Learn about the actor, Clark Gable. Explore Clark Gable's life, discover some of his roles and quotes, and understand details surrounding Clark Gable's death.
Updated: 11/21/2023
Clark Gable | Biography, Spouses & Death
Table of Contents
- William Clark Gable
- Actor Clark Gable
- Clark Gable's Spouses and Relationships
- Clark Gable's Death
- Lesson Summary
Frequently Asked Questions
What was Clark Gable's net worth when he died?
Clark Gable left some of his property in Hollywood to his first wife Josephine Dillon. The rest of his estate, which had a net worth of $100 million, was bequeathed to his final wife Kay.
What happened to Clark Gable's son?
Clark Gable's fifth and final wife found out she was pregnant in the summer of 1960. Clark Gable passed away in November 1960 and did not live to see his son be born. His widow, Kay, gave birth to his son, John Clark Gable, in March 1961.
Who were Clark Gable's wives?
Clark Gable had five wives. He married his first wife, Josephine Dillon, and second wife, Maria Langham, to benefit his career. His third wife, Carole Lombard, was considered the love of his life, but she tragically died in a plane crash. He went on to have a short marriage to Sylvia Ashley. His fifth and final wife was Kay Spreckles, and she gave birth to his son in 1961 after Clark Gable's death.
Did Marilyn Monroe date Clark Gable?
It was heavily rumored that Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable dated or had an affair, but they never did. Gable found her to be too unhygienic for his taste.
How did Clark Gable die?
Clark Gable died of a heart attack two days after completing filming on his final movie. He insisted on doing his own stunts, which included rigorous rope tying. His body could not take the activity, and he passed away.
Table of Contents
- William Clark Gable
- Actor Clark Gable
- Clark Gable's Spouses and Relationships
- Clark Gable's Death
- Lesson Summary
Famed actor Clark Gable was born William Clark Gable in Cadiz, Ohio, on February 1, 1901. His parents were William H. Gable, an oil driller and farmer, and Adeline Hershelman. His mother wanted to name him "Clark," but William Sr. thought it was too effeminate for a boy. Tragically, Adeline passed away when her son was only ten months old. To honor his deceased wife's wishes, William Sr. added in "Clark" as his son's middle name.
William Sr. was remarried to Jennie Dunlap, and she loved Clark as her own son. When he was 16, Gabel dropped out of high school and moved to Akron, Ohio. While there, he saw a play one evening and loved it so much that he decided right then that he wanted to become an actor. He attempted to work his way into the acting business by taking an unpaid job with a theater company. Sadly, his dream had to stop when his stepmother, Jennie, died in 1919. He traveled with his father to Oklahoma to assist him in the oil fields.
After three years of helping his father, Gable joined a traveling theater company. He quickly became bankrupt, and the theater company left him in Montana. He hitch-hiked his way to Oregon and joined another theater company. It was there where he met Josephine Dillon, the theater manager and his eventual first wife. She became his acting coach and had him fix his hair and teeth. His teeth majorly hindered his acting career. His unsightly crooked teeth stood in the way of him becoming a lead actor. Eventually, with Josephine Dillon's advice, he had his teeth fixed and later wore dentures. After Gable and Dillon were married in 1924, they made their way to Hollywood, California.
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Following their arrival in Hollywood, Gable found small roles and work as an extra on films, but he did not book anything major. So, he went back to his theater roots. He joined a traveling theater group and soon found himself on Broadway. He acted in the play Machinal in 1928. He received great reviews and felt confident to head back to Hollywood. He starred in the stage production of The Last Mile and caught the eye of Hollywood producers. During his time on stage, he and Dillon were divorced by 1930.
His confidence was short-lived; he was rejected during screen tests because producers and casting agents believed his ears were too big for a leading man. However, he finally booked a larger speaking role in 1931 on The Painted Desert. His performance in that film lead to him receiving a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) contract. His first big hit was in 1934 in It Happened One Night. This role won him the Academy Award for Best Actor.
However, it was his role as Rhett Butler in the 1939 film Gone with the Wind that is often best-known today. One of the most famous lines of dialogue in all Clark Gable movies comes from his character in Gone with the Wind: "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." His performances in It Happened One Night and Gone with the Wind led to him churning out a series of successful movies that cemented him as a household name and gave him the moniker "King of Hollywood."
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However, Gable did not agree with the nickname. He once said, "The King stuff is pure bull. I eat and drink and go to the bathroom just like anybody else. I'm just a lucky slob from Ohio who happened to be in the right place at the right time." As an actor, Clark Gable just loved to act and did not view himself as some type of royalty or legend in the film industry. Gable said this about his performances: "I'm no actor and I never have been. What people see on the screen is me."
Clark Gable was married multiple times; some may even consider him someone who habitually married. His first wife was Josephine Dillon, the theater manager at an Oregon theater whom he married in 1924. She was wealthy and was fifteen years his senior. She became his manager and helped fix his hair and teeth to boost his looks to further his career in Hollywood. They divorced in 1930.
Gable's second marriage was to Maria Langham in 1931. She was also fifteen years his senior. He married Langham because he believed she could be beneficial to his career. She, like Dillon, had wealth and connections. They remained married for eight years and divorced in 1939.
In 1939, Gable married the love of his life, Carole Lombard. He was hesitant to divorce his second wife because he knew it would be costly. However, after meeting and falling in love with Lombard, he knew the cost of divorcing Langham would be worth it. They became Hollywood's ideal couple. When World War II began, the couple wanted to do something to help. The couple volunteered to travel and sell war bonds. While Gable was finishing a film, Lombard traveled on her own. Tragically, on her way home to Gable, her plane crashed on January 16, 1942. Gable was devastated and took a break from his popular movie career to enlist in the U.S. Air Force at age 41. He was discharged three years later.
In 1949, Gable married for the fourth time to Sylvia Ashley. Their short marriage lasted three years, and they divorced in 1952.
His fifth and final marriage was to a former flame, Kay Spreckles. He became a step-father to her two children, and she was pregnant with her and Gable's son at the time of his death in November 1960.
Besides Clark Gable's spouses in his five marriages, Gable had another notable romantic relationship with actress Loretta Young. They had an affair during the filming of their movie, Call of the Wild, and it resulted in Young becoming pregnant with his child. She gave birth to their daughter, Judy Lewis in 1935. Young kept quiet about their affair and her pregnancy to protect their careers and his marriage.
Just before Clark Gable's death, he had completed filming of the film The Misfits, co-starring Marilyn Monroe. The film was based on a cowboy out of place in a modern society. It seemed to be a fitting role for Gable, who also felt out of place in an industry that was moving into the television era. During filming, he insisted on doing his stunts that involved rigorous scenes of rope-tying horses. Two days later, Gable had a heart attack in Los Angeles, California. He died on November 16, 1960 at only 59 years old. Gable was buried alongside his soulmate, his third wife Carole Lombard. He never lived to see his final movie or his son being born. The newspapers announcing his death had the same headline: "The King is Dead."
The actor hailed as "The King of Hollywood" was born on February 1, 1901. Clark Gable witnessed a play one evening and decided then and there that he wanted to be an actor. He joined a traveling theater group and eventually ended up in Oregon. He met Josephine Dillon, who became his manager. She advised him to fix his teeth to help further his career once he reached Hollywood. At the beginning of his time in Hollywood, he did not find much luck getting leading roles. Therefore, Gable returned to his first love: theater. He even performed on Broadway and recieved great reviews. He made his way back to Hollywood and booked his first big role in 1931 on The Painted Desert. Gable's big break, however, was his performance in the 1934 classic It Happened One Night. The role he will forever be recognized for was his role as Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind in 1939.
Gable's personal life involved five marriages. The first two marriages were to women fifteen years his senior. He married them to help boost his acting career. He married his soulmate Carole Lombard in 1939. She was his third wife, and they became Hollywood's favorite couple. Lombard tragically died in a plane crash in 1942. Gable was devastated and took a break from the movie industry to join the Air Force. After his military discharge, he returned to film and remarried two more times. His fifth and final marriage was to Kay Spreckles. She was pregnant with his son at the time of his death. Gable died on November 16, 1960 from a heart attack after returning home from filming The Misfits with Marilyn Monroe. Gable never saw his final film or his son be born. He died after completing another project involving what he loved most: acting. As Gable once said, "I'm no actor and I never have been. What people see on the screen is me."
Video Transcript
Clark Gable
Clark Gable (1901–1960) was an icon of the silver screen. He starred in films such as Gone with the Wind (1939) and It Happened One Night. In the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, Gable starred in over 75 films. He acted alongside Hollywood starlets including Marilyn Monroe, Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, and Loretta Young. He was typecast in roles of the heroic adventurer and the hard-to-get romantic. But as we will discover, Gable's screen image and his biography tell two different stories.
Youth
He was born William Clark Gable in 1901 in the small town of Cadiz in eastern Ohio. He went by ''Billy'' for most of his youth. His mother wanted to name him Clark, but his father, William Sr., protested because it was too effeminate. His mother died when Gable was just 10 months old. In an act of contrition, his father revised the birth certificate to include the middle name Clark on the same day that he filed his wife's death certificate.
William Sr. remarried in 1903 to Jennie Dunlap. Billy (Clark) grew close to his stepmother. At 16, he moved to Akron, where he saw his first play. He was immediately hooked. He began volunteering as a stagehand, eager to one day act on the stage.
When Jennie passed away in 1919, it turned Gable's life upside down. First, he traveled with his father to Oklahoma, where they worked on the oil fields. Three years later, Gable joined an acting troupe and traveled with them to the Pacific Northwest. He finally landed in Portland, Oregon, where he met Josephine Dillon, an acting coach. She would become his first wife.
Career
In 1924, Gable and Dillon moved to Hollywood. Dillon set up an acting school and commenced with the business of grooming Gable as a Hollywood star. The first step in transforming him into a screen actor was to change his name. Billy finally became Clark Gable. Dillon tutored him in movement and voice and paid for the dental work to get rid of the gaps between his teeth. Gable and Dillon separated just a few years later when he moved to New York to pursue a career on the stage.
Gable finally got his first film-speaking role in The Painted Desert (1931), which led to a contract with MGM. Gable's first big hit was It Happened One Night (1934) with Claudette Colbert, which won him his first and only Academy Award.
King of Hollywood
In 1939, Gable played the part of Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind—a performance that established him ''King of Hollywood.'' The unforgettable line, ''Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn,'' cost the studio $5000 in fines. The producers said it was absolutely worth it.
At first, the title of ''King'' was just a joke, but over time, it became part of his persona. A formal crowning ceremony was actually staged on The Ed Sullivan Show. Still, Gable said, ''I eat and sleep and go to the bathroom just like everybody else. There's no special light that shines inside me and makes me a star. I'm just a lucky slob from Ohio. I happened to be in the right place at the right time, and I had a lot of smart guys helping me—that's all.''
That same year, Gable married Carole Lombard, whom he starred with in No Man of Her Own (1932).
But happy times were brief. War was on the horizon. Lombard traveled the country promoting war bonds. In January of 1942, Lombard tragically died in a plane crash while she was flying home to California. The death of Carole Lombard, his third wife and love of his life, had a devastating effect on Gable. He joined the Army and was assigned to the 351st Bomb Group. By the time he resigned in 1955, he had risen to the level of major. Gable continued acting in films during World War II. MGM and the US government both agreed that his on-screen presence was as valuable to the war effort as his military service since he emoted an image of patriotism and heroism.
Love, Death
Clark Gable had a complicated love life. He was a serial monogamist. Gable married five times: Josephine Dillon in 1924, Ria Langham in 1931, Carole Lombard in 1939, Sylvia Ashley in 1949, and Kay Williams Spreckels in 1955. Gable once stated, perhaps sarcastically, ''It is an extra dividend when you like the girl you've fallen in love with.''
Shortly after wrapping on production of The Misfits with Marilyn Monroe, Gable suffered a heart attack and was hospitalized. The tragedy of it all was that he was only 59. His current wife, Kay, was three months pregnant with Gable's first son. An LA Times obituary quoted Gable as saying, ''This is a dividend that has come too late in life...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.''
Coincidentally, The Misfits was also the last film for his co-star, Marilyn Monroe.
Lesson Summary
King of Hollywood Clark Gable (1901–1960) starred in over 75 films in the 1930s, '40s, and '50s. Born and raised in Ohio, he grew passionate about acting as a teen. He was a member of several traveling theater troupes before moving to Hollywood with his first wife. He finally found success in the 1930s once he had mastered movement and voice and made some alterations to his physical appearance. He was married five times. At the age of 59, Gable passed away in 1960 from a heart attack.
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