1931: Danger in His Eyes

By Elisabeth Goldbeck

Motion Picture, August 1931

They’re all making way for Clark Gable, the new he-man star. With the Valentino eyes and smile he has every woman helpless

The following data about Clark Gable are not to be regarded as the delirium of a woman who is only human after all. These are cold facts, almost statistical, the result of sober and dispassionate observation. You needn’t hesitate to believe every word.

Since Clark Gable came to Hollywood, there has been a great unrest at the Metro studio. It is noticeable in every department, affecting all women—from stars to secretaries.

Girls sigh and powder their noses a good deal, with a flushed and flighty air.

Every woman who talks to Mr. Gable comes away from the meeting with a sort of stark look in her eye.

In his pictures, interest is apt to focus on the heavy instead of the heroine. Yet stars want him to work in their pictures, even though they know he may steal them.

The effect is universal and infallible.

All this simply proves that women love menace. And that in spite of all their modern theories of equality and the single standard, the arrogant male has the strongest appeal for them, as he always has had, and always will.

Clark Gable is six feet tall. He weighs two hundred pounds. No waist. No hips. But his shoulders are tremendous, with the comforting sense of not being padded.

His eyes are light gray and vivid, astonishing in his dark face. They are naturally provocative, and they have that well-remembered droop of Valentino’s. He has Rudy’s same enigmatic smile, and the same strong animal magnetism, felt immediately by men and women alike. But he lacks the sleekness of Valentino. Clark Gable is never languid. He’s rough, male and vital.

Continuing with this cool and detached estimate of the man, we find that he is the product of the two professions he has worked at—a cross between an actor and a lumberjack.

How the two were ever reconciled in one man, only Mr. Gable will ever know. Perhaps in time the actor will triumph. At present, the lumberjack is holding his own.

Life of a Lumberjack

Clark was born in Cadiz, Ohio, thirty-one years ago, but he really lived in Akron, where he was brought up and educated. When he was a young boy, he went with his father to the oil fields of Oklahoma. At home he had been prop boy, scene shifter, and general handyman for the local stock company. When it seemed that oil wasn’t really his métier, he joined a cheap repertory company as an actor, and toured the United States, playing one-night stands in all the small towns. Like all other repertory companies, they were eventually stranded far from home, without a cent. It happened to be in Portland, Oregon.

“I couldn’t get away,” said Clark, “so I got a hob as a lumberjack, and worked in the woods for months to save enough to get back to civilization.

“Those men were hard as nails, in body and mind. I wasn’t used to any exercise at all, and my hands were like this”—he indicated the white table cloth. “I worked for a great big Swede, who had huge hands like iron. He was on one end of a big saw, and I was on the other. I didn’t want to admit I couldn’t keep up with him. I worked, bent over, until at the end of the day I couldn’t stand upright—literally. And my hands were so raw and stiff that when I woke up in the morning I couldn’t straighten them out—I had to put them in hot water before they’d uncurl.

“At the end of right months, I was as hard as any of them—both my hands and my mind. I was so young then, that it was very easy for me to be influenced by these men. I was only seventeen or eighteen. You know when you’re young and unformed you easily absorb what you hear and take on the characteristics of your associates.

“I had sense enough to say nothing and listen hard. Those men had a rough philosophy of their own. I used to sit there by the hour and listen to them talk about the world as they saw it.

“They had no respect for women. Oh, they respected their wives, in a sense. But you know that women mean just one thing to such men. And their wives were just slaves, to do the work and please their men. The women were happy enough, because they didn’t know any better. And of course, the men only felt as they did because they were ignorant—although sometimes I’m inclined to think they were right!

“Anyway, when I left there, I felt just the way they did.  I was as hard as iron in every muscle. And I was pretty tough. The psychology of the lumberjack is not very gentle—and down in the Oklahoma oil fields they were real men, too. And of course, on the stage the people I’d known hadn’t been exactly sweet and lovely.”

With this sinewy schooling behind him, he started out on the familiar career of a stage actor. Stock, road companies, appearances on both coasts in famous roles, ending up with the Los Angeles production of “The Last Mile,” which catapulted him into the talkies. After playing comedy and romantic leads all his life, Clark was much surprised to find himself a heavy in pictures. In the course of the years he had become quite a finished product, and his lumber-camp feeling about women and life had been tempered—a little. But the all-seeing eye of the camera detected it.

His Slant on Women

If it’s any comfort to them to know it, Mr. Gable is likewise susceptible to women.

“Well, not exactly susceptible,” he said slowly, “but I think they’re marvelous! I don’t think there are any women anywhere in the world to compare with American girls. So smart, so good-looking, so independent and intelligent.

“It isn’t their intellect that makes me like them, but I do admire it in them. I love their courage, and the way they want to do everything men do. For instance, this girl who’s going to try to duplicate Lindbergh’s flight—I think that’s great!”

Clark is not one of the men who resent women’s craving to be man’s equal.

“Men who resent it,” he said, “are men who are worried because they think their supremacy will be threatened. They would admire it, they couldn’t help it, if they didn’t fear it for their own positions.

“I don’t want to be the head man, with women. I do want to be superior to other men. I want to be as good or better than any other man on earth. I have a very strong feeling of competition about that.

“But if a woman does what I do, that’s not competition. Because she’s a different sex, don’t you see? I’m delighted if she can do anything as well as I can.”

In other words, Clark Gable is a man of the magnanimous old school, who knows he can afford to make any concession to women, because they can’t win anyway. He’s aware that his sex makes him superior to them, no matter how many oceans they fly across or political positions they fill.

He can watch them performing their feats, with graciousness and pleasure, because he knows they are beating their pretty little heads against a stone wall.

Men have the upper hand, and unless Nature makes some unexpected changes, they always will have, whether women are suffragettes or downtrodden wives. “I’m glad you said that,” he remarked, “Because that’s it, exactly.”

Now do you see what I mean about the arrogant male? Women may resent this attitude, but they love it, too. They love to be patronized if the patronizer’s shoulders are broad enough, and not padded.

Mr. Gable will get along.