Gossip Friday: No Marriage

From January 1955 (Louella Parsons):

A rumor from several sources today had Clark Gable and Kay Williams Spreckels, ex-wife of multi-millionaire Adolph Spreckels, in an elopement.

A telephone call to the Gable home in the San Fernando Valley brought the information that Gable was week-ending at the ranch home of a friend and that he and Mrs. Spreckels were expected home for dinner.

When questioned about a marriage, the servant who answered the phone said:

“As far as I know, there isn’t any marriage.”

A few days before Christmas, Mrs. Spreckels stopped at my house and when I asked if she and “The King,” as the popular Gable is known, were getting married, she said: “Neither of us have any plans to re-marry.”

But of course, both of them could have changed their minds.

I do know that Clark spent Christmas Eve at her house, and she and the two Spreckels children were his guests on Christmas Day.

In Hollywood, you can’t overlook the possibility of their marriage, yet I doubt very much if their visit to the Al Menasco ranch was any more than a New Year’s visit.

Al Menasco is Clark’s oldest and best friend. He formerly had a Ford agency in Culver City near MGM where Clark reigned as op actor for so man years.

Mrs. Spreckels’ first husband was Martin De Alzaga Unzue, Argentine playboy known as “Macoco.” Her second marriage to Adolph Spreckels had a disastrous aftermath when he served a jail sentence for beating her over the head with a slipper.

Gable’s first wife was Josephine Dillon, his second Rita Langham, Texas socialite; then Carole Lombard, who was the love of his life and who was killed in a wartime plane crash. His marriage to Lady Sylvia Ashley lasted only seventeen months.