Clark Gable's Post War Blues, 1945-1951

As that scalawag, Rhett Butler his best remembered role. His charisma in this film is still overwhelming. Gone With The Wind, 1939

 Last year marked the 80th anniversary of one of Hollywood's most entertaining and enduring epics [and in recent years one of it's more controversial], Gone With The Wind. It's a landmark achievement, the culmination of everything the studios moguls set out to do: entertain on a lavish scale, telling a compelling story with fascinating characters, portrayed by the most engaging personalities of their day. For many of the principal players involved in it's making, after GWTW their was no where else to go but down. This certainly is what happened to Gable as the 1940's wore on.

Gable about 1950, relaxing at home.

 When it comes to classic era Hollywood movie stars Gable has got to be ranked up with the best. Born on February 1, 1901 [Happy Birthday!] in a small Ohio town, Gable's film career spanned thirty years spread over sixty-six movies. In only his seventh feature, 1931's A Free Soul, Gable played rough with the film's star Norma Shearer who couldn't get enough of his he-man treatment. Neither could the American Movie Goer during the Great Depression and the years just prior to United States entry into World War II [1941-1945]. Clark Gable's first twelve years are rightly considered his best with such bonafide classics as Red Dust, It Happened One Night [his Oscar winner], China Seas, Mutiny On The Bounty, San Francisco, Test Pilot, Boom Town, Honky Tonk and the most popular film of all-time, Gone With The Wind. In these years Gable won one Oscar for 1934's It Happened One Night and was nominated for two others, 1935's Mutiny on the Bounty and GWTW.  He was in Quigley Publication's Top Ten Box Office Poll every year from 1932 to 1943. That streak was broken only due to his enlistment in World War II at the request of his recently deceased wife, actress Carole Lombard. Gable was the country's ideal image of the male incarnate: down-to-earth, honest, rugged, fair, humorous, and--need I say?--sexy.  Gable was crowned the King of Hollywood due to all these successes not only at the box office, but with most critics. However, after 1942 when Carole Lombard died in a plane crash after flying cross county to promote the sale of war bonds, Gable was a changed man. The films he made in the immediate post war period reflected this change in the man and actor. Gable's post World War II period was generally popular with the public, yet critics--then and now--tend to denigrate Gable's efforts in this period of re-entry to his precarious life. The country that missed him the past three years had changed, grown darker. Clark was undergoing a very real, personal crisis himself.  That of a desperate, bitter, guilt-ridden, sad and lonely, alcoholic widower; uncertain of his future, thinking acting was for sissies. 

Post war blues: Contrary to legend the movie was popular, but Gable and his co-star didn't exactly set the world a-fire. 

 For his first movie to be released since 1942's Somewhere You'll Find Me, Gable's home studio of MGM and it's honcho, LB Mayer, spared no expense to make Adventure nothing less than spectacular. Some of these assets paid off, other's did not. On the plus side is "Gable's Back, and Garson's Got Him!". That famous bit of publicity--which now-Major Gable abhorred--was enough to light the fan base fire, for his co-star would be none other than Miss Greer Garson, Oscar winner for 1942's Mrs. Miniver. However, both on and off screen Gable and Garson were like oil and water, they just didn't mix well. The vivacious Joan Blondell, here in a supporting role, entering her most alluring phase in the movies [Cry 'Havoc', A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Nightmare Alley], seems a better fit with Gable's gruff merchant marine than Mrs. Miniver's prim manner.

Gable and Blondell were a natural fit, while Miss Garson stews. Adventure, 1945

 Another minus, no doubt intended as a big asset for Gable's return to the screen, would be Victor Fleming--who guided Clark through his image making rubber plantation owner impersonation in Red Dust and the second of three Gable/Spencer Tracy buddy-movies, Test Pilot. To Clark's way of thinking, the filming of GWTW was a disaster on scale with the real Titanic. Fleming took the reins of GWTW and saved it from sure disaster after Gable went to producer [and GWTW's true auteur] David Selznick demanding the replacement of George Cukor [who'd been on the film since Selznick purchased the rights back in 1936] as film's director. Gable told Selznick that Fleming was the only man who could save this picture before it hit that cinematic iceberg. Why Gable wanted Cukor off the film has never been properly explained, though theories abound. What's important is that Fleming, a he-man type who it is believed Gable based his screen persona after, had seemed to acquire a kind of PTSD spiritual crisis, epiphany, awakening or whatever. Call it what you will, Fleming's films took a different route after 1941's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde the film that Fleming collaborated on with Spencer Tracy as the good doctor and his brutal alter ego. Before Adventure, Fleming had made another movie with Tracy A Guy Named Joe. That 1943 wartime fantasy about the dead always being around and on the lookout for us mortals, to insure our happy ending [remade by Steven Spielberg in 1989 as Always, with Richard Dreyfuss in the Tracy role, only they fight fires instead of WWII]] This same malaise affected the plot of Adventure. The tone of the film feels more religious than a Cecil B. DeMille spectacle with a kind of spiritual tone, or as Michael Sragow puts it in his biography of Fleming,"There's a shipwreck; plenty of chatter about God, the final judgement and the immortal soul". All this misty-eyed, soul searching did nothing for Gable's career and the film has gone down in history as a flop with only it's ad tag line, 'Gable's Back and Garson's Got him!', supposedly the tangiest bit from a bad brew--but the film was popular and landed in Variety's Top 25 Box Office Hits, with Gable returning to the ranks of Top Box Office draw's in 1947, 1948, 1949.  Adventure made money so his bosses were happy, for the moment. So Clark went back to the dating and flirting and smoking and drinking. And drinking. And drinking.

Trying for the old charm. The year is 1947, the movie is a hit, with Gable back in the box office top ten.

 The Hucksters was Gable's next big picture. Based on a bestselling book by Fredric Wakeman, Sr; Directed by Gable favorite, Jack Conway, The Hucksters deals with Madison Avenue executive's--the Mad Men crowd and one can see it's origins here. The Hucksters is a nice cut above Gable's previous effort, having the distinction of it being Deborah Kerr's American film debut. Gable is still a rouge but that quality--previously front and center in his movies--is more implied than directly dealt with. Going all the way back to 1931's star making turn in the Norma Shearer sexy, pre-code A Free Soul, Gable as predator had been fairly well established with The King rubbing elbows with the likes of Myrna Loy, Jean Harlow, Jeanette MacDonald, Claudette Colbert, Lana Turner and Joan Crawford. Gable's lust interest for this new film would be British import, Deborah Kerr ["rhymes with STAR", so says MGM's publicity] who had distinguished her self in such hits as The Life and Death of Col. Blimp, I See a Dark Stranger, and most notably for her other 1947 release the intoxicating, Black Narcissus. In Hucksters Kerr appears as a widow with children, and Gable the bull in the china shop. Though this time around Gable appears ever the gent, nothing resembling the aggressive he-man who went after Harlow and Crawford with the appetite of a man who hasn't eaten in three days. The ads for the film have Gable's head shot looming over most of the poster, but it's a Gable from five or more years back, while more contemporary shots are smaller, in the background. Whatever it's drawbacks The Hucksters was huge box office, a bellwether hit. The film landed in Variety's Top Box Office Films at number 12. For Gable professionally the film landed on the plus side of the ledger. Whether The Hucksters measures up as good a film as one of Gable's best pre-war efforts is a debatable point, but it's one of the most enjoyable films he made in this period.

Screen capture from Homecoming which reunited Gable with gal pal, Lana Turner. Ray Collins is on the far right looking morose.

  1948 brought other themes, other concerns, other problems. Homecoming was one of those concerns. Reuniting Gable with Lana Turner for a third time, the first being 1941's sassy Honky Tonk, a western with nothing on it's mind but sex in general and sex between the two leads specifically. The duo's second feature was the film Gable made just before turning his back on his silver screen fame--at least temporarily--Somewhere I'll Find You. This latest is different from the first two in that both partners are not the same people they were six years ago when they made their previous effort. Both had matured, endured hardships, forged ahead. Weaknesses played a part. For Turner it was men and drink; Gable's issues were women and drink. Homecoming is one of several Gable post-war efforts continually derided by critics. After 1946's Oscar winning Best Picture The Best Years of Our Lives film fans were ready for some more "adult" fare than the majors offered just two or three years prior. Homecoming offered fans a melancholy frame of mind. The first time I saw this film on TCM it was in the wee hours--I heartily recommend a screening just before dawn, on a cold, gray winter's morning because that fits this mood piece, with it's murky, muted imagery perfectly. Homecoming gives us a different Gable, a rather insincere, cold, self centered, status-quo conscious society doctor living a charmed life in New York City, with a charming wife [Anne Baxter], with country club living for good measure. Dr. Gable's good friend, played by John Hodiak [fun fact: he was married to Anne Baxter in real life], is a do-gooder out to right the wrongs, a liberal that the staunch Gable likes, but has little time for and treats rather condescendingly. Hodiak, also a doctor, is working with the poor and needy, something Gable doesn't understand. Before one can say "where is Lana?', she pops up once the war breaks and Gable goes overseas to Europe as a medic. On the ship out Turner--who plays a nurse--meets Gable and they clash like a wave of symbols. On the ship's deck Turner has been listening in on Gable's conversation with Ray Collins about the war. Turner disagrees with the smug Gable attitude and tells him so. As a kind of meet cute, this exchange is partially satisfying because of the injection of life that Lana Turner offers the film and her scenes with Gable are still effective. One can sense a form of camaraderie and warmth between the two. This being their third of four they would make Homecoming may be the best movie they shared. I suppose most folks would offer up their first, Honky Tonk. Although I have fond memories of the first time I watched it, having viewed Honky Tonk again some years back I have to say it's not terribly good cinema or even good storytelling. It rambles a bit. But there is no denying Gable and Turner's immediate chemistry. Magical! It's why the movies were invented and why people still like to see them. In Homecoming after this exchange between our leading players we find she is assigned to Dr. Gable and needless to say--but I will anyway--romance ensues. Homecoming was another box office winner for Gable and he looked to repeat that success with his next feature.

Casino owner Gable tries his best Bogart in 1949's Any Number Can Play.

 Command Decision was based on a big Broadway hit. Gable play Brigadier General K.C. Dennis a flight commander who is forced to send his men on nearly suicidal missions over Germany. One of Gable's post war efforts I've never seen, it was one of the most popular film's of the year. Some critics of the day pointed out that Gable wasn't a good fit for the part; it was out of his range as an actor. Post war Gable could be strangely uncomfortable in front of a camera. Beset with sadness, it's something practically everyone who knew or saw and worked with him day in, day out for years would comment on. Clark just wasn't the same Clark, his spark had gone. 1949 found Gable still trying to find the right combination of part, script, and situation to stimulate the old charm. Another of Gable's popular-at-the-time, not-well-thought-of-now efforts is Any Number Can Play in which he plays Charley King, a casino owner in a small middle-American hamlet. That Gable runs such an establishment means the local hoi polloi don't cotton to him or his family, though everybody seems to stop or have stopped by Charley's at one time or other. Director Mervyn LeRoy--from the movie's start--tries hard to establish Gable's Charley as some kind of man of mystery. The casino's employee's are a-buzz because the boss man isn't at the club yet and it's a Saturday--a big business night--and Charley hasn't missed a night ever since he took over the joint some fifteen years ago. Things are not all sunshine and roses for Charley on the home front, either. His only child, Darryl Hickman, is ashamed of ol' pop precisely because of the way he earns his living, though it provides a comfortable lifestyle for the family. Living with Charley is his neglected-suffering-from-loneliness wife, Alexis Smith; her sister, Audrey Totter [wasted in this throwaway part] and her husband, Wendell Corey, who happens to also work at the casino as a dealer. No one appears happy or even grateful, with Gable also suffering from health issues regarding his heart. Gable plays all this off in his usual rugged fashion. When his doctor, Leon Ames of Meet Me in St. Louis fame, chastises Gable, while taking a cigarette out of his mouth, urging him to slow down, that moderation is the key to a long, healthy life. To which Gable bitterly replies, "In other words, if I quit living I'll live". Produced by Arthur Freed in one of his non-musical moments, Any Number Can Play was another success with the public while critics of the day seemed to be bored with the new Gable. I've always had a fondness for the film, especially the first half when director LeRoy tries to create a mood and feel for Charley and his environment. The movie has a plethora of fine character actors--most of them wasted in their roles, like Frank Morgan and the always compelling Mary Astor, the later seen much too briefly as a kind of wanna-be flame of Charley's. A telling indication of the malaise affecting Gable's screen persona is when a young woman of questionable morals tries to flirt with one of his suckers [aka customers], proud, heroic Gable shows her the door. The old Gable would have given her a job to brighten up the drab surroundings, or at least looked her over once or twice before 86ing her out the door and out of the movie.

Lobby card from 1950's Key To The City

 All this good, clean living was up for grabs as the 1940's became the 1950's. Times in the film colony were beginning to change more rapidly than ever. Besides the obvious cracks showing in the studio system--wide screen, stereophonic sound and technicolor--some not technically new, but more common than before--made their presence felt. Change wasn't just on the technical side of the cameras : Gary Cooper, Tyrone Power, Robert Taylor, James Cagney and others felt the onslaught from the new kids on the block such as Montgomery Clift, Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, William Holden, and the soon to emerge, Marlon Brando. Gable too, felt them all vying for the King's crown, therefore it was decided to lighten up the proceedings with a romantic comedy, his first since the pre-war days.

Talk about awkward! Gable gives Loretta Young the once over while Frank Morgan does his Wizard bit in the background. I wonder what this movie was like to film. Such baggage!! 

 For a lighthearted romp Key To The City had to be tough to make for the two leads, Gable and Loretta Young. Seems these two had a history that went back about fifteen years when they--the 34 year old Gable married to a woman seventeen years Clark's senior, Ria Gable [wife number two] and the 22 year old, single Ms. Young--met, worked, clashed and--conceived--while on location for 1935's Call of the Wild. Young subsequently gave birth to a daughter, Judy Lewis born in November 1935. Ms. Lewis would go on, many years later, to write a book about the discovery of who her real father was. Clark and Judy met for the first time while this movie was shot, though she had no idea Gable was her real father at that time. In the ensuing years it has been alleged that Gable and Young did not fall in love on that desolate location but that Gable raped Ms. Young. Whatever the true story it was certainly cause for a Xanax break. This being the case I was pleasantly surprised by the charm of Key To The City.  Though it's not witty by any means, it possesses an energy, with splendid character turns by Lewis Stone, Raymond Walburn, James Gleason, Marilyn Maxwell and in his final film, Frank Morgan. Key To The City takes place in San Fransisco and the movie does a reasonable job of offering a smidge of location work to help with atmosphere.The script isn't another My Man Godfrey or The Philadelphia Story but it is a pleasant way to spend 90 minutes or so. Although Gable's reputation could have welcomed a return to the days when he was one of the reigning interpreter's of that fabled genre, the screwball comedy, Key To The City--pleasant as it is--warrants but a footnote in Gable's cinematic career, but taken from another perspective the making of this movie must have been traumatic to at least one--if not both--parties.

Gable with co-star Barbara Stanwyck and others making it clear what they think of us. 

 More lighthearted romance was concocted for To Please A Lady. A bad title for a movie about race car driving, the movie, directed by MGM veteran and Great Garbo favorite Clarence Brown gives us Gable with Barbara Stanwyck almost twenty years on from when they were first starting out in movies in 1931's pre-code favorite, Night Nurse. To Please A Lady didn't break any box office records, so MGM went back to the drawing board with one of their biggest assets in a mid-life crisis career slump. The studio kept trying for the old Gable charm of the pre-war days, but that ship had sailed as his last two films proved. In addition, Gable wasn't aging well. The smoking, drinking and late night parties with every woman on the planet didn't help. So MGM put him in uniform. That worked, but up to a point. Then came the Bogart bit in Any Number Can Play, but that was an awkward fit. Therefore, the studio decided to risk it all, run the table and star Gable in a Technicolor action film. Across The Wide Missouri may be Gable's best film from this period. Unfortunately it's also the most overlooked, which is too bad for the movie has much to recommend it.

MGM was still selling a Gable who looks a good ten years younger than his real self in this poster.

 Filmed on location in the Rockies by veteran helmer William Wellman [Wings; The Public Enemy; A Star is Born; The Ox-Box Incident; and more recently 1949's Battleground which would net Wellman an Oscar nomination as Best Director] in beautiful Technicolor. Wellman was also the director when Gable and previous co-star Loretta Young made 1935's Call of the Wild. Again, Gable's past was catching up with him. The location was fairly rugged, which both Clark and his director enjoyed. One person for whom the location was not a pleasure was Clark's new wife. After dating dozen's--maybe hundreds--of friends, starlets, socialites, waitresses and more, Clark decided to settle down. His bride was Lady Sylvia Ashley the widow of Douglas Fairbanks, Sr and former wife of Anthony Ashley-Copper aka Lord Ashley. Sylvia was a vibrant blonde who, some said, resembled Carole Lombard. If so, it must have been purely superficial as most reports paint her as not Clark's type of woman at all. Not the good sport who would go fishing at the drop of a hat, yet could dazzle the crowds at Ciro's or a dinner party. Sylvia on location in Colorado was not a good idea. It seemed to accentuate the differences between the couple and a year later the would divorce after just three years of wedded bliss. As for the movie, Across The Wide Missouri is a leisurely paced character study disguised as an action movie. Gorgeous cinematography, a stellar supporting cast [complete with Ricardo Montalban as an Native American], the movie deserves to be re-discovered.

With Marilyn during a break on The Misfits, 1960.

 Clark Gable would go on to make 13 more movies four of which would be his last ever for MGM. In 1954 Gable and the studio parted ways. For the first time since 1931 Gable had no certain employment. Naturally he wasn't idle for long, 1955 would see Clark free lancing bouncing from studio to studio, location to location, pay check to paycheck. before dying from a heart attack in November 1960 at age 59 having just wrapping up The Misfits some ten days prior. The Misfits would also be the final film of his co-star, Marilyn Monroe. He married again, this time happily to Kay Spreckels, who he had known since the early days after WWII. Then came the news that the Gables were expecting a baby. Big news in Tinseltown. Gable would finally--as far as John Q. Public were concerned--become a father. But Clark wouldn't live to see his son, John Clark Gable. The years of drinking, smoking, stress--and never think being a star is not without it's high levels of anxiety--and years of just not giving a damn had done it's damage. Wrapping The Misfits on November 4 1960  the next day Clark Gable had a heart attack. He hung on until November 16 when another attack took the King of Hollywood. Through the years Gable has been sketched in many colors. Was he a gigolo for gay film directors in the 1920's when young Clark was struggling to get a leg up in the rat race of movies? Or was he the opportunist who latched onto his first two wives, both years older than Clark, for all they could provide him at he moment? Wife number one, Josephine Dillon, groomed him, but lost him as his theatrical career really started taking off. Wife number two, socialite Ria Langham with two children from a previous marriage, provided Clark with money for the first time, but true love eluded him. By the time he met Carole Lombard who was not only beautiful but funny as hell and cussed like a truck driver, Clark was more than ready to fall. Or was he the hit and run driver, the rapist, the rogue male who could never fit into the me too generation? My favorite portrait of Gable is by Edward Winter in the television movie The Scarlett O'Hara War. Made in 1980, based on a book called Moviloa by Garson Kanin it was a very entertaining take on the search for Scarlett and the chaos and humor it created. Gable is mostly on the periphery of the main story but as written by William Hanley and played by Mr. Winter, Gable was a not too bright but decent enough fellow who didn't recognize Margaret Mitchell's name when given a signed copy of Gone With The Wind.

With new bride, Carole Lombard. This picture seems the definition of a happy couple

 Those last 13 movies are a define mixed bag. Most are pretty poor, but a couple shine through but not enough to make Clark's 1950's output any better than the post war 1940's were for The King. Only 59 when he passed away where Gable would have gone career wise is hard to fathom. He was penciled in for Minnelli's Home From The Hill, with Robert Mitchum stepping in after Gable's passing. After that nothing concrete was lined up and when one looks at the most popular stars [Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, Dustin Hoffman and others] and prestigious and popular films [Blow Up, Dr. Strangelove, the James Bond phenom, Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate, Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, etc] from that decade it would be hard pressed to find a role Gable could fill and not seem like he was an alien from another world.    


Sources :
Books-- Long Live The King by Lyn Tornabene
              Reel Facts : The Movie Book of Records by Cobbett Steinberg
              Victor Fleming, An American Movie Master by Michael Sragow
              Clark Gable, The Pyramid Illustrated History of The Movies by Rene Jordan
              The MGM Story by John Douglas Eames
Internet--Wikipedia page on Gable and his films
Movies-- Courtesy of Turner Classic Movies  
Images-- Courtesy of the internet