Clark Gable

by David Bret

  His new amour - one of a half-dozen he squired around town at the time - was no longer a bona fide member of the British aristocracy. Born Edith Louisa Hawkes in Paddington, London, in 1904, this stable-hand’s daughter and decidedly rough diamond’s first attempt at bettering herself had involved taking elocution lessons to rid herself of her harsh Cockney accent. After World War I she modelled lingerie and posed for French postcards, and appeared as a chorine in a number of Soho revues. Little more than a prostitute, she encouraged a succession of wealthy admirers to vie for her affections, pampering her with furs and jewels. In 1927 she married Lord Anthony Ashley, heir to the 9th Earl of Shaftsbury.

  Marriage and an elevated position had not prevented Sylvia from scandalising London society by engaging in any number of very public affairs - the best known with ageing swashbuckler Douglas Fairbanks, whose supposed fairytale marriage to ‘America’s Sweetheart’ Mary Pickford had been on the rocks. She divorced Fairbanks in 1936, around the same time as Ashley divorced Sylvia, citing Fairbanks as co-respondent. Sylvia and Fairbanks had married at once. No longer Lady Ashley, but purloining the title to maintain her position in a society, many of whose members were little less corrupt and immoral than she was, Sylvia persuaded Fairbanks to buy a house in London’s Park Lane. She also coerced him into changing his will, well aware that he was ill. Upon his death, in 1939, she had inherited his London and Santa Monica homes, a citrus farm and the Rancho Zorro in California, a small fleet of Rolls-Royces, and around $4 million in cash. Fairbanks’ son, Douglas Jr, had been bequeathed little in comparison.

  In 1944, the money-grabbing widow remarried into the British aristocracy: Lord Edward Stanley, 6th Baron Sheffield and Alderly. They had met in New York, where as a conscientious objector he had lived for the duration of the War. Sylvia knew all along that her (albeit subsequently four-times wed) husband was gay, and used this as an excuse to shame and divorce him four years later, whence she had reverted to calling herself Lady Sylvia Ashley, which legally she was not entitled to do. In 1948 she relocated to the Fairbanks’ mansion in Santa Monica, until then occupied by ‘caretaker’ tenants - her sister Vera and brother-in-law: British film producer Basil Bleck. When Sylvia took up residence, the Blecks stayed put.

  How Sylvia managed to ensnare a man as stubborn as Clark Gable into marrying her mystified his friends. During most of 1949 he was rarely seen twice in the same week with the same woman, so when he and Sylvia married that year, on 20 December 1949, in Solvang, a Scandinavian community in Santa Barbara County, even the sharpest tacks among the press were caught by surprise. In 1941, he promised Otto Winkler that if he ever married again - suggesting that despite their closeness, he had not regarded his union with Carole as potentially long-term - that Winkler would be best man. With Winkler gone, Howard Strickling, alerted to the wedding plans three days earlier, was asked to take his place. Clark and his bride dressed unconventionally in blue serge, just in case they were spotted heading for the Danish Lutheran Church. Suspicious reporters, he hoped, would assume they were attending someone else’s wedding and not their own. Jean Garceau was a witness and Sylvia given away by Basil Bleck.

  Clark had insisted on strict secrecy but Strickling, in the position as Louis B. Mayer’s official mouthpiece, brought along a photographer to record the happy event. Not for the first time, the register was falsified: Sylvia lied that she was 39 - she was six years older. The gossip-columnists had a field day unearthing all the juicy details of her past, though most of these were too lurid for public consumption. The honeymoon took place in Hawaii, by which time the press were hot on the Gables’ heels. While Clark and Sylvia travelled the leisurely way to Honolulu on the SS Lurline, Strickling and his wife flew on ahead to brief reporters and ensure they refrained from asking too many impertinent questions.

  Louella Parsons had not forgiven Clark for snubbing her the last time around. Staying put in Hollywood, she sniped in her column, ‘I doubt if any characters in history - Antony and Cleopatra, Helen of Troy and all the rest - can equal the careers of these two.’ It did not take a genius to work out that she was referring to their respective ‘careers’ in the bedroom department! Ben Maddox, now out of Clark’s life for good, followed up on this by suggesting his new bride had ‘more in common with the Queen of the Nile than most would imagine’. Any serious historians among Clark’s fan-base were left with little doubt that Maddox was referring to the chronicled event when Cleopatra fellated 100 Roman soldiers in a single night! Quite clearly, the faux Lady Ashley commanded little respect other than from those within her inner sanctum.

  When Sylvia began styling herself Carole Lombard’s replacement within days of moving into the Encino ranch, it was a foregone conclusion that the marriage would not survive. She brought her personal maid and white cook - Jesse, Clark’s black cook, was shown the door. Next, Sylvia complained the house was too small: she liked to paint, therefore she needed a studio, and it was also essential her staff have their own space for receiving guests so that these might not be seen by her high-ranking friends. Her greatest folly, however, was bringing in decorators to refurbish Carole’s room, the former shrine to her memory that was now turned into an English bedsit, cluttered with antiques from her former homes - souvenirs, she said, of her marriages. Clark refused to enter the room once she had its walls painted shocking pink. Sylvia next took a leaf out of her predecessor’s book and began ‘scorning’ her husband’s machismo - not by making wisecracks, as Carole had got away with so well, but by getting him to carry her tiny pooch with its painted claws and diamond collar. Not so long before Clark had taken Joan Crawford’s husband, Phillip Terry, to one side and told him how ‘faggy’ he looked carrying hers.

  Sylvia discouraged his hunting, fishing and motorcycle fans from visiting the ranch, fearing that ‘outdoors’ language and behaviour might shock her friends. In London she had frequented Mayfair circles: likewise in Paris her ‘local’ had been the Hotel Continental, off the Place de l’Opéra. Attempting to re-create these soirées, she invited only English and French showbusiness people to the ranch: Clifton Webb, Brian Aherne, Merle Oberon, Robert Douglas, Joan Fontaine, Charles Boyer, Louis Jourdan and Noel Coward - mostly people Clark could not stomach. A permanent resident during the early months of their marriage was Timothy Bleck, Sylvia’s teenage nephew, who appears to have developed a crush on him.

  Though wealthy in her own right, Sylvia’s improvements to her new domain - including transporting hundreds of antiques from England - had been effected by Clark dipping into his wallet, something he had rarely done for his other wives, who always insisted on paying their way. Most of her money, she claimed, was tied up in property and business deals across the Atlantic. The press picked up on this. They had never stopped making comparisons with this snooty Englishwoman, who looked down her nose at anyone non-European - and Carole Lombard, adored by all and accessible to all but a few, and above all sincere. Their conclusion was that ‘Lady Ashtray’, as Joan Crawford called her, was the same with Clark as she had been with the other men in her life - a kept woman.

  Sylvia’s assets and holdings were made public. They were two beach houses, the mansion in Santa Monica and the 3,000-acre Rancho Zorro worth in excess of $6 million, the $50,000 profits invested from the movies Douglas Fairbanks bequeathed her and around $750,000 in jewels and bonds lodged in a London bank vault. When journalists commented on how well she looked decked out in all her finery - but that Clark was starting to look jaded and henpecked - he ordered her aboard the next ship to England, not to come home until she had released the revenue from some of these assets. She was also told to take Timothy Bleck with her. The youth and his friends, Clark declared, were eating him out of house and home, and always pestering him for money. Sylvia was also told to put her beach properties on the market and evict her sponging relatives - something she refused to even consider.

  Initially, she stayed put, claiming she had arranged for her London lawyers to transfer funds to a Los An
geles bank. She also promised to curb her spending and was almost good to her word while Clark was shooting To Please A Lady, which saw him returning to the caveman Gable of old. His co-star was Barbara Stanwyck, whom he had memorably socked in the jaw 20 years earlier in Night Nurse. Director Clarence Brown was therefore asked to guarantee cinema-goers a repeat performance and Clark did not disappoint as ruthless racing driver Mike Brannon, whose uncompromising way of competing on the track has seen several rivals killed or seriously hurt. Eventually he has to give up the sport because the crowds hate him so much, and he ends up as a stunt driver with a travelling sideshow. Enter all-powerful journalist Regina Ford (Stanwyck), who has built up a smear campaign against him to ban him from driving, period.

  Needless to say, love enters the equation though Mike still treats Regina shabbily, as he does everyone else. One of their set-tos ends with him warning her, ‘You’d better listen to what I’m saying, or I’ll knock that smile off your face!’ ‘Knock it off,’ she responds - and he does, before kissing her hungrily then marching off in a strop. Twenty years ago, or even ten, this scenario would have worked - now, however, at 49 and 43 respectively, Gable and Stanwyck were too old to be playing supposedly young romantic leads.

  The locations were shot over a three-week period at the Indianapolis 500 and included footage of the actual race - initially depressing for Clark, for this was the city from which Carole had embarked on her fatal flight. He was faced with an additional dilemma when Timothy Bleck showed up with a group of friends, taking over several rooms at the Marriot Hotel where the Gables were staying - and charging the bill to their account. When Sylvia received a wire from her London lawyers informing her that they had finally sorted out her complicated business interests, she decided to travel to England herself - with Clark ordering her to take Bleck with her and make sure he stayed there.

  She was away for just three weeks, and when she returned to Hollywood all she had with her was $100,000 of jewellery, which she planned putting up for auction. Unfortunately, she let slip to columnist Sheilah Graham that she had smuggled this into the country: Graham included the snippet in her syndicated column, Sylvia was arrested by the FBI and fined $5,000 for contravening customs regulations. As if she had not humiliated him enough, Sylvia was an even bigger nuisance when, in July 1950, she accompanied Clark to Durango, Mexico, for the locations of Across The Wide Missouri. The great female icons - Garbo, Dietrich, Crawford and Marion Davies at the height of their popularity had got away with demanding palatial dressing-rooms on the studio backlots, but never in the history of the studio system had a star’s wife made such demands as Sylvia.

  Budgeted at $5 million, Clark’s first Technicolor film since Gone With The Wind was directed by William Wellman, who after their set-tos on the set of Call Of The Wild had vowed never to work with him again. Time had cooled their tempers: now it was Mrs Gable who gave Wellman an almighty headache, transforming her husband’s ‘man’s man’ dressing-room cabin into a mock English country cottage. Not only did she commission a wicker fence and have the exterior landscaped with turf, rose bushes and even trees in gigantic sunken tubs so that she could relax in a ‘homely’ environment and paint - she hung pink lace curtains up at the windows! To Clark’s way of thinking, this was Sylvia’s way of launching yet another attack on his manliness. Most of the time, when not working, he went off hunting and slept rough under the stars with his buddies.

  Across The Wide Missouri was promoted as an exercise in racial tolerance and harmony between the French and Scottish fur-trappers and the Blackfoot Indians upon whose territory they encroach. Clark played Flint Mitchell, whose peaceful expedition to found a settlement among the Blackfoot sees him falling for the chieftain’s daughter (Maria Elena Marques). They marry and have a child. Needless to say MGM’s unspoken anti-interacial policy ensured the marriage was short-lived and she is killed when Mitchell’s men cause the Blackfoot to go on the warpath.

  Clark’s acceptance of the role led to his first major row with Sylvia. A champion for their cause, she resented the Indians in the film being played by made-up American actors delivering their lines in Blackfoot dialogue, with translators incorporated into the scenario so that each line was pronounced twice. She approached William Wellman and asked him why real Indians could not be used and subtitles added to the bottom of the screen. But he refused to listen. The finished film bored preview audiences senseless and the director was forced to cut all of this out, reducing the production from 135 to 78 minutes, leaving over $2 million of Technicolor footage on the cutting-room floor. Wellman then completed the farce by hiring musicals star Howard Keel to narrate the story, in flashback, to fill in the missing chunks. Few were surprised when the film bombed.

  The Gables’ marriage limped along until the end of the year, by which time Clark had begun working on another Western, Lone Star, directed by Vincent Sherman. Co-starring were Ava Gardner and Broderick Crawford. Still reeling from the losses incurred by its predecessor, MGM commissioned this one to be shot in monochrome - an exercise which would not only cost less, but eliminate by way of its more subtle lighting techniques the ravages of premature ageing starting to show in Clark’s face. According to Sylvia, she was relaxing in the tub when Clark barged into the bathroom, announced that he had had enough and that he was filing for divorce. The next day she sailed for the Bahamas, ostensibly to give him breathing space in the hope that he might change his mind. He did not, and when she returned to Elcino at the end of May, Clark had ‘done a Joan Crawford’ by having the locks changed.

  Sylvia was the first to instigate divorce proceedings. She hired Jerry Giesler, long renowned as the best - and most expensive - celebrity lawyer in California. Giesler (1886-1962) had successfully defended mobster Bugsy Siegel when accused of killing Harry Greenberg; he had got Busby Berkeley off the hook from a triple-fatality drink-driving rap; and cleared Errol Flynn of statutory rape. Naturally, when Giesler filed a petition on Sylvia’s behalf in Santa Monica on 31 May, Clark grew worried. He was convinced Giesler would encourage Sylvia to take him for every penny he had, as had happened with most of his other divorce cases.

  To cope with the stress, and several years ahead of James Dean, Clark turned rebel at 49. He, Vincent Sherman, producer Wayne Griffin and the equally hard-drinking and bombastic Broderick Crawford hit the town every night, ‘chasing skirt’, as they called it, and there were reports of brawls and other booze-fuelled incidents. On one occasion the four ran amok at celebrity eaterie Chasen’s, smashing tables and chairs, slinging food at the walls and the other diners. Clark paid for the damage, but was asked not to darken the establishment’s doorway again. Another prank backfired when he paid a studio technician to rig Griffin’s car: this exploded, very nearly writing off the vehicle and setting the producer alight. This time he was summoned to Louis B. Mayer’s office and given a dressing down. Clark blamed it all on his failed marriage, and told Mayer to mind his own business.

  In fact, Mayer had more than his share of problems to deal with as the dissension between him and Dore Schary escalated. Personality clashes notwithstanding, this was a repeat of what happened between Mayer and Thalberg: Schary had triumphed with a number of film projects that Mayer had wanted to reject, deeming them uncommercial. Mayer further accused his rival of courting publicity by using such films to exploit political propaganda, which of course was true. The matter was decided during the early summer of 1951 by MGM president Nicholas Schenck, who also took into consideration Mayer’s failing health (he would die of leukaemia in 1957), and the fact that Schary was 20 years his junior.

  Schenck, who would take a tumble himself a few years later and be demoted to company chairman, had until now played little active part in the creative side of filmmaking, leaving this to Mayer and Thalberg. Now he was called upon to exercise the upper hand over which of these war-mongering moguls would go: each had his own band of sycophants, and should both be permitted to stay, Schenk feared the studio would split into two factions
and ultimately sink. Naturally the deciding factor was money. Schary’s recent films had taken more at the box-office than Mayer’s, and had attracted more Oscar nominations. According to Mayer’s biographer, Scott Eyman, the choice of Schenk was an obvious one, simplified by Mayer having told one of MGM’s directors, Bob Rubin, over the telephone, ‘You can tell Mr Nicholas Schenck and Dore Schary that they can take the studio and choke on it!’

  The next day, 31 May, Variety reported that Mayer would be tendering his resignation within the week, to take effect on 31 August. His golden handshake would be a cool $3 million, upon which by special arrangement he would have to pay only 25 per cent tax. Schenck, two-faced as they come, lied to the press that Mayer was retiring ‘by mutual agreement’, adding, ‘Mr Mayer has given our industry leadership and inspiration, and now, in parting, his associates at [parent company] Loews’s wish him success and happiness in his future activities.’

  With Mayer gone, Clark and a few other ‘shit-stirrers’ were individually summoned to Schary’s office: if the mighty Mayer could be toppled they were told, then absolutely no one in Hollywood was indispensable. Besides a new boss, Clark had to contend with a new agent. Phil Berg retired, prompting a pouting Gable to swear never to speak to him again. He signed with George Chasin of MCA, an organisation then in favour of liberating their clients from the restricted confines of the studio system so they could branch out and experience independence. Even so, despite his hatred of Schary, Clark would have to suffer working for him for another three years until his MGM contract expired.