{New Article} 1957: Memories of a Great Lover

This article from 1957 is about Clark’s “slowed-down” lifestyle. I’d say that’s understandable for a 57-year-old, wouldn’t you?

In 1958—on February 1—Clark will be fifty-seven years old. He’s still one of the biggest at the box-office—and as lusty a he-man to the ladies in the audience as he ever was.

But Clark is slowing but he still stands as straight as an Indian and can make a muscle on any part of body lie. He tips 200 on the scale—only twenty-five more than twenty years ago—and his middle finger doesn’t bulge.

But Clark has mellowed. “He’s seen it and done it and had it in spades,” one friend said, “and he likes the let-up.” Clark himself says,” I’ve reached the age of when I figure a man should relax and enjoy himself.” And that’s the clue.

Now Gable used to enjoy himself—and not so long ago either—could hardly be caught relaxing. He was tuned up for action—all the time—like the engines of sport cars, which he used to buy, hop in and then turn in for a faster one before he could get his license plates. That’s when he wasn’t plowing his ranch and running the tractor himself, or stalking mountain lions, or churning Mexican waters for black marlin. In the old days, he’d straddle a motorcycle and roar off on cross-country races at 100 miles per hour, jump a horse over the hills, or zoom off on a plane. Most nights the pace continued at Hollywood night spots or society spots here and abroad. That was Clark’s style—a strenuous, full life.

Today, the car he drives is a comfortable black limousine, not a hot-rod at all. He doesn’t own a motorcycle anymore, or for that matter a horse since his old one died. The only stock on his Encino ranch are two burros—Baba, which Grace Kelly gave him after “Mogambo,” and one he bought for his step-children.

As for adventure—well, the last deer he had in his gunsights got away when he loosened up and refused to shoot. The marlin he hooked, he let go.

The night life, the King dismisses these days as “a bore,” and “out with the boys” means a gin rummy or poker session.

It dives into his brief marriage to Sylvia Ashley, which had ended five years prior:

There was nothing elegant about Clark Gable’s twenty-acre Encino spread. The only feminine touches were left over from Carole Lombard’s years there—some deep chairs, a few antiques, Staffordshire china, pewter and copper knick-knacks that he hadn’t moved an inch.

Sylvia started changing all that. In a way you couldn’t blame her. Like ever one else, she knew the story of that near-perfect love. And reminders were all around her. White pigeons fluttered around the roof, descendants of the two doves of peace Carole has sent Clark after their first fight. In the garage the station wagon that had carried them on gay expeditions still sat, polished and neat. Red roses, planted by Carole, rambled along the white fence in front. A huge table in the living room still bore the deliberate ‘antiquing’ scars of Clark and Carole’s cigarettes.

“Her ghost was everywhere,” Sylvia said to friends later.

So Sylvia installed her English maid and tried to replace Clark’s loyal handy man—Clark’s friend—with a British butler, and ordered a guest house built—though Clark doesn’t like house guests.

Then Mrs. Gable looked over Clark’s poker-playing friends and decided they were just too crude, and Hollywood life was dull, and the ranch a bore. The lone fishing expedition Clark got her to go on ended with Sylvia sitting on the bank stream with her lap dog and making cute—but let’s face it—cutting remarks as he cast for trout. The upshot of it all was that Clark Gable learned the hard way that he didn’t want a doll to pamper. He wanted a wife geared to his speed.

It then goes into how his current wife Kay Williams is indeed “geared to his speed.”

As mistress of Clark Gable’s ranch at Encino, Kay Gable has suffered no unhappiness about any ghost. Carole Lombard’s pigeons, her antiques, china, horse prints, copper and pewter are things she likes to show off and talk about. Carole’s roses deck the cigarette-scarred table. “Aren’t they lovely?” Kay will say to visitors. “They’re from rose bushes that Carole planted herself!”

No ghost haunts Kay because she realizes that a man who has had four wives before her has had four lives—before his life with Kay. She is no rival of the golden girl who once brought happiness to the man Kay loves now—because he was a different man altogether then. The gags and escapades of Clark and Carole are only amusing to hear, not to envy.  Kay wisely knows she holds Clark’s love in another way, because he is in another stage of life. And Kay knows too that she has brought him something he has never known before—a full family life.

Both of Kay’s kids call him “Pa.” He’s teaching Bunker, his eight-year-old stepson, how to handle a rod and gun and helping him train Rip, the hunting dog he bought for him. He taught Bunker and six-year-old Joan to swim.

Kay was no fool. She saw what brought Sylvia down before her and was definitely not going to make the same mistakes. It should go without saying, anyway, that the 38-year-old Clark who married Carole in 1939 was a different man than the 54-year-old Clark who married Kay in 1955. They were two different men with different needs in life. I have always thought, though, if Clark and Carole had had children he would have “slowed down” earlier. The fast automobiles, motorcycles, big game hunting, etc. would have probably gone to the wayside much earlier. Unfortunately for Clark, he was a wandering bachelor for most of his 40’s into his 50’s, so his “growing up” took a bit longer.

You can read the rest of this article in the Article Archive.

(#2 Article added in 2019)