“Hell, if I’d jumped on all the dames I’m supposed to have jumped on, I’d have had no time to go fishing.” – Clark Gable

Clark Gable Biography

William Clark Gable was born in Cadiz, Ohio, USA on 1 February 1901. His father, William Henry Gable, worked in the oil industry as a driller. His mother Adeline had William baptised as a Catholic when he was six months old, but only a few short months later, she died, leaving William to be brought up by his father and from 1903, his father’s new wife, Jennie Dunlap, who raised him to be well presented.

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});

Gable had been named William after his father, but even from a very early age, it was the middle name that stuck and he would be forever known as Clark. He learned to play the piano from his step-mother and would later take to playing brass instruments. He took an interest in languages but was also practically minded having been pushed into doing things that were thought of as manly by his father such as fishing and hunting.

As Clark progressed through school, his father started to get into financial difficulties and decided to sell up and move to a place called Ravenna, still in Ohio, near the city of Akron to take up farming. He was hoping to get Clark to work the farm with him but the boy had other ideas and took a job instead at the Firestone Tyre and Rubber Company in Akron.

By the time he was 17 years old Clark Gable had started to become interested in acting after he had seen a play called The Bird of Paradise. When his step-mother died, he inherited some money and so by the time he was 21, he had started to variously take jobs at different companies whilst working his way across the country looking for acting work.

Whilst working as a logger in Portland, Oregon, he met the stage and movie actress Laura Hope Crews who persuaded him to pursue a life on the stage and recommended a theatre company to him. 20 years later, Crews would star alongside Gable when she played the part of Aunt Pittypat in Gone with the Wind.

During his time in Portland, he also met Josephine Dillon who took Gable under her wing. She paid to have his teeth straightened and she fed him enough to bulk him out. She also taught him to have better body posture so he could show a better presence on the stage. As a young man, Gable had a rather high pitched voice and Dillon spent a lot of time with him, training him to lower it. When she was finished with him, Dillon suggested it was time to pursue a career in film.

In 1924 using Josephine Dillon’s money, the pair headed for Hollywood and she became not only his manager but his first wife, even though she was 17 years his senior. He had been using the stage name W. C. Gable but upon their arrival in Hollywood, he changed it to Clark Gable. During 1924, 1925 and 1926, he appeared as an extra in a number of silent movies but wasn’t offered any major roles so took back to the stage.

During 1927 and 1928 Gable landed quite a number of stage parts, and became friends with Lionel Barrymore. The more he acted, the more he gained a following becoming somewhat of a matinee idol. Towards the end of 1928, Clark and Josephine moved to New York with the aim of getting Gable parts on Broadway but the following year would come the great depression and the advent of talking pictures which led to many plays being canceled to acting jobs being particularly hard to find.

Moving back out West, Gable was impressive in a stage production of The Last Mile and was offered a contract by MGM, with his first role in a ‘talkie’ being that of the villain in the Western The Painted Desert. The studio took notice of his performance but his relationship with Josephine broke down and the couple were divorced in 1930. Shortly afterward, he married Maria Langham, also known as Rhea.