{New Article} 1961: Clark Gable’s Baby: This is a Story of Faith and Immortality

Sometimes, when I find a new article for the site, I sit down and read it, jot down some notes, and then put it in the pile to type. Other times (often when I’m backlogged!), I don’t read the article until I am actually typing it up. This article is one of those and I must say that while I was typing it I had to stop several times and re-read what I typed, shaking my head, “What the heck is the point of this article?!” I’m still not sure.

Kay Gable ignored the advice of her doctor. “Your own heart’s not in such great shape, you know,” he’d said. She ignored the advice of her friends. “It will be too much of a strain for you, Kay—with the baby only four weeks away,” they’d said. But it was February 1, 1961. And Clark Gable—her husband of five years, till the night of his death six weeks earlier—would have been sixty this day. And she was going to celebrate his birthday, her way, exactly the way she wanted to celebrate it. Just her. And him. And their unborn child. Together. In a little building somewhere between heaven and earth…She awoke early that morning. She had a light breakfast. She kissed her children good-bye—Bunker, ten, and Joan, eight—children by a former marriage. And then she got into her car and began to drive away from the house…As she drove, she remembered his words, among the last he’d ever spoken to her. Clark had never much of a man to talk about prayer, or church. So the words mighthave come as a surprise to some. But Kay had understood them.”When I’m gone,” he’d said, “when I’m there, on the other side of eternity say a prayer for me once in a while, go to church for me once in a while…” She pulled up to the church now, a small Catholic church. The priest stood outside to meet her. “I’m sorry, Father,” she said, “that I haven’t been able to get here since the funeral. But the pills, the sedatives—“ “I understand,” the priest cut in, softly. “Do you feel better now?” “I feel better,” she said. “Are you sure you can go through with this?” “Yes,” she said. She got out of the car. She stood there a moment and looked up into the blueness of the sky above her and smiled a small, secret smile. And she and the priest began to walk into the church.

It might have seemed a strange sort of Mass to some, with Kay there, in a rear pew, kneeling, her eyes closed—alone, completely alone in the church; only Kay and the sound of an organ playing softly from somewhere above her and the sound of the priest’s voice, coming from the altar, praying softly. But Kay had wanted it this way—to be alone with him, her husband, in a place such as this; cool, dark, quiet, sacred, distant, far from the world they had known together—yet, somehow, a link to things as they were now.

First of all, Clark’s funeral was not in a Catholic Church. It was at the Church of the Recessional in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale. So, if she was indeed going back to the church where his funeral was held, she would have been in that little church at Forest Lawn, so there would not have been a priest conducting Mass.  I have read in several places that Kay was on bedrest for the last two months of her pregnancy and left only for her baby shower and doctor’s appointments, so hearing she was driving herself to the church is contradictory.

The whole article is her on her knees talking to Clark and talking to God while the priest recites things in Latin.

Kay barely heard what the priest was saying now.

Because she, too, was speaking now—softly, so softly that only one person on earth or in heaven could have heard her. “Clark,” she was saying, “oh, Clark. Are you worrying about me? Don’t. Please don’t…I know you. The way you could worry sometimes. But don’t. Please don’t worry. Not now. Not ever…I will get through the days ahead all right. And the nights. You said to me once ‘You are not weak, Kay. You are strength to me, Kay”…So I will get by. And I will feel as I do now. That you are still with me. I know that you are still with me. And I will get by. And take care of myself. Myself. And your child…You’re going to have a big son, I think. A strong son. And he’s going to be such a lucky son, too, my love..To have had you for a father. The kindest, the best of men…There are others who will weep for him. Let them weep. But I, I will not weep. I will think of you, his father, and I will not weep…”

Who gave an account of this? Did Kay call a reporter immediately afterwards and tell them everything she just murmured to her dead husband? Or did the reporter sit in the pew behind and take notes? What an odd piece of journalism.

“…and I keep speaking as if I am certain the child will be a boy,” Kay was saying. “I don’t know, love. Nor do I care. Just as I know that you did not—do not—really care…If it is a boy it will be named, as we planned, either John Clark or Charles Clark. If it is a girl it will be named Gretchen, as we planned…But whichever, it will be our child. My child, and your child. And all I hope is that it comes to me soon, this child. So that, in a way, when I hold it, I will be holding you again. So that when I place my cheek against its cheek—as I will do for hour after hour after hour after hour—I will feel a part of you again, a part of your warmth…”

It’s funny, it seems that since the day Clark announced to the press that he and Kay were expecting, that there were quotes from Clark about the big strong son he would have and Kay talking about their impending son. I’ve always thought how it would have been wretched if the baby had been a girl since apparently that would have been such a big disappointment to them all! This is the first time I have heard that they picked out a girl name–and I can’t help but laugh a bit at the name, as Gretchen was Loretta Young’s real first name. Odd coincidence.

You can read the article in its entirety in The Article Archive.