Gossip Friday: Resentful Ex-Mrs. Gable

From June 1939:

Josephine Dillon Resents Title of Ex-Mrs. Gable

“It has been exactly one week since anyone referred to me as the former Mrs. Clark Gable,” said Josephine Dillon to your reporter a few days ago. She added, “You don’t know what a struggle it has been for me to become a personality in my own name. They never say, ‘Josephine Dillon, period.’–always ‘Josephine Dillon, ex-wife of Clark Gable.’ Why don’t you write a story,” concluded the dramatic coach, “of us poor unfortunates whose apparently sole claim to present attention or fame is a label in the past tense.”

As a matter of record, I do not think it has hurt Miss Dillon professionally to be labeled “ex-wife of Clark Gable.” It has helped. Students have enrolled in her dramatic school as much because she is reputed to have instructed Gable in the first rudiments of film acting as for the fact that she is a fine teacher. But it must be a continual thorn in the side of her ego to be constantly tied in print to a man she would have forgotten but for his emergence as a front rank star. And be rated unimportant as herself. I believe she is genuine in her desire to drop the label of the past.

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Rather ridiculous really. She made money by selling articles to fan magazines telling her tales of young Clark Gable, and there is no question that the only reason she was written about at all was because of her famous first husband. Why else would anyone report about her? Her acting coach business was based on that as well.