William Clark Gable (February 1, 1901 – November 16, 1960) was an American film actor, and the biggest box-office star of the early sound film era. He was born in Cadiz, Ohio. When he was seven months old, his mother died. At the age of 16 he left high school and started to work in a factory. After seeing a play which impressed him, he made the decision to become an actor. He started to tour with several second class theater companies, and worked also as a salesman and in the industry.

In 1924 he went to Hollywood with the financial aid of theater manager Josephine Dillon, who was more than 10 years older than he was and became both his manager and his first wife. He acted in small roles and returned to the theater, until in 1930 he finally signed a contract with MGM. In the following years he acted in several pictures which soon made him become a megastar, earning the title of "King of Hollywood".

Gable won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his 1934 performance in the film It Happened One Night. He is, however, best-known for his performance as Rhett Butler in the 1939 classic Gone With the Wind, which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. A few years before, he had also earned an Academy Award nomination for his role as Fletcher Christian in 1935's Mutiny on the Bounty. In addition, Gable was one of the few actors to appear in three films that have won an Academy Award for Best Picture.

Gable's marriage in 1939 to his third wife, actress Carole Lombard, was reportedly the happiest episode in his personal life, but it ended with her death in a plane crash in 1942. He was deeply grieved and joined the U.S. Army Air Force. His first movie after returning from service in WWII was the 1945 production of Adventure. It was not really successful, and MGM did not renew his contract in view of his high salary. During the next ten years, he made films which did not match the quality of his earlier roles.

His second wife had been Texas socialite Rhea Langham Davis, and his fourth was actress Sylvia, Lady Stanley, a British divorcée who also was the widow of Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. His fifth wife, married after an on-again, off-again affair spanning 13 years, was Kathleen Williams Capps de Alzaga Spreckels, a thrice-married former fashion model and stock actress from the town of North East, Pennsylvania. She was the mother of Gable's posthumous son and only legitimate child, John Clark Gable , born in 1961; she also had two children from her third marriage, Joan and Adolph Spreckels 3rd.

Gable also had an illegitimate daughter, Judy Lewis, from an affair with actress Loretta Young.

Gable's last film was The Misfits, which also featured Marilyn Monroe in her last screen performance. Gable died in 1960 of a massive heart attack in Los Angeles, at the age of 59. He was interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California, beside his beloved wife Carole Lombard.

Filmography

• White Man (1924)
• Forbidden Paradise (1924)
• The Pacemakers (1925) (short subject)
• Declassee (1925)
• The Merry Kiddo (1925) (short subject)
• What Price Gloria? (1925) (short subject)
• The Merry Widow (1925)
• The Plastic Age (1925)
• North Star (1925)
• The Johnstown Flood (1926)
• One Minute to Play (1926)
• The Painted Desert (1931)
• The Easiest Way (1931)
• Dance, Fools, Dance (1931)
• The Finger Points (1931)
• The Secret Six (1931)
• Laughing Sinners (1931)
• A Free Soul (1931)
• Night Nurse (1931)
• Sporting Blood (1931)
• Susan Lenox (Her Fall and Rise) (1931)
• Possessed (1931)
• Hell Divers (1931)
• The Christmas Party (1931) (short subject)
• Jackie Cooper's Birthday Party (1931) (short subject)
• Polly of the Circus (1932)
• Screen Snapshots (1932) (short subject)
• Red Dust (1932)
• No Man of Her Own (1932)
• Strange Interlude (1932)
• The White Sister (1933)
• Hollywood on Parade No. 9 (1933) (short subject)
• Hold Your Man (1933)
• Night Flight (1933)
• Dancing Lady (1933)
• It Happened One Night (1934)
• Men in White (1934)
• Manhattan Melodrama (1934)
• Chained (1934)
• Forsaking All Others (1934)
• After Office Hours (1935)
• Hollywood Hobbies (1935) (short subject)
• China Seas (1935)
• The Call of the Wild (1935)
• Starlit Days at the Lido (1935) (short subject)
• Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)
• Wife vs. Secretary (1936)
• San Francisco (1936)
• Cain and Mabel (1936)
• Love on the Run (1936)
• Hollywood Party (1937) (short subject)
• The Candid Camera Story (Very Candid) of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures 1937 Convention (1937) (short subject)
• Parnell (1937)
• Saratoga (1937)
• Test Pilot (1938)
• Hollywood Goes to Town (1938) (short subject)
• Too Hot to Handle (1938)
• (1939) (short subject)
• Idiot's Delight (1939)
• Hollywood Hobbies (1939) (short subject)
• Gone with the Wind (1939)
• Northward, Ho! (1940) (short subject)
• Strange Cargo (1940)
• Boom Town (1940)
• Comrade X (1940)
• You Can't Fool a Camera (1941) (short subject)
• They Met in Bombay (1941)
• Honky Tonk (1941)
• Somewhere I'll Find You (1942)
• Combat America (1943) (documentary)
• Show Business at War (1943) (short subject)
• Wings Up (1943) (short subject)
• (1943) (short subject)
• Adventure (1945)
• The Hucksters (1947)
• Homecoming (1948)
• Command Decision (1948)
• Any Number Can Play (1949)
• Key to the City (1950)
• Screen Actors (1950) (short subject)
• To Please a Lady (1950)
• Across the Wide Missouri (1951)
• Callaway Went Thataway (1951) (cameo)
• Lone Star (1952)
• Never Let Me Go (1953)
• Mogambo (1953)
• Betrayed (1954)
• Soldier of Fortune (1955)
• The Tall Men (1955)
• The King and Four Queens (1956)
• Band of Angels (1957)
• Run Silent Run Deep (1958)
• Teacher's Pet (1958)
• But Not for Me (1959)
• It Started in Naples (1960)
• The Misfits (1961)

External links