3 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.