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{In the News} The Final Years of Kay Williams 1965-1983
Here is our final installment of the Kay Williams news clippings series. The other installments: Clark Gable Marries Kay Spreckels 1955-1960 Kay Williams Divorces Adolph Spreckels, Dates Clark Gable Again 1951-1954 Kay Williams Marries Adolph Spreckels 1945-1951 Kay Williams Dates Clark Gable (For The First Time) 1944-1945 Kay Williams 1937-1943 We pick up in 1965. April 19, 1965: Los Angeles–On the flickering screen was the happiest marriage of casting and character, plot and player, in the long history of motion pictures. The handsome, muscular man who played the renegade Confederate blockage runner seemed less an actor than the real article. In short, it was hard to tell where Clark Gable…
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{In The News} Newly Widowed Kay Williams 1961-1963
We last left Clark Gable and Kay Williams Gable in late 1960. Clark died on November 16, 1960, and I am skipping over all the coverage of his illness and death as I have covered that before and it would get redundant–the subject at hand is Kay. You can read about Clark’s death and funeral here. So let’s pick up in January 1961, when Kay is newly widowed and an expectant mother. January 15, 1961: Gable’s Widow Gets Allowance Los Angeles–Clark Gable’s widow has a $5,000 monthly allowance from the actor’s estate to meet family expenses. The petition of former actress Kay Williams for this sum was approved in Superior…
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{In the News} Kay Williams Divorces Adolph Spreckels, Dates Clark Gable Again 1951-1954
When we last left Kay, she was married to Adolph Spreckels Jr. and had just given birth to their second child. September 13, 1951: Fifth Wife Sues Spreckels Heir Los Angeles–The fifth wife of Adolph B. Spreckels II, 39-year-old heir to a sugar fortune, has sued him for divorce, alleging cruelty. The former Kay Williams, 33, who married Spreckels six years ago, asked the court in her suit yesterday to oust her estranged mate from the Bel Air mansion they occupy. She claims Spreckels persists in staying there although they became estranged September 5. Mrs. Spreckels, former actress, alleged in her complaint that her husband used physical violence on her…
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{In the News} Kay Williams Marries Adolph Spreckels 1945-1951
Picking up with where we left off, Kay and Clark Gable are broken up and so Kay has moved on.. September 7, 1945: Kay Williams Is Bride Hollywood–Blond actress Kay Williams, who last year was reported engaged to Clark Gable, today was honeymooning with sugar heir Adolph Spreckels, Jr., of San Francisco. Same date: Film actress Kay Williams and Adolph Spreckels, Jr., sugar fortune heir, were married last night at the home of a Wickenburg justice of the peace. Adolph Spreckels Jr. was the grandson of Claus Spreckels, founder of the Spreckels sugar company. Now that she married Adolph Jr., you thought that was the last we’d see of her…
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{In the News} Kay Williams Dates Clark Gable (For The First Time) 1944-1945
When we last left Kay, she’d been awarded a divorce from her second husband, Argentine millionaire Macoco. Before we get into 1944, I want to address some inconsistencies about when Clark Gable and Kay Williams first got together. In her book, “Clark Gable: A Personal Portrait,” Kay details the following: I turned down the initial invitation to meet [Clark]. It was in 1942, shortly after I arrived in Hollywood. I had a stock contract at MGM, the same studio where Gable was the reigning star. I was living in a small apartment in Westwood when one day I received a call from Benny Thau, an MGM executive and technically, one…
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{In the News} Kay Williams 1937-1943
Just as I did for Clark Gable’s fourth wife, Sylvia Ashley, I’ve rounded up newspaper blurbs about his fifth wife, Kay Williams. Kathleen “Kay” Williams was born on August 7, 1916 in Erie, Pennsylvania. Her father left the family when Kay was very young and so she, her brother Vincent and sister Elizabeth were raised solely by her mother, Joan, on a peach farm. Kay knew her good looks could get her more than Erie could offer, and so she took off for New York at age 17 to become a fashion model in New York. She was soon heralded as “The Most Beautiful Model in the World” and appeared…
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Kathleen “Kay” Williams
Stats Born Kathleen Gretchen Williams on August 7, 1916 on a peach farm in Erie, Pennsylvania. She had two younger siblings, Vincent and Elizabeth. Her parents divorced in 1930 and her father abandoned the family afterwards. 5’5, blonde, blue-eyed. Quotes “Looking back I wonder if there are many people who even in 25 or 30 years of marriage find the happiness that Clark and I had in those five years and four months.” “Sometimes I would try to tease Clark into telling me some tasty morsels about his former leading ladies, but I might as well have banged my head against a stone wall. He simply refused to gossip. He’d…
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{In The News} Clark Gable Marries Kay Spreckels 1955-1960
We pick up from our last installment and head into 1955, the year Clark and Kay married. January 3, 1955: Clark Gable Denies Kay Spreckels Romance Hollywood–Actor Clark Gable today denied rumors circulating in Hollywood that he plans to marry Kay Williams Spreckels, former wife of sugar heir Adolph B. Spreckels II. “There is absolutely nothing to it,” Gable said. “Kay and I have been friends for 15 years and that’s all.” Mrs. Spreckels also denied the report. Same date: Filmland Waits Gable’s Return To Find Out Whether He Eloped Hollywood awaited Clark Gable’s return to work on his current picture “Soldier of Fortune” today to find out whether…
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Gossip Friday: Snubbed by Kay
Here’s a rare one, gossip about the fifth Mrs. Gable, Kay Williams, from the mouth of Louella Parsons, no less. Any guess which actress she’s talking about? From December 1955: Mrs. Clark Gable has become so much the wife of the King that she is seeing few of the old friends who were so good to her in the dark days when life was pretty desperate for her. It’s understandable that a married woman must accept her husband’s pals and make his pals hers, but there is one case where I think Kay is remiss–that of a certain actress who was very good to her during the days when other…
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{New Article} 1961: The Secret Clark Gable and Kay Never Shared
Obviously, if you take a gander at the Article Archive, I am a vintage magazine junkie. I scour Ebay and antique stores and love nothing more than when I find some obscure Gable candid or article nestled in the yellowing pages of a seventy year old magazine. Most of my magazines are from the 1930’s. Clark was top dog then and I know that I can snatch up any magazine, any issue, any year from about 1934-1941 and they’ll be at least one picture, gossip items and, if I’m lucky, an article. By the time Clark returned from war, after the initial “he’s back!” hubbub, the coverage of him lessened…