Clark Gable

by David Bret

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction

  Chapter One - GAY FOR PAY: ASCENDING THE LAVENDER LADDER

  Chapter Two - CLARK & RIA . . . & JOAN . . . & JOHNNY

  Chapter Three - HARLOW

  Chapter Four - BEN & LORETTA

  Chapter Five - LOMBARD

  Chapter Six - SOUTHERN BELLES & SINNERS

  Chapter Seven - LOVE CONQUERS ALL

  Chapter Eight - DEATH WISH IN THE CLOUDS

  Chapter Nine - STRANGE INTERLUDE

  Chapter Ten - SAFE IN THE ARMS OF MA

  EPILOGUE

  FILMOGRAPHY

  DOCUMENTARIES

  BIBLIOGRAPHY:

  INDEX

  Copyright Page

  This book is dedicated to Maria da Fé, Amalia Rodrigues

  and Les Enfants de Novembre.

  N’oublie pas . . .

  La vie sans amis c’est comme un jardin sans fleurs

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Writing this book would not have been possible had it not been for the inspiration, criticism and love of that select group of individuals whom I regard as my true famille et autre coeur: Barbara, Irene Bevan, René Chevalier, Marlene Dietrich, Roger Normand, que vous dormez en paix. Lucette Chevalier, Jacqueline Danno, Betty et Gerard Garmain, Annick Roux, Tony Griffin, Terry Sanderson, Helene Delavault, John and Anne Taylor, Francois and Madeleine Vals, Axel Dotti, Caroline Clerc, Charley Marouani, David and Sally Bolt, and those hiboux and amis de foutre who happened along the way. Very special thanks to Maria da Fé, the greatest living fadista, and those at Senhor Vinho, particularly Filipa and Rita, Jose-Luis Gordo, Aldina Duarte, Antonio Zambujo, Maria Dilar, Carlos Macedo and Vanessa Alves for inadvertently offering support when it was most needed. And to Amalia, always in my thoughts. Finally, a massive cloudburst of appreciation to Jeremy Robson and the magnificent team at JR Books, and to my agent, Guy Rose, and to my wife Jeanne, still the keeper of my soul.

  David Bret,

  June 2007

  INTRODUCTION:

  A HUNK OF ROUGH

  Like most of the great Hollywood icons, little is known of Clark Gable’s early years other than the facts that he himself wanted the world to know, together with the usual publicity-driven biography part-fabricated by the studios who stood to profit from the legend they had created and nurtured.

  Clark Gable was the archetypal supermensch, the kind of rough-and-ready man women yearned for, while their jealous husbands longed to be him. In fact he was bisexual although he would be better described today as ‘gay for pay’ since this aspect of his complex persona was more for career elevation than natural inclination. In an age when such men were invariably perceived as lily-livered and effete - which Gable most definitely was not - this fact was airbrushed out of his image. Indeed, in this respect he figures among illustrious company for Rudolph Valentino, Cary Grant, Randolph Scott, Gary Cooper, Errol Flynn and Rock Hudson all possessed similar traits and in no way could any of these greats be described as effeminate. Fearful of exposure, all of these men married and had almost 20 wives between the lot of them. Fifty years from now, when they are dead and gone (and no longer able to sue), similar anecdotes concerning many modern day lothario screen heroes rarely seen in public without being in the company of beautiful women will also be revealed.

  Throughout his life, Gable’s father was prepossessed with the word ‘sissy’. It was almost as if, at some stage, he had doubted his own sexuality at a time when homosexuality was regarded as an affliction, if not an actual disease. William Henry Gable was born around 1870 in Meadville, Pennsylvania, one of at least eight children. In 1900 the staunch Methodist married farmer’s daughter Adeline Hershelman. Despite her Jewish-sounding name, Adeline was a Catholic and, like William, of German-Dutch descent. Needless to say, their respective parents strongly disapproved of the union. In Adeline’s case this was not simply on grounds of William’s religion, but also because he earned his crust as a ‘wildcatter’ (an oil-prospector) and between long shifts he spent most of his time away from home gambling and womanising. Nor was it a very profitable profession. Major prospectors such as John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company had long held a monopoly on the region, leaving little chance for such small fry as William Gable to strike oil big time - not that this ever stopped them trying. The nearest free-for-all oilfield to Meadville was Titusville, 7 miles away. Most of William’s workmates did not mind walking to work twice a day whereas he stayed in lodgings. It was a case of what Adeline did not see, would not hurt her.

  Shortly after their marriage, and weary of family interference, William upped sticks and took his new wife to Cadiz, Ohio, where he found employment in an oilfield with better prospects and rented a small apartment. As before, Adeline saw little of him, and when she did, he was frequently drunk and abusive. But Adeline was not a healthy woman: reports state that she appeared to be suffering from epilepsy and a heart condition which would only became aggravated when, against doctors’ orders, she fell pregnant in the late spring of 1900. Her son, whom she insisted should be named Clark after the family name of her maternal grandmother, came into the world on 1 February 1901. Whether or not this name was included on the baby’s original birth certificate at a time when these were non-mandatory is unclear. William always maintained Clark was too sissified a name for any son of his, so it is likely - again in keeping with a tradition of the time - that he was registered William Clark Gable. Until he left home, his father would only address him as ‘William C’, or more familiarly as ‘The Kid’.

  For Adeline, Clark’s arrival was the beginning of the end and she grew progressively weaker. By the time his birth was registered in June of the same year, she was virtually bedridden and being cared for by a nurse. She was well enough to attend his baptism on 31 July - though for some unexplained reason William did not - at a Catholic Church in Dennison and soon afterwards she returned to live with her parents. On 14 November she died, aged thirty-one. In his notes, one of the doctors attending her suggested she might also have been suffering from a brain tumour on account of her severe headaches and general condition. The official cause of death recorded on the death certificate, however, was an epileptic fit.

  In January 1902, William Gable had for some reason re-registered Clark’s birth in Cadiz, at the same time as he registered Adeline’s death. By now he had all but turned his back on the boy, leaving him with his grandparents - effectively a practical solution since this saved him the expense of having to pay someone else to look after his son.

  In next to no time, William Gable found himself another woman. Coal miner’s daughter Jennie Dunlap worked as a seamstress and lived at the Cadiz boarding house where he lodged. She was around his age - early thirties - and married him on 16 April 1903. Combining their savings, the couple deposited $150 on a 4-acre plot of land near Hopedale, Cadiz, and acquired planning permission to build a modest home. It would take them another five years to complete the project aided by Jennie’s three brothers (also coal miners), one room at a time so they had somewhere to live while the house grew around them. In the meantime, William set about ‘reclaiming’ the son he had not seen since dumping him on his in-laws.

  So far as William was concerned, little had changed in his life save that he now owned his own property and had a little cash to spare. He still spent most of his time away from home and so Clark bonded with Jennie Dunlap - he would always recall her with both names, never ‘stepmother’ - and it was she who encouraged and developed his interest in the arts. It was also Jennie, never William, who threw a lavish party for ‘Clarkie’, as she called him, every year on his birthday. Jennie taught him how to sing and play the piano, and it was she
who paid for him to have music lessons. By the age of 12, he was so adept with the French horn that he was invited to join the town band.

  Clark appears to have been a well-behaved youngster, requiring little discipline. He was also a tall lad - standing 5 feet 9 inches tall and tipping the scales at 150 pounds by his fourteenth birthday - when he stood shoulder to shoulder with his father, who never lost an opportunity to denounce him as effeminate on account of his artistic leanings. All the men in his family, William reminded his son, had gone in for extreme manual work and he would be no exception. To appease his father, Clark participated in every sport going at the Hopedale Grade School and swimming, sprinting, baseball and shot putting were favourites at which he excelled. Though less interested in the staple subjects - maths, English and Latin - he achieved above average grades and was encouraged by Jennie to study just that little bit harder. At this stage girls did not figure in his life - he would more than make up for this later on. He was the biggest boy at his school but because of his placid, unassuming nature, he often found himself picked on. Rather than fight, he later confessed how he had preferred to talk himself out of tricky situations because he had been saving his fists - which were enormous - should the time come, to use them on his father! At the age of 15, Clark was working part-time and earned 50 cents a week as a delivery boy - no amount at all, but enough to make him more independent of his father.

  Then, in 1917, William Gable gave up prospecting, sold his house, and bought a farm at Ravenna, some 60 miles from Hopedale. For Clark, relocating was a terrible wrench. Not only did he have to give up his school, friends and pastimes, but he was now subjected to the horror of being with his father all of the time. Initially, he recalled, this was not too bad for William taught him how to hunt, shoot and fish. Such excursions were the only period in their lives when father and son got along, and they became pastimes for which Gable would develop a lifelong passion. He was enrolled at a new school - Edinburgh High - but stayed here just a few months before leaving to make his own way in the world. Oddly, instead of finding a job, he opted to help out on the farm. Later he admitted that he was desperate to prove to his father that he was a real man. Sadly, William Gable’s ‘sissy’ paranoia had been passed down to his son.

  Fortunately, Jennie Dunlap soon persuaded Clark to recognise the error of his ways and he found other work: water-carrying at a mine. He was paid $5 a day and lived frugally for several months until he had saved up $175 for his first car - the Ford Roadster, in which his father taught him to drive. According to Gable he mastered this in a single lesson through fear of his bullying parent. Upon his return to Hopedale, William sold it to him for what he had first paid for it - something of a cheek considering he had had it for years.

  Clark stayed on at Hopedale long enough to plan his next move: accompanying a group of friends to Akron, Ohio. In the days before achieving its status as the supplier of over half the world’s rubber, Akron, some 35 miles south east of Cleveland, was an industrial boomtown. B.E. Goodrich had established a rubber factory there in 1870 and production dramatically increased around 1910 with the demand for car tyres. By the time Clark arrived in 1917, the company - along with Firestone, Miller and Goodyear - was operating full-steam around the clock, producing not just tyres but other rubber goods for US forces fighting overseas in World War I.

  William Gable tried to prevent Clark from leaving Hopedale. His place, he declared, was staying put and toiling in the oilfields or on the farm. Jennie, however, supported Clark’s decision. By this time her health had begun to fail, but rather than keep her stepson tied to her apron strings, she wanted him to make something of himself. It was almost as if she was aware that she would never see him again. Akron was but 60 miles from Hopedale, but in those days of primitive commuting, when hardly anyone ventured beyond their neighbourhood, it might just as well have been at the other side of the world.

  In Akron, Clark was employed on $100 a month as a clerk with the Miller Rubber Company - a good salary at the time. He rented a room over a pharmacy and while his buddies hit the bars and went out chasing girls after work, he was interested only in exploring the town’s cinemas and theatres. None of these attractions existed in Hopedale and after his first visit to the ‘flickers’ he was hooked, particularly on the Westerns of Tom Mix. If the legend is to be believed, the first play he ever saw was Richard Walton Tully’s Bird of Paradise, which first opened on Broadway in 1912. The Akron production was staged by the Pauline MacLean Players at the Music Hall on Exchange Street. Maclean herself was in the role of the Hawaiian princess who, when spurned by her white American lover, flings herself into the crater of a volcano! Gable later said that it had been the most exciting night of his life thus far. Indeed, he was so impressed that he decided there and then to pursue a career on the stage.

  Clark foisted himself on the actors, hung out with them after the show and became their unofficial mascot. Being 6 feet 1 inch tall, jug-eared and tipping the scales at almost 200 pounds, he was not the sort of man to go unnoticed. Occasionally he worked as the company errand-boy and his burly build made him ideal as a bootlegger’s runner, standing him in good stead for some of the gangster-thug roles he played in his early films. Every now and then, when an actor called in sick, he was asked to tread the boards, usually with drastic results on account of his clumsiness.

  Towards the end of 1919, Clark received word that Jennie Dunlap was terminally ill - it is believed with cancer or tuberculosis of the bowel. No sooner had he returned to Ravenna than there were fireworks with his father. Clark’s maternal grandfather had recently died in Meadville, bequeathing him $300, which he would not be able to collect until he came of age. William had fought against him leaving home in the first place and now he attempted to use the inheritance as a bribe to keep him here but upset Clark with his persistent mocking of his involvement with the theatrical troupe. Jenny died on 11 January 1920 with Clark at her bedside and immediately after the funeral he returned to Akron. Her not-unexpected demise affected him in such a way that for years he would search for a surrogate stepmother in a number of relationships with much older women.

  Shortly after Jennie’s death, William Gable sold the farm and moved to an oilfield in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where the chance of a lucky strike was more likely than in Ohio. By August of the same year he was prospecting in Bigheart. From there, he contacted his son and asked him to join him, apparently promising him support with his acting aspirations if that was really what he wanted to do. William concluded his letter by saying that there was even a drama group in the town willing to take him on. By this time the Pauline MacLean Players had left Akron so Clark worked his last shift at Miller Rubber then headed for Bigheart. He cannot have been surprised to learn that his father had conned him for there was no acting job and William had already boozed away most of the money raised from the sale of the farm. At the oilfield he was living rough, sharing a six-bed tent with twelve roughnecks like himself. When one left for his shift at dawn, his bunk was immediately seconded to another coming in from the night shift. Such were the conditions that the fumigator had to be brought in once a week!

  Clark was taken on as an odd-job man, mostly chopping wood and stoking the fires, and was eventually promoted to cleaning stills in the refinery. Between shifts, he was expected to let off steam with the other men in what appear to have been little more than what today’s tabloids would refer to as ‘dogging’ sessions with whores brought in from the town, many of whom were well past their sell-by date. Often there were not enough women to go round, so the men would wait their turn, standing in line with no privacy between bunks while the action was taking place. Clark later said that the scenario had disgusted him but that he had forced himself to join the queue in order to prove himself a man in front of his father.

  His experiences in Bigheart were to leave him with a mania for personal hygiene. Later on, when he could afford the luxury, he would shower a minimum of twice daily - baths were out because that would me
an sitting in water that he had polluted. His stomach turned, he said, by the hirsute bodies of some of his fellow workers, he would shave almost daily and not just his face but also his arms, legs, chest and pubic area. Unlike the majority of American men, he was uncircumcised and would sometimes scrub his penis until it bled.

  In February 1922, when he turned 21, Gable gave up his job and left for Meadville to collect his $300 inheritance. Suspecting he might be about to return to the stage, William Gable had called him ‘sissy’ just once too often and ended up flat on his back. The two would not see or speak to one another for almost a decade afterwards.

  Chapter One

  GAY FOR PAY: ASCENDING THE LAVENDER LADDER

  William Gable’s slurs on Clark’s masculinity were to rankle. When he left Meadville in 1922, he temporarily left his ‘effeminate’ name behind and for the next few years he would call himself Billy Gable. From Meadville, Billy headed for Kansas City - for no other reason, he later said, than ‘it happened to be there for the drifter he had become’. His first job was with a chautauqua (travelling tent show) but not as a performer: instead he was erecting and taking down marquees. When the company folded in snowbound Montana, Billy and their pianist stowed away on a freight train to Bend, Oregon, where his fellow traveller’s relatives lived.

  For a while Billy found work as a lumberjack but handling logs damaged his hands. Unable to afford the proper, protective gloves he toughened his hands by soaking them in vinegar. He stuck with the 12-hour shifts until he had saved up enough cash to travel to the nearest big city - Portland - to hopefully set himself up. Tired of heavy-duty labour, Billy is reputed to have got himself a job working behind the neckties counter in Meir & Franks department store although this is unlikely for customers would almost certainly have been put off by the sight of his big cracked hands and decaying teeth. He is more likely to have been employed in the store’s warehouse or loading bay.