{New Article} 1956: The Brave Lovers

This article is from 1956, when Clark Gable and fifth wife Kay Williams Spreckels had been married less than a year.  It’s one of those that I’m not really sure what the point of it is. Also they picked the weirdest photo for the main page of the article; it’s him helping her out of a chair and she’s hunched over and not looking at the camera (See for yourself). Anyway.

Clark Gable and his wife Kay have had more than their share of trouble in their lives. But fate waited until now, when they thought there was nothing but peace ahead, to deal them the hardest blow.

Their big test came, ironically enough, just a few weeks before their first wedding anniversary, last July 11. It came suddenly, without warning.

The vivacious, beautiful woman Gable had chosen, who was sharing with him the outdoor, rough-hewn life he needs, was told she had a heart condition.

Kay, the witty, forthright blonde who used to boast she’d never had a sick day in her life, suffered several attacks of angina pectoris. She was rushed to the hospital. Clark called in a team of top specialists. They made every test in the medical book. But there was no getting around those two ominous Latin words.

However, the doctors were encouraging, if in a slightly negative way. “Don’t worry,” they told their beautiful patient and her famous husband. “We’re taking every precaution to ward off a coronary.”

Kay was given the same medicine that was administered to President Eisenhower following his heart attack. She was also given some firm instructions. She was told that she must follow them to the letter if she wanted to get well.

The instructions? Change her whole way of life. Just like that.

No more hunting trips with Clark. Not for a long, long time. No more location trips with him. No more swinging those gold clubs he bought her. No more dashing about with “The King” in that glistening white Thunderbird he loves to drive.

No more Sunday bicycle rides and picnics along the out-of-the-way roads in San Fernando Valley. No more airplane flights to Clark’s favorite fishing grounds up Oregon way. No more busy days working around their twenty-acre ranch home in Encino. No more riding beside her husband on that bright red tractor she’d surprised him with at Christmas.

In short, Mrs. Gable would have to give up, at least for the present, all the activities that had helped to make her first year of marriage such a happy one.

Kay was ordered to remain in bed for several months after she went home from the hospital. She was allowed to get up for only a few moments each day. But she was forbidden to climb the stairs to the attractive bedroom she and Clark had shared before her illness.

A temporary bedroom was set up in the downstairs study, which Clark had been using as his office. Kay organized it while she was still in the hospital. “I’ve been lying here moving furniture in my mind all day. Boy, have I worked hard,” she joked to a close friend who was allowed to visit her.

But though Kay’s sense of humor remained as healthy as ever, she experienced some pretty low periods as she lay in that flower-filled hospital room.

Not that she complained much. She’s not that kind of girl. “Kay’s always been one for keeping her troubles to herself,” one of her best friends points out. “She’s not a crybaby. Nor does she go in for self-pity.”

Still Kay was worried and depressed those first few weeks of her illness. But she did her best not to let her husband know about it. You could hardly blame her if she brooded over the fate that threw up this last minute hurdle just when it appeared she’d won everything she’d ever wanted.

Kay must have asked herself the question that many in Hollywood started asking as soon as the news of her illness leaked out. What effect would it have on her marriage?

Really? Clark was just going to be like “Well, you can’t go fishing or ride on a tractor anymore so….that’s that.” Silly. Also I can never get past the fact that Kay had attacks of angina in her early forties and then insisted on getting pregnant at 44. That seems so dangerous. Especially when you already have two children to raise. But I digress.

Once they were settled down in the house that had been Clark’s home for so many years, Hollywood saw very little of the newlyweds. Only a few close friends, most of whom are not “movie names,” have been invited through the big electric gate that guards the entrance on Petit Avenue.

The Gables have been content to be happy without trying to prove it to anybody. Mostly, they bypass parties and premieres. After all these years, Clark’s still embarrassed when feminine fans drool over him in public.

However, Clark was mighty pleased to find he was a hit with two young fans—Kay’s children by her marriage to millionaire Adolph Spreckels II. Seven-year-old Bunker (Adolph Spreckels III) and four-year-old Joan adore Clark. And he loves them.

“Clark spends a lot of time with the youngsters,” Kay says. “He got them each a pony and he’s taught them to ride. At night, we both sit with them while they have their dinner. You should see us all watching ‘Howdy Doody’ and those other TV shows the kids are so crazy about.”

Clark’s proud of the children. “They’re well-behaved,” he said. “Their mother’s done a wonderful job with them. She makes them toe the mark. Of course, Old Kathleen has an awful lot of remarkable stuff in her, a lot of good, plain horse sense.”

Remarks like these are funny to me. “We sit with them while they have their dinner.” Wow! You do, really? You sit with your own children while they eat dinner? Hardly an amazing feat for a mother in 2018. The children had a nanny and lived in the guesthouse; the nanny slept there with them. They didn’t even sleep under the same roof as their mother. I have no doubt that Clark and Kay both adored the children, but I wouldn’t exactly call her a doting mother.

You can read more about these “brave lovers” in The Article Archive.