faking an aerial bombing in China, which is Gable at his comedic best. But the script is overly busy in too many directions and the hi-jinks become tiresome before the story is over. Considering the cast, a major disappointment / Absolutely inane / This cast of pros obviously never left the Hollywood back lot, but for the general public who had never travelled very far, this would have been very exciting and exotic. A fun story, worth every minute / Gable, Pidgeon and Loy all are great, although Loy doesn't quite carry off the "missing brother" pathos as well as she does the brave pilot parts / Gable's performance completely dominates and overshadows this movie, even when he's in a chicken suit. You would think that a film with Myrna Loy in the cast would have some great zingers back and forth with the male lead. This happens too few times, however, and Loy looks like she'd sooner not be there. Because much of the satire is still true today, the movie doesn't seem dated. There are some plot holes and only Gable is truly worth watching. There are also a few too many racist references that might make a modern viewer uncomfortable / Unless your a fan of the stars, don't bother / I defy anyone to watch this film and not split a gut laughing / In '38 Gable and Loy were voted King and Queen of Hollywood. Why? Watch and see. A masterpiece!

Clark Gable and Myrna Loy The pairing of Clark Gable and Myrna Loy on the big screen seems to have had the effect of a magnet that invariably drew others to it. Not only were audiences drawn to theatres to see these two in action, but other actors seemed drawn to join the duet, thereby expanding and enhancing the team. While the first film that Ms. Loy and Mr. Gable graced with their combined presence should perhaps be excluded from a list of collaborations (for it was the 1925 silent production of Ben-Hur: Tale Of The Christ and employed the two as extras far removed from one another in their scenes), their work in this movie is in a sense very much a part of a team, a much larger team than just themselves, a mob, in fact, a mob of extras that also included Gary Cooper, Joan Crawford, Janet Gaynor and Carole Lombard; and movie audiences, in the habit of blinking now and then, should expect the entire experience of watching this movie, even again and again, to pass without any glimpse of any of these soon-to-be Hollywood icons. But that was in the silent era and in a time when these actors' careers were still in their nascent stages. With the coming of talkies and the rising of these movie extras to the level of screen idols and stars, the public had quite an easy time of spotting them and a rather enjoyable one at that. In the case of Myrna Loy and Clark Gable's collaborations, the public was treated to seven more films (all talkies). As with the silent Ben-Hur, this magnetic duo seemed to have embraced, even celebrated, a practice of teaming with more than just themselves. William Powell, Walter Pidgeon, Spencer Tracy, Jean Harlow, the Barrymores (both John and Lionel), Helen Hayes, Robert Montgomery and Jean Hersholt, among others, contributed their unique personas to flesh out and expand upon the collaborative efforts of Clark Gable and Myrna Loy. Here's a full list of their co-credits:

Ben-Hur: Tale Of The Christ (1925), Night Flight (1933), Manhattan Melodrama (1934), Men In White (1934), Wife vs. Secretary (1936), Parnell (1937), Test Pilot (1938), Too Hot To Handle (1938)

In a rather ironic fashion, there is one other, perhaps infamous headliner who should be mentioned for his magnetic collaboration in the history surrounding not the making but the showing of just one of those films, i.e. Manhattan Melodrama. It was in an alley just outside Chicago's Biograph Theatre on 22 July 1934, as gangster John Dillinger was leaving the show, that the notorious bank robber and public enemy number one was shot and killed by F.B.I. agents. He was a big fan of Myrna Loy - so big, in fact, that it did him absolutely no good. But it did wonders at the box office for the picture. Coincidentally, the film is about a hoodlum (Clark Gable) who similarly can't get away with murder, though he, too, has a fancy for Myrna Loy.

GONE WITH THE WIND (1939)

Storytelling on a grand, opulent, majestic scale - an epic saga dazzlingly, eye-poppingly presented. A film, exploiting the cinematic arts to the full, decades ahead of its time. Though all the leads perform strongly - Leigh (above) and Gable in particular - Howard is given the thankless task of having to try and breathe life into anaemic, spare-part Ashley. Still, an experience to be savoured time and again, unique and unforgettable. Circa 220 minutes, in two halves. IMDb: This film shows the best of the American cinema. Whether we like it or not, one has to recognize the greatest achievement, perhaps, of the creative talent of the people working in the movie industry. Gone With The Wind represents a monumental leap, as well as a departure, for the movies, as they were done prior to this film / A pro-Confederate travesty of history / More ham than a Danish abattoir / Vivien Leigh's beauty, sense of timing and intelligent approach to the role of Scarlett makes hers a hallmark performance. Gable, a man's man, projects passion with charm and power. His love for Scarlett, the woman he knows is wedded to a dream, speaks eloquently for itself. Olivia de Havilland as Melanie and Leslie Howard as Ashley are pitch perfect - and to omit the contribution of Oscar-winner Hattie McDaniel would be a sin. Such a natural actress, a joy to watch, excellent in any role / The mother of all soap operas / Won eight Academy Awards and the deserves every one / An incredible spectacle / Frankly my dear, this movie sucks / The first - and best - blockbuster / Much ado about nothing / One of cinema's greatest marvels and a living testament to its timelessness and limitless potential, GWTW, the telling of the interwoven lives of Rhett, Scarlett, Ashley, Melanie and their world, will be viewed with admiration hundreds of years from now.

I Was Afraid of Rhett Butler Rhett Butler really put me on a spot, a hot one. Or rather Margaret Mitchell did when she created Rhett. I hope some day to have the privilege of meeting Miss Mitchell. This is partly curiosity. When a lady puts you on a spot it is only human to want to meet her. More than that, I feel we have a lot in common. Misery loves company. I can understand perfectly why she built a wall around her home. Haven't I wanted to do the same thing during the past year? Rhett put us both on a spot. We are his innocent victims. I am certain I can speak for Miss Mitchell as well as for myself in saying that neither of us had any idea of the dent he was going to make in our lives. Frankly I was one of the last few millions to read Gone With The Wind. When people first started talking about the book and Rhett, I wasn't impressed. Everybody in Hollywood has the greatest story ever written. I am constantly asked to read novels, plays and originals that will make screen epics. Besides, I wasn't interested in playing a character named "Red" Butler. It would mean dyeing my hair or wearing a wig and that's too much to ask, even of art. Later I learned in a rather embarrassing discussion that it was Rhett, not "Red," which punctured a good defence. What aroused my interest was a puzzling flood of letters, urging me to play Rhett, "because he was obviously written for me," and those many friends who told me emphatically I was Rhett, and that fifty million Americans couldn't be wrong. I read Gone With The Wind. My reaction was enthusiastic and immediate. "What a part for Ronald Colman," I said. I was sincere. Right here I would like to clear up a misunderstanding. The tremendous popularity of the book inspired many myths. One of these, frequently repeated, contends that Miss Mitchell had me in mind to play Rhett on the screen when she wrote her book. This is not true. She got her idea for the book and was writing it while I was a four-dollar-a-day labourer in the Oklahoma oil fields. I could have been an inspiration to no one, except possibly a soap salesman. I cannot honestly say that I didn't want to play Rhett, I did. But there certainly was a rub. Miss Mitchell hadn't missed a thing. She left nothing to the imagination. Rhett was as real as life. That's one of the things I have a desire to ask Miss Mitchell. Where did a quiet and gentle lady meet a man like Rhett Butler? Take it from me, there was a Rhett Butler and he wasn't Clark Gable. In my travels I've known men like him. There was a gambler in Bigheart, Oklahoma, with long slender white fingers, who could deal faro like nobody else. He dressed and talked like a Virginia gentleman, killed a man one night, and every woman in town - but that's another story.

Rhett was too popular, had fired the imaginations of too many people. Literally millions of people knew Rhett better than they knew George Washington. Everyone couldn't be pleased, not even the majority. I knew that. I might have saved myself my worrying. When the time came for the decision, I had little to do about it. David O. Selznick had purchased the screen rights and Dave was interested in making a separate deal with me, providing my studio would give me time off to make the picture for him. It was with considerable pleasure that I informed David my contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was about as iron-clad as smart lawyers could make it. And, as a minor additional point, I didn't want the part for money, marbles or chalk. David was fair, but firm. He wanted me to know that he was going to try for a deal with MGM anyhow. I could see myself being sold down the river. I didn't ask the studio not to loan me. I said nothing. My contract states that I have no choice of roles. News that the deal had been agreed upon reached me during the making of Idiot's Delight. I read it in the paper. The guillotine, I thought. I was farmed out for a percentage of the profits to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Then I lost my fear of Rhett. There were too many other things to think about. I started out with the idea of knowing Rhett as well as I know myself. I lived with him day after day, reading and re-reading Gone With The Wind, underlining each sentence that revealed a facet of his many-sided character. Making the picture was comparatively easy and a pleasure. The hard work was during months of unrelenting preparation. I felt that it was essential to have Rhett so minutely pegged in my mind that it would not be necessary to think consciously about him, a direct person, extremely confident, sure of himself in any situation. A man of unrelenting will, unchangeable once he had made up his mind, polished, a gentleman, yet his own worst enemy, a mellow blending of good and bad, with a saving sense of humour. I had no difficulty visualizing Miss Leigh as Scarlett. My thanks here are publicly expressed to Miss Leigh for making it a pleasure to believe the part of Rhett. Scenes were not filmed in sequence, since this is not practical because of technical problems, but the book was religiously followed in its essentials. If a favourite scene is missing, you can blame the restrictions of censorship. Tut, tut, Miss Mitchell. Some dialogue and certain situations were thus eliminated but ninety per cent of the dialogue used was taken directly from the book. Rhett always will remain among the most memorable roles I have played on the screen, although I sincerely believe that Fletcher Christian in Mutiny On The Bounty was a part of equal calibre. It was the unprecedented public interest in Rhett that made him a difficult and frightening role to tackle. Gone With The Wind belongs to the public, not Hollywood. Anyhow I'm glad it's over. Now I can get a haircut. And I've got my fingers crossed. Clark Gable, Liberty magazine, February 1940

BOOM TOWN (1940)

There's good news and bad. Gable plays a happy-go-lucky wildcatter - the type of role that suits him best - he's reunited with It Happened One Night co-star Claudette Colbert and Spencer Tracy (above, left) is always a pleasure. But the inclusion of a few token action sequences doesn't make up for superficial, by-the-numbers storytelling in which fortunes are repeatedly won and lost in ten screen minutes with little apparent effect on the character arc of anyone concerned and justice is blatantly thwarted for the sake of cloying sentiment. Hedy Lamarr and Frank Morgan also figure in 119 minutes of B pic cheese. IMDb: Not since the days of Grand Hotel and Dinner At Eight did MGM throw its top four stars into one movie, but man, oh man, was it worth it / There was something lacking in this film, not that I didn't like it: it just wasn't as good as it should have been. There was an intensity missing - I found it tough to get involved with the story and the characters. Grubby would have been better than soapy / Before he was actor, Gable worked in the oil fields with his widowed father. After that, he decided acting was a far easier way to make a living. But he actually lived the life that he and Tracy portray in Boom Town allowing him to bring more to this part than any other he ever played. I'm sure he was an unofficial technical consultant on the film / No movie starring Gable and Tracy can be all bad, but this one could have been so much better. After a while the plot becomes very tiresome and the relationship between the guys makes no sense. But worse than that is the ridiculous courtroom scene near the very end / Fast-paced entertainment and one of the best "buddy" films / The rise and fall and rise and fall and rise and fall and rise of Gable - and Tracy. Or something like that. Silly but solid.

THEY MET IN BOMBAY (1941)

Gable breezes through his part with his usual roguish charm, Rosalind Russell (above) makes a sympathetic and attractive leading lady and Peter Lorre is always good value. The problem here is with the story, which starts out promisingly but becomes increasingly absurd such that, before it's done, it gets hard to care what happens next, or to whom. 92 minutes. Poor. IMDb: The time-worn cliché of the glamorous, romantic jewel thief can be charming when done with a touch of class, as in Trouble In Paradise, Grand Hotel or I Was An Adventuress. Here, it's handled with so little taste or imagination it positively degrades the profession. Witless bilge / An incongruous embarrassment / Fast paced and very funny, They Met In Bombay still holds up today / An entertaining though silly romp with Gable still looking in peak form and seeming to enjoy himself / Despite several obvious faults and drawbacks in its second half, a good old fun Sunday afternoon film / Not a washout - one can enjoy all the fine actors going through their paces - but not well conceived or made / Good director, grand cast, wobbly script, mediocre results. That the original storyline gets derailed unpardonably is too true to ignore / The first two-thirds of They Met In Bombay is fantastic. Gable at his cocky best is a con artist trying to steal a rare jewel and Rosalind Russell is gorgeous as his love-interest/rival. The story moves along at a brisk pace and soon the two stars find they have more in common than they knew, and might be falling in love. The movie is funny, engaging, romantic and sweet - classic Hollywood at its best. Sadly, the final third takes a strange and sudden turn and the story falls apart. What's more, the awkward, contrived ending negates most of the nice moments that went before. They met in Bombay - and should have stayed there / First half sophisticated comedy, second half patriotic cry for arms. Two films for the price of one / Most of the movie is a joy, but ...

ADVENTURE (1945)

As in Test Pilot, Gable's character is unsympathetic - in this case, an immature, impulsive, selfish, thoughtless, merchant marine bosun. There is no emotional sense or consistency to a plot that has Garson (above, left) randomly repelled by and mad for Gable, who gives a broad, unpersuasive performance. Blondell (above right) is good value, but the whole is dull and slight. 126 minutes. IMDb: This is the movie that could have seen Gable restored to the top of the heap, reclaiming his crown as King of Hollywood - but it doesn't do it for him, and I don't think that Gable was ever really the same man after WWII. He remained capable but the swagger and glamour were irretrievably lost. In their place we see a hollowed-out figure who can still act, but for whom being top dog was no longer a priority. The film's title is a huge pun, or a huge mistake. This is an adventure of a man who is no longer looking for the high seas and wartime survival, but the adventure of love with a woman who is not his type. It's not as bad as some other reviews suggest, but there is something too steady and normal and incipient about it all. While featuring Clark Gable in the lead, and with the same director as Gone With The Wind a few years earlier, there is something stiff about it all, even the humour and fun. Greer Garson is the "serious" woman, someone who has to force herself to have fun, and Joan Blondell is the racy one, out for fun above all else. And if Gable seems suited to the crazy woman, he's clearly also set to be tamed by the other. That's pretty much the "adventure" ... Garson can be impressive in her cultured way, but here she is hot and cold, on and off. It's partly that her speeches are more words than meaning. Nothing is more boring than people talking about being exciting ... Blondell frequently never quite gets her due because she plays against (or in contrast to) the leading female, who is more grand or beautiful or star-powered than she is. Too bad. She's fun but also has fabulous screen presence. That, to me, is what matters most often in this era. The movie is too long in parts and its theme wears thin after while. In the end it's about the choice between a sailor's life or a landlubber's, the first redolent of freedom, the second of home and family. It's 1945, servicemen are returning from the war. Guess which side wins.

TO PLEASE A LADY (1950)

Barbara Stanwyck (above) adds Gable to her impressive roster of leading men (though their paths previously crossed briefly in 1931's Night Nurse). Adolphe Menjou (Forbidden, Golden Boy) is back again. Look out, too, for a young Will Geer. As for the film, To Please A Lady's extended footage of midget and Indy car racing footage bolsters a trite but watchable romance played out by two leads with hopelessly flip-flop personalities. Gable is mean but then not really while Stanwyck needs only a slap in the puss/rough clinch one-two to metamorphose magically from hard-as-flint journo to soft-as-mush camp follower. 91 minutes. A petrol heads' delight - otherwise fair. IMDb: It took Gable's career a while to get back on track - excuse the pun - after World War II. He was older than the other matinée idols, he was a grieving widower when he returned from the war, and the indelible image he had created as Rhett Butler would haunt him. It wasn't until the mid-fifties that he really found his groove with some very good films. This is one of the ordinary movies he made during this period / A demented romance-from-hell that bored me to tears / Car racing at its best / Ho-hum, predictable and formulaic. Stanwyck's character is completely unlikeable / Gable's sex appeal comes steaming off the screen. His chemistry with Stanwyck is the way you dream that love can happen / The story line is thin as Gable's moustache but the 65 year old automotive background is priceless / Exceptionally dull / Worth watching even after all these years / Just another Gable-playing-himself movie. That's called acting? / Forget the story! A fabulous film tour of dirt and asphalt oval tracks around the country ... Worth every minute of Gable and Stanwyck's banal banter.

THE TALL MEN (1955)

Consistently stunning visuals - like a Russell canvas come to life - more than make up for a slow and mostly low-key narrative. A rare treat. Gable makes as authentic and natural cowboy as he does most other things - more watchable than Wayne because less of a caricature. Sulky Jane Russell plays her part in bringing home a languorous (123 minute) but surprisingly delightful mosey up The Bozeman Trail. Wait for the right mood, then saddle up and ride. IMDb: The cast, CinemaScope lensing and Victor Young's plaintive music score are all very good / With few exceptions, the best Western films were made in the 1950s. The Tall Men is one of the best / Veteran Raoul Walsh superbly handles The Tall Men with simplicity, confidence and a great sense of humour / The scenery is beautiful, especially during the cattle drive scenes / A classic Western, recalling Red River. A bit overlong because an action-packed story it is definitely not. The cinematography is splendid and enhances marvellous landscapes with a good use of scope / Gable and Russell still put a smile in my heart and a grin in my spirit / In spite of large means, excellent actors and stunning locations, the movie is disappointing / The most enjoyable qualities of this film are the cinematography and the beautiful music. Whatever you do, make sure you see it in widescreen / A worthy addition to the works of director Raoul Walsh and the main players / An unusual but completely ordinary Western about a kidnapping and Gable and Cameron Mitchell hiding out with Jane Russell / I don't even like Westerns, but I liked this movie quite a bit / A film that, beyond its sprawling camera pans, is curiously shy of blowing its own trumpet ... Too much thumb-twiddling, despite the undeniable scenic grandeur / Raoul Walsh directs this well-rounded sagebrush saga. Gable, strong and self assured, appears to be at the top of his game as his career nears its end / There are times when I wonder whatever became of Westerns, especially when I see a film like this. The cinematography is outstanding, and the cattle drive itself is absolutely breathtaking. I don't want to begin to think about what it took to shoot the many scenes involving thousands of cattle and horses. This was an "A" production all around / Enjoyable of its type, nicely photographed by Leo Tover, with Gable giving a solid, star performance / You won't be disappointed / Not as good as Red River? I don't agree / It's sad to think that within five years Gable would be dead and a new breed of darker, more intense psychological Westerns would have replaced Boy's Own Adventure movies like this, among the last of its kind.

THE KING AND FOUR QUEENS (1956)

Flimsy cornball hokum concerning four ourlaws' widows (except one - though no-one knows which one - isn't) and some hidden stolen gold. Mildly diverting but eminently forgettable. Gable reprises his Rhett B. Southern gent shtick to pleasing effect, but not much else in this one's favour. 76 minutes. Fair. IMDb: The storyline here is very, very thin. Most of the film is about Gable trying to charm the women, using every trick in the book. There are a few minor surprises near the end, but this is really nothing special / One of the more interesting of Gable's post World War II films. Lots of sexual innuendo, a precursor of the adult TV Westerns soon to come / Extremely disappointing. Despite a great cast, weak writing did this one in / Above average / Not much going on ... Ridiculous ... A royal flop / A Western trifle dominated by Jo Van Fleet's dynamic performance as "Ma" McDade, a tough old buzzard hiding the loot from a bank robbery committed by her now deceased sons / A rather weak tale that comes off as mildly disappointing / A light-hearted romp / No matter how much the actors try, a plot and script that are dull and not very believable defeats them. But to make matters worse, an aging Clark Gable who looks every bit a man in his mid-fifties (or older) is cast as a stud who uses his seductive wiles on four horny and unsuspecting women. In other words, because he is Gable, the women are to chase after him as if he's Gable circa 1939. It just doesn't convince. My advice is to see any one of his other films, most of which are significantly better than this drivel. Second only to Parnell as Gable's worst movie / Best part of this nonsense may be the colour cinematography by Lucien Ballard, but its main appeal is titillation courtesy of its four good-looking women / Neither uproariously funny or dramatically potent, it's a film caught somewhere in between. Yet, on this occasion, it really doesn't matter - it's like a good old glass of bourbon, enjoyably warm while ingested but the buzz soon wears off at closing time / It's unfortunate that, thanks to the Production Code, the narrative relies heavily on suggestion, choice scripting ("Perhaps you need a new rooster!") and fill-in-the-gaps-yourselves moments, but it's all played with a glint in its eye and there's still a cheekiness and sexiness about the picture that strikes the right chords. Sometimes it's an uneasy blend of drama and comedy, but when it hits its straps, as during the wonderful dance sequence, it has sufficient quality to plant a smile firmly on your face, even if the finale is somewhat of an anti-climax. Production-wise it's a beauty / The only film released by Gable's short-lived production company.

RUN SILENT, RUN DEEP (1958)

A decent film set aboard a US Navy submarine, with Gable and Burt Lancaster (above, left) doing their stuff. But the story is thin (Gable, seeking revenge for a previous sinking, ignores sailing orders, leading to one unhappy Exec) and sub pictures are all more or less the same, aren't they? 89 minutes. Fair. IMDb: Realistic settings and an excellent script. Recommended / Taut and tight / A thoughtful, penetrating, brilliantly realised and influential drama that doesn't have men debating the merits of their morality but integrating it into their actions / Submarine movies are almost always fun to watch. Everyone crowded together, sweating, all that obsolete technology, sliding down ladders, hatches clanging, rivets popping, the depth charges, the man left on deck as the sub plunges beneath the waves, the wisecracking crew, and the commands: "Take her down to fifty feet," "Rig for silent running," "Rig for depth charges," "Open outer doors one and two," "Come right to course one five zero," "After torpedo room, report damage," "Crash dive!" It's like going to mass / A wonderful performance from Lancaster and a very good one from Gable. The film's quality shines through / A compact, well-edited little film that tells its story and then shuts up / Taut, suspenseful and action packed, Run Silent, Run Deep is completely effective, except for the last scene. Gable is terrific and should have received an Oscar nomination. Best of all, however, are the action and incredibly realistic special effects. Exploding ships would never look this good or real again until Star Wars / Probably the best on-screen example of the everyday life and working on a submarine. Superb! / The second-best submarine film of all time, after Das Boot / The special pleasure for me was appreciating Gable's absolutely convincing performance / Very well paced with no unnecessary ballast / A rousing action film, juvenile in its simplicity / Terrific.

THE MISFITS (1961)

Arthur Miller developed the screenplay, presumably as a vehicle for his then wife Monroe (above), from one of his own short stories. Themes of spiritual liberation and the passing of The Old West eventually emerge, but not very persuasively, thanks mainly to Marilyn's talent deficit - or, more charitably, maybe she was just miscast. Gable performs creditably, with able support from both Eli Wallach and Montgomery Clift. The film ends poignantly (It'll take us right home: see above), since it was the last of both Gable, who died shortly after its completion, and Monroe, also dead within two years. Clift died in 1966, aged 45, with three more credits to his name. Wallach, in contrast, acted on into his nineties and died, aged 98, in 2014. 120 minutes. Good...ish. IMDb: I can't say The Misfits is an entertaining movie, but it is certainly profound and stays with you / Knowing the tragic fate of three of the film's participants probably adds something to its greatness. It is virtually impossible to stop watching. It will break your heart in a thousand different ways / It has a great script, is perfectly cast and speaks as sadly and eloquently to us now as it did fifty years ago / Overrated, and does no service to the legacy of Gable, Monroe or Clift. Clift's is a worthless, underwritten part and Gable and Monroe are an unbelievable match (unless you're Woody Allen) / "You're only happy when something dies! Why don't you kill yourself and be happy?" This is Marilyn shouting at the industry that made and destroyed her / Poignant and brutal, a story of endings / Despite superbly crisp cinematography, this lumbering loser is one of director John Huston's notorious failures ... The movie plods along in dreary fashion. Despite a game cast, the unsatisfying script sinks everything / Just goes to show that the power of names can't salvage poor content / Two hours of Arthur Miller sounding off about Reno divorces and horse roundups. Chillingly awful / Impeccable acting from Gable and Monroe ... It's beautiful / Monroe's performance is, as usual, mannered and overrated / Great art about loneliness and the pain of losing.

Clark Gable is Dead - A Last Intimate Look Clark Gable laughed when people called him a king. But he was one. He carried himself with a dignity rare in Hollywood and hordes of fans seldom mobbed him. Instead the crowds stood back when he walked by and responded with happy smiles to his amiable grin. For 30 years he stood alone among the great personalities of the movies. In over 60 films his presence made the bad ones supportable and profitable and the good ones great and gold mines. It could have been much different. At 15, Clark Gable quit high school at Hopedale, Ohio and often said that if a rich man had offered him a job as the chauffeur of a really interesting car, say a Mercer or Stutz, he would have lived a happy life driving automobiles. As it was, he drifted around as a telephone lineman and oil field worker until he married a drama coach who drew him into the world of make believe. He was happy and relaxed when the exclusive intimate picture above and others on these pages were taken a few days before a heart attack felled him. Then suddenly last week it was all over; Clark Gable, aged 59, was dead, and lovely women everywhere - his wife Kay, who expects his first baby, Marilyn Monroe in New York, Sophia Loren in Madrid, Vivien Leigh in Paris - wept. One of his recent heroines, Carroll Baker, once said, "I never really believed I was in movies until I played with Clark Gable." And one of his first heroines, Norma Shearer, said, "Now he is on the right side of eternity. Bless him." The world can recall glorious moments with Gable: Gable searching the ruins of San Francisco for Jeanette MacDonald; Gable teaching Claudette Colbert how to dunk doughnuts; Gable fighting Spencer Tracy; Gable glaring as Charles Laughton threatens to hang him; Gable catching Jean Harlow in a rain-barrel bath; Gable giving Scarlett O'Hara her comeuppance with a lordly "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." Gable used to laugh, "Hell, I haven't learned to act yet" - but he certainly had. He won an Oscar for his newspaperman in It Happened One Night and nominations for his roles in Mutiny On The Bounty and Gone With The Wind. And on film he had done everything. He was a doctor in Men In White, a general in Command Decision, a daredevil airman in Test Pilot - and he himself was decorated for bravery as a B-17 gunner in World War II. The role in real life he most wanted to play ... was to be a father. Now people may remember him best as the mustang hunter in The Misfits who turns to Marilyn Monroe and says, "Reason or no reason, dyin's as natural as living …" But, if his death was sudden, his life had held more of the world's joys than

most. Finally Hollywood, which has staged near-riots at the funerals of its stars from Rudolph Valentino to Tyrone Power, said goodbye to Clark Gable with dignity. A little knot of the people who loved him best - his wife, fellow stars, old hunting and fishing companions, fellow lovers of fast and complicated automobiles - gathered in the Church of the Recessional, Forest Lawn Memorial Park. An Air Force Episcopal chaplain accompanied by an honour party of ten airmen and a colour guard offered a short soldier's service for the star who, at 41, enlisted as a private and flew five battle missions over Europe. Then the crowd, its famous faces looking sad, left, and workmen entombed his body by the side of Carole Lombard. Life magazine, 28 November 1960

Clark Gable (1901 - 1960)