THE LAST DAYS OF CLARK GABLE

Clark Gable's last film was "The Misfits" (1961), with a script by Arthur Miller and directed by John Huston. Co-starring with Gable were Marilyn Monroe (in her last completed film), Montgomery Clift, Eli Wallach and Thelma Ritter. Many critics regard Gable's performance to be his finest, and Gable, after seeing the rough cuts, agreed, although the film did not receive any Oscar nominations. Miller wrote the screenplay for his wife Monroe; it was about two aging cowboys and a pilot that go mustanging in Reno, Nevada, that all fall for a blonde. In 1961, it was a somewhat disconnected film with its antihero western themes, but it has since become a classic.

In a 2002 documentary, Eli Wallach recalled the mustang wrangling scenes Gable insisted on performing himself, "You have to pass a physical to film that" and "He was a professional going home at 5 p.m. to a pregnant wife." The New York Times found "Mr. Gable's performance as a leathery old cowboy with a realistic slant on most plain things" ironically vital, with his death before the film's release.

On November 6, 1960, Gable was sent to Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, where doctors found that he had suffered a heart attack. Newspaper reports the following day listed his condition as satisfactory. By the morning of November 16, he seemed to be improving, but he died that evening at the age of 59 from an arterial blood clot. Medical staff did not perform CPR for fear that the procedure would rupture Gable's heart, and a defibrillator was not available.

In an interview with Louella Parsons published soon after Gable's death about speculation on his physically demanding role in "The Misfits", wife Kay Gable said, "It wasn't the physical exertion that killed him. It was the horrible tension, the eternal waiting, waiting, waiting. He waited around forever, for everybody. He'd get so angry that he'd just go ahead and do anything to keep occupied." Monroe said that she and Kay had become close during the filming and would refer to Clark as "Our Man," while Arthur Miller, observing Gable on location, noted, "No hint of affront ever showed on his face."

On March 20, 1961, Kay Gable gave birth to Gable's only son, John Clark Gable, at the same hospital in which her husband had died four months earlier. Marilyn Monroe attended his son's baptism...

HOLLYWOOD URBAN LEGEND: LORETTA YOUNG & CLARK GABLE

URBAN LEGEND: DID LORETTA YOUNG HAVE A LOVE CHILD OUT OF WEDLOCK TO FELLOW ACTOR CLARK GABLE?

ANSWER: YES! 

Judy Lewis (1935-2011) was the out of wedlock offspring of screen legends Loretta Young and Clark Gable. At the time of her birth, Gable was married, Young was unmarried. Young covered up the fact of her pregnancy, later announcing she had adopted the girl. Judy graduated from Marymount High School in 1953. She moved to New York and began her acting career, landing a small part on Ponds Theater (1953). She appeared on Broadway in Jean Kerr's "Mary, Mary", and became a featured performer on a number of daytime series, including The Secret Storm (1954) and General Hospital (1963). Judy had a successful career behind the camera, as well. It took her eight years, when she was 31 and appearing on the soap opera “The Secret Storm,” to confront her mother. Young, after throwing up in the bathroom, told her that Gable indeed was her father. Loretta then made Judy keep the truth secret until 1994 when she wrote a book exposing the truth. Loretta Young refused to talk to her daughter for three years until 1997. Loretta died in 2000...

PAST OBITS: CLARK GABLE

Here is the obituary for movie legend Clark Gable as it appeared in the LA Times on November 17, 1960...

Clark Gable died at Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital Wednesday at 11 p.m.The 59-year-old star had been hospitalized since he was stricken with a heart attack Nov. 6.B.J. Caldwell, hospital administrator, said it was assumed that another heart attack took the actor’s life.

“He appeared to be doing fine,” said Caldwell. “He was sitting up, then he put his head back on the pillow and that was that.”

A private duty nurse was the only other person in the room when death came. Dr. Fred Cerini, Gable’s personal physician, was at the actor’s side “in a matter of minutes,” but it was too late to do anything, Caldwell said.Gable’s wife, Kay, was asleep across the hall when the actor died. She has been staying at the hospital since her husband was stricken and they had eaten dinner together a few hours earlier.

Mrs. Gable was reported bearing up “reasonably well” from the shock..Gable, who was stricken at his San Fernando Valley home, had been reported resting comfortably earlier in the evening.Gable was eagerly awaiting the birth of the baby he and his wife expected in March—his first child.

“This is a dividend that has come too late in life,” Gable recently told a reporter during film shooting in Nevada.

“When I wind up this picture I’m taking off until after the baby is born. I want to be there and I want to be there a good many months afterward.”

The actor’s death followed by only 11 days the deaths of actor Ward Bond and pioneer movie maker Mack Sennett, 81. Both men also died of apparent heart attacks.

The couple had returned to their home in Encino earlier this month after Gable had finished final scenes for “The Misfits,” in which he stars with Marilyn Monroe.

He reportedly was paid more that $48,000 a week in overtime payments for the three weeks of extra work on the film. Gable was long the undisputed “king” of movieland and one of its highest paid stars.

A native of Cadiz, Ohio, Gable broke into the movies after a fling as a roustabout in the Texas and Oklahoma oilfields. Under the tutelage of his first wife, Josephine Dillon, who operated an “acting clinic” in Hollywood coaching stage actors for the movies, Gable acquired acting “polish” that soon shot him to stardom. The actor divorced Miss Dillon on April 1, 1930, and later married Mrs. Rita Langham in 1931. They were separated in 1935 and were subsequently divorced in March, 1939.

Then came his marriage to Carole Lombard. The couple were married in Kingman, Ariz., in 1939 and after the marriage drove back to Los Angeles and went back to work. Gable and Miss Lombard, each with a lusty sense of humor, quickly became a Hollywood legend. Shortly after World War II broke out, the actress went on a bond selling tour and on her return home was killed in a plane crash near Las Vegas.

In 1949 the actor married Douglas Fairbanks’ widow, Lady Sylvia Ashley. She divorced him in 1952. He took his fifth wife, Kay Williams Spreckles, a 37-year-old divorcee, in 1955. Gable’s film career included an Academy Award winning performance in “It Happened One Night,” and he achieved tremendous success in such other movies as “Mutiny on the Bounty” and “Gone With the Wind.”

SOURCE

THE DEATH OF CAROLE LOMBARD: 82 YEARS LATER

On January 16, 1942, the actress Carole Lombard, famous for her roles in such screwball comedies as My Man Godfrey and To Be or Not to Be, and for her marriage to the actor Clark Gable, is killed when the TWA DC-3 plane she is traveling in crashes en route from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. She was 33.

Gable and Lombard met in 1932 during the filming of No Man of Her Own. He was just starting out on his trajectory as one of Hollywood’s top leading men and she was a talented comedic actress trying to prove herself in more serious roles. Both were married at the time–Gable to a wealthy Texas widow 10 years his senior and Lombard to the actor William Powell–and neither showed much interest in the other. When they met again, three years later, Lombard had divorced Powell and Gable was separated from his wife, and things proceeded quite differently. Much to the media’s delight, the new couple was open with their affection, calling each other Ma and Pa and exchanging quirky, expensive gifts. In early 1939, Gable’s wife finally granted him a divorce, and he married Lombard that April.

In January 1942, shortly after America’s entrance into World War II, Howard Dietz, the publicity director of the MGM film studio, recruited Lombard for a tour to sell war bonds in her home state of Indiana. Gable, who had been asked to serve as the head of the actors’ branch of the wartime Hollywood Victory Committee, stayed in Los Angeles, where he was set to begin filming Somewhere I’ll Find You with Lana Turner. Dietz advised Lombard to avoid airplane travel, because he feared for its reliability and safety, and she did most of the trip by train, stopping at various locations on the way to Indianapolis and raising some $2 million for the war effort.

On the way home, however, Lombard didn’t want to wait for the train, and instead boarded the TWA DC-3 in Las Vegas with her mother, Elizabeth Peters, and a group that included the MGM publicity agent Otto Winkler and 15 young Army pilots. Shortly after takeoff, the plane veered off course. Warning beacons that might have helped guide the pilot had been blacked out because of fears about Japanese bombers, and the plane smashed into a cliff near the top of Potosi Mountain. Search parties were able to retrieve Lombard’s body, and she was buried next to her mother at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California, under a marker that read “Carole Lombard Gable.”

Hysterical with grief and adrift in the empty house he had shared with Lombard, Gable drank heavily and struggled to complete his work on Somewhere I’ll Find You. He was comforted by worried friends, including the actress Joan Crawford. That August, Gable decided to enlist in the U.S. Army Air Forces. He spent most of the war in the United Kingdom, and flew several combat missions (including one to Germany), earning several decorations for his efforts. He would remarry twice more, but when he died in 1960 Gable was interred at Forest Lawn, next to Lombard..

PHOTOS OF THE DAY: CLASSIC HOLLYWOOD VALENTINE'S DAY

 No one showcased romance more than classic Hollywood. There are some great pictures of classic Hollywood celebrating February 14th. Here are just a few of them...

Betty Hutton

Jean Harlow, Clark Cable, Myrna Loy

Mary Carlisle

Marilyn Monroe

Mary Pickford

Cyd Charisse

THE BOX OFFICE STARS: 1942

Even though America was involved in World War II by 1942, audiences were flocking to the movies to get away from their troubles. Here are the biggest stars of that year by box office, and it shows who war weary audiences were going to see...

THE BIGGEST STARS OF 1942:

1. ABBOTT/COSTELLO
2. CLARK GABLE
3. GARY COOPER
4. MICKEY ROONEY
5. BOB HOPE
6. JAMES CAGNEY
7. GENE AUTRY
8. BETTY GRABLE
9. GREER GARSON
10. SPENCER TRACY

THE BOX OFFICE STARS: 1941

For this 1941 edition of the box office champs, we see Mickey Rooney staying on the list as the most popular star. It is very interesting to see who made the list...

BIGGEST STARS OF 1941:

1. MICKEY ROONEY
2. CLARK GABLE
3. ABBOTT/COSTELLO
4. BOB HOPE
5. SPENCER TRACY
6. GENE AUTRY
7. GARY COOPER
8. BETTE DAVIS
9. JAMES CAGNEY
10. JUDY GARLAND

                                        

HIGHEST GROSSING FILMS: THE 1930s

TOP FILMS OF 1930s (unadjusted domestic gross totals)

1. Gone With The Wind (1939)
2. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
3. The Wizard of Oz (1939)
4. Frankenstein (1931)
5. Tom Sawyer (1930

6. King Kong (1933)
7. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
8. Hell's Angels (1930)
9. Cavalcade (1933)
10. Saratoga (1937)

11. Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)

12. A Star Is Born (1937)
13. Modern Times (1936)
14. Ingagi (1930)
15. The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)

16. San Francisco (1936)
17. Shanghai Express (1932)
18. All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) (tie)
19. City Lights (1931) (tie)
20. Three Smart Girls (1936)

THE BOX OFFICE STARS: 1940

I wanted to start a new feature where I spotlight and remember the top ten box office champs of each year. It was great to see some of my favorite stars on here.

For this edition we are spotlighting 1940. The box office champ for that year was none other than Mickey Rooney...

BIGGEST STARS OF 1940

1. MICKEY ROONEY

2. SPENCER TRACY

3. CLARK GABLE

4. GENE AUTRY

5. TYRONE POWER

6. JAMES CAGNEY

7. BING CROSBY

8. WALLACE BEERY

9. BETTE DAVIS

10. JUDY GARLAND

                     

                                                       

PHOTOS OF THE DAY: A CLASSIC HOLLYWOOD HALLOWEEN

I love looking at vintage pictures of Hollywood stars at the holidays. My favorites I think are the photos from Halloween. I spotlighted them in 2012 and 2014 so it's been awhile. Here are some classic Hollywood pics celebrating Halloween...

Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis

Jeanne Crain

Jimmy Durante

Clark Gable and Marion Davies

Linda Darnell

Cyd Charisse

A CLASSIC HOLLYWOOD HALLOWEEN (2012)

A CLASSIC HOLLYWOOD HALLOWEEN (2014)

ON THIS DAY: FEBRUARY 27

On this day in entertainment history...

1935 - 7th Academy Awards: "It Happened One Night", Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert win
Best Actor and Actress.


1941- 13th Academy Awards: "Rebecca", James Stewart & Ginger Rogers win Best Actor and Actress.


1957 -  Premiere of only prime-time network TV show beginning with an "X": "Xavier Cugat Show" on NBC (until X-Files).


1968 - CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite delivers a scathing editorial on America's chances of winning the Vietnam War


1986 - The United States Senate allows its debates to be televised on a trial basis.


2005 - 77th Academy Awards: "Million Dollar Baby", Jamie Foxx & Hilary Swank win Best Actor and Actress.

RIP: GRANDSON OF CLARK GABLE

We have learned the legendary actor's grandson -- an actor himself, as well as a TV host -- was found unresponsive in his bed by his fiance Friday morning. We're told he was transported to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The cause of death is unclear.

A family member tells us Clark was in Dallas for filming. We're told he had no prior health conditions.

Gable was best known as the host of the reality show "Cheaters" from season 13 to 14.

Gable was an entrepreneur and businessman. He owned his own boutique men’s fashion and surfing line of clothing and accessories. He was also the president of the online electronics store "ClarkGableSpyGear.com".

Gable was arrested in 2011 for shining a laser pointer at a police helicopter in Los Angeles. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to ten days in jail and three years' probation, which we reported on.

In September 2017 Gable’s first child was born.

He also survived being stabbed in the ribs in 2009 by a fellow partygoer in L.A.

Gable III's survived by his parents, John Clark Gable and Tracy Yarro, his sister Kayley and his daugther, Shore. His famous grandfather died in 1960 before Clark Gable's son was even born.

He was 30...

BORN ON THIS DAY: CLARK GABLE

I have to admit even though I am a big classic movie fan, I have only seen a handful of Clark Gable movies. I do not like Gone With The Wind (1939), but I did enjoy Gable in 1936's San Francisco. Maybe this year will be finally the year for me to expand my horizon when it comes to Clark Gable's films. Today would have been Gable's 118th birthday! William Clark Gable was born in Cadiz, Ohio on February 1st, 1901, to William Henry "Will" Gable (1870–1948), an oil-well driller, and his wife, Adeline (née Hershelman). Gable was named William after his father, but even in childhood, he was almost always called Clark or sometimes Billy.

His mother died when he was ten months old, possibly from a brain tumor, although the official cause of death was given as an epileptic fit. William Gable refused to raise his son Catholic, which provoked criticism from the Hershelman family. The dispute was resolved when Will Gable agreed to allow his son to spend time with his maternal uncle, Charles Hershelman, and his wife on their farm in Vernon Township, Pennsylvania.

At 13, Gable was the only boy in the men's town band, playing the piano. He was very mechanically inclined and loved to strip down and repair cars with his father. Although his father insisted on Gable doing "manly" things, like hunting and hard physical work, Gable loved language. Among trusted company, he would recite Shakespeare, particularly the sonnets.

At 17, Clark Gable was inspired to be an actor after seeing the play The Bird of Paradise, but he was not able to make a real start until he turned 21 and inherited some money. By then,  his father moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma to go back to the oil business. Gable toured in stock companies, as well as working the oil fields and as a horse manager. He found work with several second-class theater companies, thus making his way across the Midwest to Seaside, Oregon, working as a logger, and to Portland, Oregon, where he worked as a necktie salesman in the Meier & Frank department store. In Portland, he met Laura Hope Crews, a stage and film actress, who encouraged him to return to the stage with another theater company. Twenty years later, Crews played Aunt Pittypat alongside Gable's Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind (1939).

Gable's acting coach, Josephine Dillon — a theater manager in Portland – was 17 years older than him. She paid to have his teeth repaired and his hair styled. She guided him in building up his chronically undernourished body, and taught him better body control and posture. She spent considerable time training his naturally high-pitched voice, which he slowly managed to lower, to gain better resonance and tone. As his speech habits improved, his facial expressions became more natural and convincing. After a long period of training, Dillon considered him ready to attempt a film career. In 1924, with Dillon's financing, they went to Hollywood, where she became Gable's manager and first wife. His first movies were silent movies where he played an extra often. It wasn't until the advent of sound that Gable's career really took off, and the rest is history...

PHOTOS OF THE DAY: A NEW YEAR WITH CLASSIC HOLLYWOOD

Hard to believe it is another year! It does not seem right that it is 2016! One thing that does not change with each year is our love of classic movies. Here are some pictures of the classic stars celebrating the New Year...

Dorothy Lamour

Bette Davis

Clark Gable, Van Heflin, Gary Cooper, and Jimmy Stewart

Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz

Betty Hutton

Shirley Temple