{New Article} 1951: What’s Wrong with the Clark Gables?

This 1951 article is all about how there is indeed nothing wrong with Clark Gable and Sylvia Ashley’s marriage. Okay, sure. Clark and Sylvia had been married just a little over a year and were at this point spending more and more time apart.

That Clark is trying to make this marriage his last is very obvious. I nearly fainted when I saw him all dressed up with Sylvia the first night of the Sadler’s Wells Ballet. Clark doesn’t know one end of a ballet shoe from the other. He went to please Sylvia, of course. And the fashion shows! It’s fascinating to see Clark at Sylvia’s side, hob-nobbing with the elegant dress designers. He even bought a suit for her at one of the fashion flings.

Clark has never been a man for parties in his home. But Sylvia is a girl who likes to have people around, so Clark has enlarged what used to be the combination tap room and dining room. Now they have one big room, and most Saturday and Sunday nights they have quite a gang in—mostly Sylvia’s friends.

And Sylvia, if she misses the non-stop traveling to the gay playgrounds of the fashionable world—well, at least she hasn’t been heard to complain. I haven’t seen her in a night club with Clark since the marriage. And she passes her days in the garden, fixing up the roses, or absorbed in her needlework. Sylvia has a “green thumb.” Everything she touches blooms. Her roses are all over the place and very beautiful. The 8 by 6 rug in the living room, she designed and made herself.

A week before the surprise elopement of Clark with the girl who was then Lady Sylvia Stanley—before that, as you know, she was Mrs. Douglas Fairbanks, senior, and before that, Lady Ashley, daughter-in-law of the Earl of Shaftesbury—a columnist printed the story that ever since the tragic death of Carole Lombard in a plane crash, Clark had kept the bedroom of the wife he adored, untouched. Every dress was in the same place. The perfume was undisturbed on the blonde colored dressing table. Clark was furious when he read the story. “It’s completely false and ridiculous,” he stormed. The dresses and personal belongings had been sent to Carole’s relatives. But the furniture and décor were left as Carole had planned it. Why not? Clark wasn’t going to marry again, so why redecorate?

No one wants to live with a ghost. The new Mrs. Gable, with Clark’s complete agreement, called in a top decorator to turn her bedroom into a gay green and white affair, which matches her coloring and complements her personality. The drapes and coverings are in English imported chintz with a white background. The chairs are quilted with the same expensive material. And to please his lady, Clark gave up his office and turned it into a sitting room for Sylvia. All this, plus the newly built guest house. And a barn converted into a studio for Sylvia who loves to paint. This doesn’t seem to add up to trouble in the marriage, does it?

A lot of these things are the very things that drove Clark to divorce Sylvia: the redecorating of the ranch to her more proper tastes, the constant parties in his private home (and her nephew who moved into the guest house for long stretches). The preservation of Carole’s room is indeed a false rumor. It is documented that Clark sold off many of Carole’s belongings and gave a lot of her clothing to her friends. She had bought some of the costumes she wore in her final film, To Be or Not To Be, and it is documented that Clark returned them back to the studio for a refund.

This is how the future seems to be shaping up for them. Career-wise—Sylvia is rather vague about motion pictures. At Clark’s last preview, she sat with him at the back of theater, giggled a lot, then summed up, “It was very gay.” But she plans to be with him again on the next location trip. This will be “Lone Star” for his own independent company. The plan now is to shoot it in Texas. So once again Sylvia will pack the linen and the silver and go by train, probably, while Clark drives alone. And that, I suppose, will start some more “trouble” talk.

Before the picture, they will have had the trip to Nassau and New York. Clark was always dashing off to New York prior to his marriage to Sylvia. But in those days he was bored in Hollywood between pictures. The reason for the last jaunt, I am sure, was to give Sylvia a change.

Well by the time Clark started production on Lone Star, he had told Sylvia he wanted a divorce. She filed for divorce on May 31, 1952.

Modern Screen magazine followed suit with an article called The Inside Story of the Gable Rift in July.

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

(Article #28 posted in 2019)