{New Article} 1951: The Girl Who Won Gable Back

This article is a follow-up to the one I posted a few weeks ago, Clark Gable’s Secret Romance. That 1949 article was all about the sweet, secret romance between Clark Gable and Virginia Grey. Well, by the end of that year Clark had married his fourth wife, Sylvia, and left Virginia in the dust, despite Modern Screen magazine’s insistence that Virginia would be the next Mrs. Gable.

By the time this article was published in November 1951, Sylvia had moved out and Clark was back on the market.

The night she heard of Clark Gable’s marriage to Sylvia Ashley, she cried her eyes out.

Later, her sister came by, took one look at her and asked, “Do you love him that much?”

“I’ve been in love with him for six years,” Virginia Grey said. And the tears came again.

Virginia had not expected Clark Gable to marry Sylvia Ashley. She’d hoped that if he ever married again, he’d make her his bride. As a matter of fact, no one expected Gable to marry Sylvia—not even Gable himself. He proposed in a moment of self-delusion, and a year later realized his mistake.

But what about Virginia Grey, this 34-year-old actress with the sky-blue eyes, the soft auburn hair? Why did Gable turn to her after his fourth wife filed for divorce?

Will Virginia ever become the fifth Mrs. Gable?

It’s been written that Virginia was quite bitter about Clark’s marriage to Sylvia and referred to her as “Lady Ashcan” in private. Can’t say I blame her.

Gable regarded Ginny as “the old reliable,” the girl who would always be there. For a time, there was talk that Ginny would marry Richard Arlen, but that came to nothing.

There was talk, too, that Gable would marry again, but as far was Clark was concerned, marriage was out. He had and still has a faithful secretary in Mrs. Jean Garson, a former secretary to Carole Lombard. The daily housekeeping routine of paying bills, ordering food, answering mail, and all the rest of it is still taken care of by her.

Many people insist that one cause of the present breakup between Lady Sylvia and Clark was Sylvia’s inability to get along with Mrs. Garson.

Anyway, as long as he had Mrs. Garson to look after things, Gable was never in a hurry to get married. He never proposed to Ginny.

Had she been more ambitious, more devious, Ginny might have forced the play. She isn’t the type.

“Sure, I love him,” she confessed to her sister, “but thousands of people have been trying to marry him off for years. Why don’t they just stop matchmaking? When the right time comes for Clark to marry, he’ll get married, but not before.”

Gable kidded himself into believing that December 20, 1949, was the right time for him. That was the day he and Sylvia Ashley were married at Alisal Ranch. They went to Honolulu on a honeymoon, while Virginia Grey remained at Encino, and wept.

Like all good troopers, however, she went back to work. Whenever reporters asked her about Gable, she insisted that he was a wonderful man, and that she hoped he was very happy.

But Gable wasn’t very happy. Early this year, it was no secret that his fourth marriage was on the rocks.

Just before leaving for Honolulu aboard George Vanderbilt’s yacht, Sylvia Gable filed a divorce action charging grievous mental cruelty. That was in June. On her return to California, she moved out to her beach house, and Gable went to work in “Lone Star,” with Ava Gardner.

He got lonely. After a hard day’s work, there was an empty house to greet him, and no one to visit but Howard Strickling, the MGM press director who lived across the road. But he saw Howard practically every day at the studio.

It might take years before he could technically call himself a single man, but certainly Clark had no wife to come home to.

What was more natural for Clark than to call up Ginny Grey, the girl he could depend on for loyalty and friendship? Well, he called her, and now they take rides together and swap stories, as they did in the old days. No one ever sees them in public, because Clark likes to give the impression that he’s through with women.

There are some who insist that Gable loves Virginia Grey as he might love a kid sister. Others say that if he did love her at all, he would have married her years ago. The smart money, however, points out that Clark didn’t realize what a gem he had in Ginny until he went ahead and married someone else. They say that by remaining herself, Ginny had won back the King.

Clark’s secretary’s name was actually Jean Garceau, not Garson. Jean went on to write a book about her time with Clark (which I do recommend). What’s interesting is that although there were of course many adjustments that had to be made when Sylvia entered the household, Jean seemed to get along with her just fine. However, if you read the book, you will find that Jean’s decades-long tenure as Clark’s right-hand woman came to a rather abrupt end soon after the fifth Mrs. Gable, Kay Williams, arrived. Not much explanation is given in Jean’s book, so we can figure that one out for ourselves.

This is a fan magazine, so we can take it with a grain of salt, but from what I had previously read, Virginia refused to see Clark again after the Sylvia breakup. Can’t say I blame her for that either. Who wants to be the girl who is strung along. Well, whether this article is right or not, Virginia never did become Clark’s wife. In fact, Virginia never married. Many say Clark was the reason.

You can read the article in its entirety in The Article Archive

(Article #24 posted in 2019)