Tuesday, January 30, 1934

Pauline and I rode the streetcar. We are writing Morality Plays in Expression. Making a History scrapbook.

William Clark Gable (February 1, 1901 - November 16, 1960)
Born: Cadiz, Ohio
Died: Los Angeles, California
Height: 6'1"
Nicknames:
Gabe
The King
The King of Hollywood
Pa (by Carole Lombard)

Clark Gable's mother died when he was seven months old. At 16 he quit high school, went to work
in an Akron (Ohio) tire factory and decided to become an actor after seeing the play "The Bird
of Paradise". He toured in stock companies, worked oil fields and sold ties. In 1924 he reached
 Hollywood with the help of Portland, Oregon, theatre manager Josephine Dillon, who coached
and later married him (she was 17 years his senior).

After playing a few bit parts he returned to the stage, becoming lifelong friends with Lionel
 Barrymore. After several failed screen tests(for Barrymore and Darryl F. Zanuck), Gable was signed
in 1930 by MGM's Irving Thalberg. Joan Crawford asked for him as co-star in "Dance, Fools, Dance"
(1931) and the public loved him manhandling Norma Shearer in "A Free Soul" (1931) the same
year. His unshaven lovemaking with bra-less Jean Harlow in "Red Dust" (1932) made him MGM's
 most important star. At one point he refused an assignment and the studio punished him by
loaning him out to (at the time) low-rent Columbia Pictures, which put him in Frank Capra's
"It Happened One Night" (1934), which won him an Oscar. He returned to far more substantial roles
 at MGM, such as Fletcher Christian in "Mutiny on the Bounty" (1935) and Rhett Butler in
"Gone With the Wind" (1939).

When his third wife Carole Lombard died in a plane crash returning from a War Bond drive,
a grief-stricken Gable joined the US Army Air Force and was off the screen for three years,
flying combat missions in Europe. When he returned the studio regarded his salary as
excessive and did not renew his contract. He freelanced, but his films didn't do well at the
box office. He announced during filming of "The Misfits" (1961) that, for the first time,
he was to become a father. Two months later he died of a heart attack. He was laid to rest
 beside Carole Lombard at Forest Lawn Cemetery.