1950: Sylvia Stanley Gable Has a Lucky Star (Part 3)

by Sheilah Graham

Associated Newspaper Article

January 18, 1950

Hollywood, Calif., Jan. 17—Clark Gable has had unusual marriages. His first wife, Josephine Dillon, was and still is a dramatic coach. They met while Gable was in a stock company in Portland, Oregon. Previously, Clark made tires in Akron—he was born in Cadiz, Ohio, 49 years ago. Then he worked as an oil driller with his father in Oklahoma. He was also a railroad linesman. As a sideline, to make money, he got work as a callboy in stock, and acted in tent shows. One week he did fourteen shows and earned all of $1.50.

I remember meeting Mrs. Dillon shortly after Gable was divorced by his second wife, Rhea—who, like Josephine, was several years older than Clark. Mrs. Dillon was bitter. Not because she had lost her king, but because “he is too good an actor for the picture he is making.” Clark has never had too many illusions about his acting. Even though he won the academy award in 1934 for “It Happened One Night.”  “With me it’s just a business,” he used to say. But since the war, he has become very ambitious to make good pictures.

Gable is paid something like $6,500 a week by Metro. “But that isn’t enough,” says Clark, who—hood pictures and bad—has been in the first ten at the box office for the last 17 years!

“I haven’t made a really good picture since ‘Gone with the Wind,’” he has said. Clark was so anxious to star in “Captain Horatio Hornblower” that his agent, Phil Berg, offered Warner Brothers $250,000 to buy the movie rights for Clark.

It’s too early to tell, but I believe Sylvia will be just as interested in Clark the actor as she is in Clark the man. She is completely a man’s woman. When she’s madly in love, the interests of her man always come first. “When she was married to Fairbanks, where he went, that’s where she went. If he had wanted to fish in Siberia, she’d have hone there,” one of her friends told me. But don’t forget, Sylvia was an actress on the London stage 22 years ago, and while she is more of a home girl than any of us suspected, she doesn’t exactly hate the limelight.

Clark has denied the recent rumor of immediate retirement. When queried, Clark replied, “My present contract doesn’t expire until 1955. I suppose when it’s finished, I’ll be ready to retire.” The story that Gable would then direct pictures is false. Neither will he putter-out via character roles. He’ll be the great lover of the screen—or nothing.

Everyone wants to know how Lady Sylvia succeeded in marrying Clark when so many other just-as-beautiful girls failed. Virginia Grey was so sure that Clark would never remarry, she gave him the gate after years of companionship. Iris Bynum, who looked pretty hot for a while, plunged into marriage with a colonel in the army, shortly after a tiff with Clark. Anita Colby seemed to have the best chance, but when I asked her, “are you going to marry Mr. Gable?” she replied, “He’s never asked me.” Anita finally pulled up stakes here to live in New York.

Personally, I think Sylvia happened to be around at the psychological moment. Every one of Clark’s girls, including Marilyn Maxwell and Audrey Totter, have told me he was a very lonely person. As the years went on and the touch of gray appeared in his dark hair, he seemed lonelier. Sure, he still likes to fish and hunt, but lately the trips to his Oregon hunting grounds were getting shorter. And he seemed rather more lonely recently, with his passion for people in nightclub life.

Christmas and the New Year is always a dreary time for lonely people. And I think both Clark and Sylvia, who is usually very gay and has a great sense of humor, were dreading the holidays. And so, on December 18, four hours after leaving the Feldman party, Clark—who can be very obstinate, but equally impetuous—decided that Sylvia was his girl. On Monday, December 19, he called his best friend, Howard Strickling, Metro’s publicity boss, and asked, “what are you doing?” “I’m working,” Howard replied. Clark laughed. “You’d better stop working and come on over,” he said, “I want to talk to you.

“I want to marry quietly,” Clark told him on arrival. “Then you’d better do it right away,” Howard said. As you all know, the marriage took place the next day at the Alisal ranch near Santa Barbara.

Next to Sylvia, Gable’s current passions are automobiles and golf—both of which are shared by Sylvia. She learned to love the game in her Robert Sweeney days. A few months back, when Gable made a hole in one, you’d have thought that someone had given him a million bucks.

Last week a new Jaguar—was added to the Gable garage. It came from England, like Lady Sylvia. And it’s the fastest passenger car ever made—it can do 130 miles an hour! Clark, the restless type, used to wake up Carole at three in the morning and say, “Let’s go for a drive.” “Okay, Pappy,” Carole always replied.

It was Sylvia’s Cadillac that took them to San Francisco for the boat to Honolulu. Clark’s Cadillac was damaged on the night of the fateful Feldman party. In addition to the Ford, Gable owns two motorcycles. I hope Lady Sylvia has a good seat.

But this is for sure, Sylvia has a lucky star: She’s got all the beauty she wants; all the health—in spite of her fragile, China-like quality, all the money she needs, Fairbanks left her a cool million—and all the man she can ever use in Clark Gable.