1957: Memories of a Great Lover

Memories of a Great Lover

By Jack Wade

Modern Screen magazine, October 1957

Ask Clark Gable’s friends—his close friends—and they’ll agree that it happened the morning he walked into the boudoir of his fourth wife, Lady Sylvia Ashley Gable. Clark, miserable and fed-up, said, “I don’t want to be married to you any longer—or to anyone else!” Packed in that one short sentence was all the disillusion of a marriage that was a mistake, and a life that wasn’t living—not for Clark Gable.

That was four years ago. Clark was fifty-two then—and feeling it. In those four years, something happened.

Something must have happened—because one day, only a couple of months back, the big moose stepped into his marks on the set, grabbed the half-naked little strip teaser, wrapped her in his arms and kissed her for keeps.

“Print it!” the director barked. “Attaboy, King,” he added.

Clark Gable slapped his hair up out of his eyes and grinned up at Mamie Van Doren like he knew a secret…This was a different Gable. But to pretty, curvy Mamie he smiled, “Thank you, Honey.”

As for Mamie, when she got back her breath she gasped one eloquent word—“Oh!” This was something she had suffered the hots and colds anticipating for days—as a hundred Hollywood girls had before her in their time. Now it was over. Gable had kissed her. And kissing a legend is something you don’t forget fast…

But—what about Clark? How did he feel?—this fabulously attractive and virile man, this great lover who’s been crushing girls to his chest for the cameras for a long, long time.

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.

JOLT FOR CLARK

Now, none of this means that Clark is an old gaffer set for a rest home, a recliner chair and a pipe-and-slipper routine. Clark is simply trading one kind of life for another, a life that’s richer and more satisfying.  And like we said, it all started one morning when Clark said to his fourth wife, Sylvia Ashley, that their marriage was a mistake. A year and a half after their marriage, their divorce was granted.

Anyone could argue that Clark’s brief liaison with Sylvia Ashley should never have happened. Yet, maybe the jolt was necessary to prove to Clark Gable that what he thought he wanted, he’d outgrown. He didn’t like living with the International Set, with Café Society, and had been living that life for eight years, eight years following the tragic plane-crash death on a snowy Nevada mountainside in 1942 of Carole Lombard, the wife he had loved so very much, the woman who was as much a part of him as any woman had ever been. But for eight years he mourned, and then he didn’t want to be alone any more. So Clark and Sylvia eloped right before Christmas, 1949.

Their Hawaiian honeymoon with all the lush trimmings was right up Sylvia’s alley. It was when this orchid was transplanted to Clark’s San Fernando Valley hilltop that the petals began to curl.

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.

A WIFE GEARED TO HIS SPEED

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.

KAY’S STORMY MARRIAGES

He finally found her—he found her in Kay. Clark didn’t marry Kay Williams Spreckles impulsively. His was the proposal of a man who had had his last fling and wanted the woman he loved to be—not a fluttering butterfly, but a homemaker, and a companion. That’s what Kay Gable is for the King.

Clark met Kay around twelve years ago. He was just back from the war then and picking up the pieces of his life. So was Kay. She had already been married twice, but neither spelled happiness for her. In less than a year—both times—the marriage was over. Kay had been a New York model and was then in Hollywood trying to be an actress. Clark liked her warm friendliness and good looks. He took her out a few times. But he also took out a lot of other girls—he simply didn’t want marriage then. Kay, only too plainly, did. Clark cooled off. Not long after, Kay—who never made the grade as an actress—married the playboy sugar heir, Adolph Spreckles. They had two children during a stormy union. Kay divorced him in 1953.

Halfway through Kay’s unhappy marriage, Clark married Sylvia. And then his marriage was over too. Clark and Kay started seeing each other again. Again, Clark saw other gals, too. But somehow, he always came back to “Old Kathleen”—as he still sometimes calls her.

One July afternoon two years ago, in the rose garden of the ranch, Clark asked Kay to marry him. At Minden, Nevada, where Clark and Kay had just been joined together as man and wife, Clark looked at his bride—and tried to think of something to please her.

NO GHOST FOR KAY

He took her in his arms, kissed the top of her head, and whispered, “Where shall we go now? Europe? South America? Africa? Where would you like to go for your honeymoon?”

“I want to go home to the ranch,” said Kay, and that’s where they went. A quiet kind of peace, of happiness settled in Clark’s heart. He had come home—and brought the right woman with him.

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.

JUST THE TWO OF THEM

Then for a little while, life was holding more happiness for the King than he’s ever known before. Kay was pregnant. He whooped like a wild man the day she told him and swung her around the room till she begged “Uncle.” Next day, Kay was asking, “Clark, have you seen the doctor’s report? I can’t seem to find it.”

“Seen it?” grinned the expectant pop, “I put it in the bank vault!”

They agreed to keep the news a family secret, but a few nights later at Mervyn Leroy’s party, Clark was spilling the beans—he was that happy—hamming it up with a big cigar.

But only two months later, Clark’s little “halfback” was a dream that was not to come true. Kay lost the baby.

More things happened to add to Clark’s sorrow. A year ago in May, just as she was preparing to go with Clark on location to St. George, Utah, for “The King and Four Queens,” Kay felt pains grip her chest.

Angina pectoris, said the doctor—a severe heart condition. Since then, Kay has been forced into the role of a semi-invalid.

Clark doesn’t miss the social life. “Night clubs,” he still grunts, “are for people who are unhappy.” And Kay is well enough for occasional dinner parties. A few close friends, but the evenings aren’t late. Like New Year’s Eve—well, Kay and Clark stayed at the ranch and toasted each other with champagne, just the two of them.

JUST CALL HIM JOE LUCKY

Today Gable even enjoys being called “King,” a tag wished on him as a razz by Spencer Tracy years ago. Back then, he couldn’t hear it without its drawing a frown from him. Now he sits in the middle of the set with the nickname lettered on his chair—and presides over the set like a father at a dinner table. Now he knows—no one’s laughing at him—you give nicknames to people you love…

But even in this kick he isn’t letting anything strain an artery. After “Teacher’s Pet” Clark won’t make another picture until 1958. Like all star-producers he has to read scripts more often now than the sports magazines he used to fancy. “But if I don’t find a good one,” he states with that lop-sided grin, “then I go fishing.”

That’s what he did this summer, in Canada, after a rest in Carmel with Kay. When she gets stronger they hope to hop off for a tour of the Orient. After that—well, what looks good? He’s in no hurry. After all, in three years he’ll be sixty. But if you ask him when he expects to retire, he answers fast—“Not while they still want me hanging around!”

And, if the past is any indication, that will be for quite a spell yet! One thing is certain: Clark won’t slip into doddering character jobs! What he really means is “as long as they want me hanging around as the King.”

And if time finally knocks the crown from his head, he won’t be shedding tears for himself. Because he can look forward to work and play, with his final love and his final mate—and his young family growing up around him to keep him warm.

Clark always called himself Joe Lucky. In a new—and rather wonderful way—his luck still holds.