1948: The 10 Greatest Gable Stories

By Mervyn Leroy

Modern Screen, July 1948

He’s many things to many men: friend, neighbor, legend. Here are ten sharply-etched impressions of him—all different…all matchlessly Gable.

I’m a Gable expert. I tried to sell the young hunk of dynamite to my boss, Jack Warner, straight off the Los Angeles stage where he, Gable, was playing in “The Last Mile.” My boss shook his head. “Ears too big.” Now I’ll bet he’d like to have just the ears under contract!

I’ve got a picture of Clark over my desk. It says on that picture, “Thanks for believing I had it in me.” But it really isn’t any thanks to me. You couldn’t help sensing the force in Gable. He always was—he still is—what any director in his right mind prays to have for his picture.

That’s Gable, the actor. Gable the man’s another story. A lot of other stories. He’s something different to everyone who knows him. He’s a friend, a neighbor, a presence, a state of mind. A million people have had a million contacts with him, and after you’ve listened to the first few hundred reports, you realize an odd fact. Gable emerges from every report a greater, and more amazing guy. I’ve thought over my collection of Gable anecdotes—culled through the years from people who know Clark best—and I’m ready to present testimony from ten of them (me included) to prove my point. I think you’ll find that each person quoted brings out a different facet of the man. But all facets are exciting, fine—Gable.

And not knowing the proper etiquette or protocol in a matter of this kind, I might as well start with my own Gable data, and get it off my chest…

I remember the day we were driving down a busy boulevard in Los Angeles, Clark and I, in his car. Two girls spotted Gable and chased him. They caught up, crowded his car over toward the curb. All of a sudden, I almost went through the seat. Clark gunned his car forward like a jackrabbit, twisted it straight for two tall buildings. Luckily an alley was in between. I didn’t know that. Clark did. We screeched around the corner on two wheels at 70 miles an hour.

“What are you trying to do?” I gasped when I got back my breath. “Kill me?”

“Sorry,” Clark said when it was safe to slow down. “What if those kids had bumped me, or I’d bumped them? An accident—maybe somebody hurt or killed. Whose fault? Clark Gable’s. When you’re in pictures, you’re on the spot. That was trouble,” said Clark, “so me—I just got out of the way!”

That’s one Clark Gable—canny, direct, practical, hard-boiled. Here’s another: Some visitors came to our set. One had just been through Clark’s old hometown, Hopedale, Ohio. I heard him ask Clark if he remembered his old grammar school teacher, Miss Frances Thompson.

“Of course,” said Clark.

“I just saw her and she’s got a big picture of you on the table by her bed. Calls you ‘her boy’!”

“No kidding!” Gable couldn’t have looked more pleased. Then his face clouded. “Her bed?”

“Well,” said the fellow. “She’s pretty old now, and pretty sick.”

“Got her address?” asked Clark.

I don’t know how many years it had been since Clark Gable had seen his old school teacher. But we couldn’t make another take until he’d gone to his dressing room, written her a long letter and sent it with a box of roses. That’s Gable, too.

“MR. GABLE” TERRIFIED HER

LeRoy rests his case. And goes on to some others.

Judy Garland’s maybe Clark’s staunchest fan. When she was a pudgy kid of fifteen, she carried a torch for Gable, and Roger Eden wrote her the song called “Please, Mr. Gable.” She sang that as she’d never sung any song before, and once, Clark had her do it.

She didn’t know he was listening, or she’d have sunk right through the MGM soundstage floor. But three years later, Clark showed up at a birthday party for Judy. How he knew she was having a party or even that it was her birthday, she’s never figured.

But there he was, and she was so terrified she couldn’t even squeak “hello.” He handed her a package wrapped in ribbon. “I can’t sing or make speeches very well,” he said, “but, Judy, I’ve wanted for a long time to thank you for one of the nicest things that ever happened to me. The song—” then he turned and was gone.

“I almost dropped the birthday gift,” Judy told me once, long ago. “Glad I didn’t. It was a record. Clark had spent the whole afternoon—I found out later—making it. I sneaked away from the party to play it and it’s still my prize platter, because Clark said to the recording mike what he was too bashful to say to me.

“How nice he thought I was, how he’d watched me—known for a long time I’d make good as an actress—how he loved to hear me sing, oh, a lot of things embarrassing to tell, but very easy on my ears. I sat and played it again and again and cried and cried. What a wonderful birthday! And all the time I’d never suspected that Clark Gable knew I was alive and on the same lot!”

She sighed. “The sweetest man ever to make a picture—and one of the shyest…”

To the young stars who’ve grown up around him at MGM Gable’s been the one Hollywood hero who summed up all their hopes and ambitions.

TO MICKEY, GABLE IS HOLLYWOOD

Mickey Rooney, for instance, used to tag Clark around the MGM lot like a shadow, copying everything he did. The Mick’s best star impersonation is his deadly take-off on Clark Gable. Clark caught him at it once years ago on the set of Manhattan Melodrama and Mickey’d have died gladly in embarrassment, but Clark asked him to do it again and still does whenever he catches him. The most unbelievable moment of Mickey Rooney’s fabulous career must have been when he succeeded Clark Gable as national box office champ. “I didn’t believe it. It was impossible,” said Mickey. “Clark is Hollywood to me…”

GABLE HAD HER WRONG

Clark Gable was also the man who handed Lana Turner the dizziest thrill of her life with five little words. It happened, though, long after she first met the mighty Gable. Lana was only sixteen when she woke up as MGM’s bewildered Cinderella girl. The front office trotted her down to Clark’s set, practically immediately. Looking ahead, they spotted her as a possible leading lady for their head man star. Lana didn’t know that, of course. Neither did Clark. Luckily, they didn’t tell him.

Clark was friendly but baffled. What were they bringing this green little high school girl to him for? What was this, the children’s house?

It still gives Lana gooseflesh to think of that reading. It was ghastly. She barely knew what a script was, and she was frozen in awe. Later on she learned what Clark had said after she’d tottered out.

“She’s a sweet, pretty kid,” he told people. “But she’ll never, never be able to act.”

“There have been times,” Lana will tell you, “when I’ve thought Clark had something. But I made some pictures and I learned a few things.

“One day I got the news that I’d make a picture with Clark. Experienced as I was by then I shook like a leaf at the very idea. Clark didn’t exactly jump with joy either. He hadn’t watched my career. When they told him his next leading lady was Lana Turner, Clark still pictured that awkward, scared little high school girl. ‘Are you kidding?’ he exploded. I heard about that, too.

“So, I couldn’t have been hind a blacker eight-ball when I started ‘Honky Tonk.’ There was one person in the world I wanted to prove myself to—and you can guess who. I put everything I had into our scenes that first morning. In the afternoon, I found a box of flowers in my dressing room with a note. It read ‘I’m the worst talent scout! Clark.’

“I’d barely finished reading it, before the face that had given me shivers and shakes poked through the door, wearing a sheepish grin. Then Clark spoke the five words that made me prouder than any gold Oscar ever could. ‘Baby,’ he said, ‘you’re a terrific actress!’

“Since then,” she laughs, “sometimes I think maybe I am. You know why? Because Clark Gable said so…”

TRACY RIBBED THE KING

Let’s consider Spencer Tracy next. Spence and Clark have been buddies since way before ‘Boom Town’ and Spence likes to chat about the coronation of Clark. How Gable got that tag—the King.

“It’s my most glorious picture of the Great Lover,” Tracy muses happily. “One afternoon I picked up a paper and read where some box-office poll named Clark the ‘King of Hollywood.’ I grabbed the phone and called the prop department. We sneaked on the Gable set that night and worked late. Next morning when Clark stepped through the door a long, red carpet stretched clear across the stage. All along, huge signs greeted Gable, ‘Long Live Our King’ and ‘We Love Our Roya Highness.’ Everybody Clark passed salaamed, crying, ‘O, King!’—actors, director, cast and crew. It was lovely, but Clark kept his top until he opened his dressing room door.

“The whole room was draped in purple. His char was gone; it its place we’d stuck a gilded throne. There was even a moth-eaten ermine robe draped across the arm, and a crown and scepter. We ganged up on him then, pulled him down, and crowned him ‘King of Hollywood.’ That’s when Gable blew up. He roared like a bull, ‘Tracy—you did this,’ and came after me. Well, I beat him out the door and off the lot to save my health. But all you have to do to set Gable on fire is to say, ‘Long live the King!’”

MAJOR GABLE MEANT NOTHING

In the book of John Lee Mahin (the writer, and Clark’s close pal) Gable’s the biggest softie ever. Johnny went through Air Corps days at Clark’s side, and the thing that struck him all along the line about Clark was his consideration for others.

Clark kept a camera with him all the time they were overseas and took rolls of pictures of every man in their crew. One day a kid who’d been with their outfit a long time and flown a flock of missions didn’t come back. They’d thought a lot of him, and it cast a pall over the whole Officers’ Club. Some of them went out and had some drinks to try and forget it. Not Clark. He went right to his desk and wrote a long letter home to that flyer’s wife telling her all about her husband, how everyone liked him, how they missed him, how sorry he was. He sent along all the pictures he’d taken. He did that every time something like that happened.

“The guys who flew with Clark were all crazy about him,” Johnny’ll say fervently. “He bent over backwards every minute not to be Clark Gable, the Hollywood star. I never saw him flash his Hollywood fame to get himself anything—except once.

“We were in London—a bunch of us—on leave. The younger flyers looked on Clark as a sophisticated man of the world, able to wangle almost anything. That put him on the spot one night when the Krauts were on the run and there was occasion to celebrate. A gang wanted to step out to the Savoy or some posh place and asked Clark to line up reservations. That particular night, all London wanted to celebrate too, of course, and the tight table situation was practically hopeless.

“Clark got on the phone though. ‘This is Major Gable,’ he started. ‘I’d like to reservation for twelve at—’

“That’s as far as he got. ‘Sorry, sir, we’re all filled.’ He tried again. And again. And again. ‘This is Major Gable.’ It didn’t mean a thing. The boys were getting a little worried after eight or ten turndowns and believe me, when it came to doing anything for his gang, Clark would go the limit. Next place he called he did.

“‘Say,’ he said, loud and haughty. ‘This is CLARK GABLE and I want a table!’ He got it.

“One incident adds up Clark Gable more to me than any I can remember.

“We found ourselves in Colorado Springs one night right before we went overseas, and right after some fairly rugged weeks in Officers’ Training School. We hadn’t had a look at a pretty girl for a painfully long time. We strolled into the bar at the Broadmoor Hotel, and there wasn’t a soul around except two girls sitting at a table. They were well dressed, obviously well bred.

“Both of us were dying for feminine company, but we didn’t even get a glance. ‘Damn it,’ Clark said at last. ‘I’m gonna ask those girls if they’ll have a drink with us.’

“’Ten to one you get blitzed,’ I bet him.

“Clark shrugged. ‘They can’t shoot you for trying.’ He strolled up, flashed his best Gable smile. ‘Hope I’m not being rude, but my friend and I would love to buy you a drink.’

“One girl gave him an icy smile. ‘No thank you,’ she said. But the other studied Clark with puzzled friendliness. ‘Funny,’ she mused, ‘but you look so familiar to me. We couldn’t possibly have met somewhere?’

“’Maybe,’ smiled Clark. ‘I’m Lieutenant Clark Gable.’

“’Oh,’ laughed the girl. ‘That’s it.’ Then she made a remark that I often kid Clark about. ‘I’m sorry, Lieutenant Gable,’ she teased, ‘but you do this sort of thing much better in the movies!’

“They finally broke down and had a drink and Clark asked if they wouldn’t have dinner and dance with us that night.

‘All right,’ the friendly one said, ‘That should be fun. I haven’t been dancing since my husband left for overseas.’ Clark pumped her for an hour or so all about him, where he was, what she’d heard. Finally, the girls left to get dressed and Clark and I sat around our room. Clark didn’t say much, just chain smoked. Suddenly he grabbed the telephone, called the two girls, and cooked up a story that our colonel had called us, we had to leave at once, we couldn’t take them out. Then he ordered flowers, penned a nice apology, wished them luck.

“I was struck a bit dumb by it all. ‘How come?’ I asked him. ‘What got into you?’

“’A-h-h-h,’ growled Clark, scowling like a thundercloud, ‘when a guy’s overseas dodging lead, I’m not going to take his girl out stepping!’

“We fidgeted in our room until plane time next morning. Because Clark Gable, on second thought, couldn’t be that way. That,” Johnny Mahin says, “is Gable to me…”

1. FIX-IT

Howard Strickling, boss of MGM’s publicity department, is Clark Gable’s next-door neighbor. Their ranches out Encino way almost run into each other. Howard has known Clark since the days when Clark was slinging Norma Shearer around the set in “A Free Soul,” but he can still work up a wonder wrinkle about the guy.

“I dropped out to Clark’s house once on studio business,” Howard relates to listeners, “not long after he’d taken the first big hitch on his fame. I found him out in his garage, in oil soaked overalls, smeared all over with grease, half buried in the engine of his car.

“’For gosh sakes,’ I kidded him, ‘you can afford to get your car fixed in a garage by now. You’re a star—why act like a grease monkey?’

“’Listen,’ came Clark’s muffled voice out from under the hood, ‘How do I know how long I’ll be in this acting racket? My box-office can vanish any minute. I may be darn glad to get a job as a mechanic. Besides,’ he wiped his grease-smeared face and grinned. ‘I’ve got to know how this works.’

“That was the real reason, of course. He wants to know how everything works.

“I walked over to his place the other day and found him wrapped up in an apron, canning fruit! He’s hipped on home refrigeration and canning and he’s learning all the answers! Gable’s a good farmer. He knows his stuff.”

THE WOMAN HE LOVED

Howard Strickling has been through some rough times with Clark Gable, too. One was the tragic time when Clark’s wife, Carole Lombard, lost her life in a plane crash on a Nevada mountainside. Clark rushed to join the search, and Howard was with him.

We had headquarters in Las Vegas, setting out from there every morning. By night everyone was wet and cold from the snow, and dog-tired from climbing the mountains. Clark couldn’t do enough for the search party. Each night he personally ordered a huge steak dinner for everyone. And there was this cowboy deputy named Jack, who couldn’t eat his.

“Jack was a typical old-time cowboy—slow-talking and hard-bitten—and Clark called him ‘sheriff,’ talked to him for hours. In all his grief, he couldn’t overlook the fascination of a unique guy. But it got Gable’s goat every night to watch Jack sit by his sizzling steak and stare hopelessly.

“The day we left, I missed Clark, and the plane was waiting. Finally, I found him in the hotel in a huddle with a pal of Sheriff Jack’s. ‘Here,’ Clark was saying, ‘I don’t want to hurt Jack’s feelings. But take this two hundred bucks, and for God’s sake, get him some teeth!’”

HE THOUGHT GABLE WAS A CREAM-PUFF

Victor Fleming, like me, is a director. He’s had Clark Gable in three pictures, including “Gone with the Wind.” Like Spencer Tracy, Vic has few words to spare—he’s a man of action—but he can wax eloquent over Clark Gable. “He’s the greatest guy I know,” he says. “He’s also one of the most powerful.”

“First time I noticed that strength was making ‘Test Pilot’ with Clark, years ago. We had a scene in a shack where Clark was heaving sandbags. They were prop sandbags, stuffed with sawdust, and when Gable tossed them around, they flew up win the air like balloons. It looked phony, and it worried Clark. He said he wanted real ones so we got ‘em—over a hundred pounds they weighed—and Clark heaved them all day long and stayed fresh as a daisy. He’s fast, straight and strong, as an actor and as a man…”

HE KNEW WHEN HE WAS LICKED

Jack Conway, tall, soft-spoken, has directed more Gable pictures than anyone.

“Clark’s a stubborn Dutchman,” Jack says, “but reasonable.”

In all the pictures they’ve made together they’ve only tangled once. That time, Jack wanted Clark to crawl under a leading lady’s bed, and Clark blew up. ‘Not by a damsite!’ Gable yelled. ‘Not as a man or as an actor have I ever sneaked under anybody’s bed, and I’m not gonna start now!’ Well, Jack had in mind a funny scene, and he poured on all the persuasion he knew. Clark fought like a wildcat, Even called the head executives of MGM in on the battle. Finally, Jack talked him into a sporting offer. ‘Okay,’ Clark agreed at last, ‘on one condition. After I do it, I see it, and if I look as much like a jerk as I think I will, out she comes. Right?’ They shook hands on that.

Clark showed up at the sneak preview still hostile. When they came to the bed-crawling scene, the audience roared and rocked—even Clark laughed. That was enough for him. He stuck out his hand.

“You win, Jack. From now on, I stick to acting. I’m not trying any more to direct pictures.” He never did, again.

Jack calls Clark “America’s Sweetheart.” Then he usually ducks. Clark thought that tag was funny just once. He and Jack had been hunting down in Mexico for a couple of weeks. The King looked like a black cactus around his face; he hadn’t seen soap and water since he left Hollywood. They’d been up late this one night, had about an hour’s sleep in their shack when the alarm clock went off for the morning’s hunting. Seeing the great Gable there in the cold, gray dawn, whiskered, dirty, red-eyed and spiky-haired, yawning and slapping himself awake delighted Jack. “Well if it isn’t America’s Sweetheart!” he said.

Gable stepped over to the cracked mirror, squinted at his reflection and shuddered. “God help America!” he grinned. That’s one of Jack Conway’s favorite pictures of Clark Gable…

HE’D GIVE YOU THE OSCAR OFF HIS MANTLE

I’ve saved Walter Lang’s reminiscences until the last on purpose. He’s another veteran Hollywood director, and Walter and “Fieldsie,” his wife, are as close a pair to Clark as exists in this world.; Madeleine Fields was Carole Lombard’s best friend and secretary for years before Fieldsie married Walter and Carole married Clark. They were inseparable as couples when Carole was alive.

Walter could talk about Gable all afternoon, but he couldn’t do any better than this story he once told me.

“Our boy, Richard, has one big idol in the world,” he said, “and that’s Clark. Richard’s right years old, and he wants to be exactly like Clark when he grows up.

“We were over at Clark’s house the other Sunday afternoon when Dick got a wave of his usual Gable worship.

“He studied Clark’s mantelpiece, and the Academy Oscar sitting there. ‘Someday, I’m going to have one of those, too, like you.’

“’Would you really like to have it, Richard?’ Clark asked. He stepped to the mantel and took down the trophy. ‘Here, Dick,’ he said, ‘from Me to You.’

“So our boy, Richard, has Clark Gable’s Oscar and there isn’t a prouder kid in the world. I’ve known a few people in mu life who’d give you the shirt off their backs,” Walter Lang says, “but did you ever hear of a star who’d give you the Oscar off his mantelpiece? Try and top that story!”

You couldn’t, of course. Any more than you could top Clark Gable.