1952: Gable’s Divorce Problem
By Arthur L. Charles
Modern Screen, January 1952
Millions of dollars are involved. Famous names will be tossed around. The “King” is up against the most expensive fight of his life.
In Hollywood, the unwritten law says that no actor must file for divorce.
Should an actor and his wife strongly disagree—and this is putting it mildly in the case of Clark and Sylvia Gable—then it is the little woman who must sue the actor and not vice versa.
The reason for this is that the actor must remain gallant in the eyes of the public. No matter how strong the case, he mustn’t plead it. After all, how gentlemanly would it look for a man to accuse his wife of mental cruelty?
Clark Gable was willing to go along with the game. It was his understanding that his bride of 17 months and six days would file for divorce in May. And Lady Sylvia did.
On the even of a leisurely trip aboard George Vanderbilt’s yacht to Hawaii, Lady Sylvia announced that she had filed a divorce complaint in the California Superior Court. At the time, she said she wanted absolutely nothing from her tall, handsome graying husband, and was in fact, acting only on his request.
It was Clark, she intimated, who wanted their marriage dissolved. Not she. A few weeks previously she had even scolded reporters at the airport when they asked her to comment on the separation. “What separation? she had innocently asked.
Gable also insisted upon extending the fiction that he was sublimely happy.
He was even happier, however, when Lady Sylvia filed her complaint. But this happiness turned to sorrow when Gable learned that Sylvia wasn’t too anxious for an early hearing. In fact, she was hoping for a reconciliation.
Gable has been divorced twice before—once in 1930, from Josephine Dillon, a dramatics coach, and once in 1939, from Rhea Langham, daughter of a wealthy rancher. Both of these divorces cost Clark a pretty penny, but at least they were friendly.
The divorce involving Sylvia Gable is not. Attempts have been made to settle the dispute amicably, but to date, none of these have worked out, and the divorce has developed into a knock-down, drag-out affair.
As of November, Gable was determined not to pay his fourth wife a single penny in alimony, contending that she was an extremely wealthy woman in her own right, having acquired quite a bit from three previous husbands.
The basic source of Lady Sylvia’s fortune was from Douglas Fairbanks Sr. Back in 1935, Sylvia’s first husband Lord Ashley publicly charged Fairbanks of alienating his wife’s affections. After the divorce, Sylvia married the dashing actor. Four years later, Fairbanks died, and Sylvia inherited more than a million dollars.
Gable was irritated when he learned that Sylvia planned to take her own good time about following through on the California divorce. The more he thought about his 17 months with her and what it had cost him, the hotter he grew under the collar.
He finally decided that he would file suit in Nevada, where a legal divorce is obtainable in six weeks. In California, a divorce takes at least a year to be final.
Gable drove up to Glenbrook, Nevada, where he ran into Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner. This was in September. When reporters asked if he were contemplating a divorce, Clark said, “I’m just up here to soak in a little sun.” he lolled about Lake Tahoe in shorts, played golf, took things easy. But the newsmen knew what he was up to when he applied for a Nevada driver’s license and changed the California license tags on his car to Nevada ones.
“Okay,” Gable finally admitted. “I’m in the process of making myself a true resident of Nevada. I’m even looking around for a ranch, a small place, maybe 100 head of cattle. You want to know about the divorce. My six weeks is up on October 4th or 5th. If I need a Nevada lawyer, I’ll get one.”
Gable has always been cagey with the press where his private life is concerned, and this time was no exception.
Actually, the entire divorce plan had been worked out with his Los Angeles lawyer, Bill Gilbert, long before he’d even set foot in Nevada.
The plan was simple. Gable was to drive up to Glenbrook, 50 miles from Reno. He was to establish legal Nevada residence by applying for a driver’s license. He was not to leave the state for at least six weeks. At the end of six weeks instead of filing for divorce in Reno, Gilbert’s Nevada affiliate, attorney William Coulthard would quietly file the complaint in Las Vegas. Maybe no one would discover it there.
Fat chance!
On October 4th, Clark Gable filed a divorce complaint against Sylvia Gable in Nevada, charging that, “the defendant has treated the plaintiff with extreme cruelty and has caused him great grievous mental suffering and pain without cause or provocation, and plaintiff’s health was and is thereby and therefrom impaired.”
When Lady Sylvia was served with a copy of the complaint she was enraged. The next day her lawyer, Jerry Giesler, one of the shrewdest attorneys in California, announced that the Nevada divorce would be fought by his client.
“In 1949,” Giesler explained, “the California legislature passed a law forbidding one party to obtain a divorce in another state if he has been a bonafide resident of California in the preceding 12 months. If he does obtain such a divorce, he cannot return to California for 18 months.”
The legality of this law has never been tested, and many attorneys say that Gable’s divorce is legal as long as he maintains a legal residence in Nevada. (Recent reports however, indicate that this is not the case, and that Gable will not be allowed a Nevada divorce.)
While all this legal hassling was going on, Giesler also announced that Sylvia Gable would amend the complaint she filed in Santa Monica last May and would seek both a settlement and an annual share of Gable’s income. He implied she would file a separate maintenance action.
“After all,” explained one of Sylvia’s friends, “I can’t understand Gable at all. You can’t marry a woman for 17 months and then throw her out of your house without making some provision for her support. I don’t care how much money a girl has in her own right. According to Anglo-Saxon law, a husband is charged with support of his wife.
“This is no case of the wife having left the husband’s bed and board. Gable had the locks changed on the Encino ranch house. Sylvia couldn’t even get in.
“They may not have any children, but certainly after 17 months of marriage, she’s entitled to something.”
Friends in Gable’s camp say, “You have no idea how much money Sylvia cost the King. Did you see what she did to the ranch house? She tore out half the orchard and replaced it with a formal rose garden. She moved her own furniture into the main house, bought paintings and a TV set, had a separate guest cabana built, changed the whole works. It must have cost Gable more than $100,000.”
To which Sylvia’s crowd says, “So what? Of course, she’s improved his property. What dutiful wife doesn’t? But it’s still his property, isn’t it? She didn’t buy a million dollars’ worth of jewels, or a big house for herself. All she did was make his place livable. In this country when you lock out your wife, you have to pay her something for services rendered. What does Gable want Sylvia to do, pay him for the privilege of having been married to him?”
When Sylvia’s lawyer and Clark’s lawyer got together in an effort to settle the mess, Gable’s lawyer said that Sylvia’s alimony demands “were so unreasonable and exorbitant it was obvious no agreement could be reached.”
The rumor was that Sylvia wanted a million dollars from Gable to be paid over a period of 10 years, $100,000 a year. In short she valued her 17 months of marriage to Gable at approximately $60,000 a month, figuring in terms of cold cash.
How accurate this rumor was, no one could find out. Perhaps it was the first in an exchange of bargaining offers. Anyway, Gable’s lawyer came right out and said that despite his client’s movie income of $500,000 a year, Lady Sylvia had spent more than Gable had earned. How and on what Sylvia Gable had spent more than half a million dollars was a pretty huge mystery in Hollywood. It still is. Sylvia made many changes on Gable’s property but even the highest estimate of these was around $250,000.
Anyway, when Sylvia’s lawyer was confronted with this statement, he said, “It’s haywire.” He said that talks which had as their purpose an out-of-court settlement broke down when he asked to see Clark Gable’s income tax returns. “We cannot accept a bald statement as to Mr. Gable’s earnings that comes right out of thin air,” Giesler said. “The usual thing in any divorce case is to inspect the joint income tax records, and Gable is no exception.”
Gable’s lawyer countered by saying that Mrs. Gable’s attorney had been sent “an accurate statement” of Mr. Gable’s financial affairs and status the previous week.
While all this fighting was going on, Gable discreetly remained in silence up in Nevada. He played golf, sun-bathed, began dating a few girls who were also in Nevada for divorce purposes. He took out Barbara Reed Joseph one night, and generally played the field.
He also spent his spare time looking over cattle ranches and announcing once again that he would make his legal residence in Nevada, and just commute to Hollywood for pictures.
By the time you read this, Gable should be starring opposite Ava Gardner in a comedy entitled, “Sometimes I Love You.”
It is also possible, though not probable, that he tried to persuade Sylvia not to contest his Nevada divorce, or to go through the motions of filing her own divorce, just as Nancy Sinatra did.
This doesn’t seem probable now. The rumors are that Sylvia will ask for her divorce and then leave Hollywood for good, and move to Nassau.
And no matter what effort Gable makes to minimize the payment, his marriage to Sylvia is going to cost him. Sylvia Ashley is shrewd. When it comes to worldliness Gable isn’t in the same league with her.
As far back as last September, Gable was advised to go easy on his divorce suit. Friends told him the notoriety would do him no good; that he’d have to hand over a good share of money in the end, if even for nothing but the legal fees. But the King was adamant. The marriage had cost him a fortune, and he was going to fight this through to the end. The way he felt, Sylvia didn’t deserve more than the legal minimum, whatever that was. And the fight got under way.
In his long career Gable has faced divorce suits, a paternity suit, and various legal battles. Now that he’s 50, all his friends say he’s entitled to a little peace of mind.
The fact that he refused to take the easy way out, that he stubbornly chose to fight his way through a nasty divorce mess is certainly proof that he is still a man of courage, integrity and fortitude.
Lady Sylvia should know better than to get “the big Dutchman” angry. When aroused, Gable is a terror, even in a court of law.