April 9, 2018 • 28 mins
The film legend Clark Gable was a key figure at the heart of the glamour and excess of the Golden Age of Hollywood. But his rise and scandal-buried reign at the top of the movie world reveal a great deal about a young industry both obsessed with adhering to morality codes, and incapable of being moral.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Why Uzzy Media Productions. The Misfits was a much anticipated
film when it was released in nineteen sixty one. The
movie featured two enormous Hollywood stars, Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable,
(00:23):
but The Misfits was a box office flop. A year later,
Monroe was found dead from a drug overdose. The Misfits
was not just the last film that Monroe completed, it
was also Clark Gable's final appearance on screen. The fifty
nine year old Gable died from a heart attack just
twelve days after shooting finished. Monroe was stunned and heartbroken
(00:45):
when she learned of Gable's death. She told one reporter quote,
nobody was more of a man's man than he was,
but he appreciated women. It's clear Monroe was talking about
someone who was much more than a co star to her.
Lark Gable was like a father to Monroe. When she
was being shuffled between orphanages and foster homes as a child,
(01:06):
she slept with the movie stars picture under her pillow,
which is why on the final day of shooting for
The Misfits, Monroe reportedly walked over to her famous costar
and made a confession, She told Gable, do you know something?
You're my hero and I never had a hero before.
(01:26):
Clark Gable's rise to the top of Hollywood during the
nineteen thirties was much different than Monroe's two decades later.
Both actors came from humble origins and we're products of
a studio system that transformed them into larger than life figures. Monroe, however,
as we learned in episode three, thought of Hollywood as
quote a merry go round with beds for horses, and
she resented the fact that her career advancement depended upon
(01:48):
pleasing the predatory male executive she called the wolves. Monroe's hero,
Clark Gable did not have to confront the wolves the
way that women did in early Hollywood, but unlike Monroe,
he was willing to do whatever it took to become
a star. In this episode, we chart Clark Gable's journey
to screen legend, including how Hollywood's archetypal man reportedly used
(02:10):
and abused women along the way. Suit the star away
from how's it going, I know you got a clue?
What you do? You complain brand new to all the
other chicks out here that I know what you are
(02:31):
what you are, baby, look at you. I'm Sean Braswell.
Welcome back to the Thread. This season is about the
chain of historical events behind the rise of feminist leader
Gloria Steinham. The chain we follow takes us back to
the Hollywood of the nineteen thirties and Clark Gable. He's
the man who uttered perhaps the most famous line in
(02:52):
film history as Rhett Butler and Gone with the Wind. Frankly,
my here, I don't give a damn. Here's a quick
recap to follow our thread so far, but please listen
to the previous episodes if you haven't already. Las Vegas, Nevada,
(03:15):
was a desolate, struggling town in the late nineteen thirties
that changed dramatically after Clark Gable's wife, Real Langham, went
there to get a quickie divorce while Gable filmed Gone
with the Wind, and pretty soon people were running. You
might say, to Las Vegas to get a divorce, because
everyone wanted to get a divorce where the Gables had
gotten theirs. Seven years later, a nineteen year old Marilyn
(03:38):
Monroe obtained her own divorce there. Maryland clearly felt that
it would be easier for her to pursue her modeling
and acting career if she were single. Fast forward another
seven years, A magazine publisher named Hugh Hefner uses a
nude photo of Monroe taken when she was a struggling model,
to sell the first issue of Playboy magazine. She was
(03:59):
the the launching key to the beginning of Playboy. Fast
forward another seven years, and Hefner founds the first Playboy club,
whose bunny clad employees revolutionized the nightclub scene. A young
reporter named Gloria Steinham then writes an expose of life
as a bunny, one which helps spark her resolve to
(04:20):
spend a lifetime on women's rights. It was subject to
constant what we would now term sexual harassment, but there
wasn't even a word for it. Then. In this episode,
we turn our attention to the movie star whose landmark
divorce helped launch Las Vegas, the man they called the
King of Hollywood, Clark Gable. Clark Gable plays a Nevada
(04:48):
cowboy in The Misfits, one who finds love and companionship
with a recently divorced younger woman played by Monroe. In
the final scene of the movie, Monroe turns to Gable
as they drive down desert road at night. How do
you find your way back in the dark? Just head
(05:09):
for that big star, straight on the high. Raise Catt'll
take us right home. Those would be the last lines
Clark Gable would utter on screen. Two weeks later, he
died from a heart attack. The New York Times headline
read the King is Dead. Gable's widow and fifth wife,
(05:31):
Kay blamed one person for her husband's sudden death. Marilyn Monroe,
the actress, had a reputation for causing delays and problems
on set, and The Misfits was no different. Monroe was
always late, She forgot her lines. She fought constantly on
set with her husband, Arthur Miller, the playwright who had
written The Misfits for her. She also popped amphetamines and tranquilizers.
(05:54):
The filming was very, very difficult. This is Monroe. Biographer
Sarah church Well, her relationship with Arthur Miller was breaking down,
um and um. There were many many problems on the set, uh,
some of which had to do with Maryland's own problems
with addiction, but also with her unhappiness in her marriage.
To make matters worse, the Nevada summer heat was oppressive.
(06:17):
The delays, the waiting, and the heat were hard on
the aging Gable. He also insisted on doing many of
his own stunts, including being dragged by a truck for
over four hundred feet across the desert. The physical strain
on Gable during the Misfits may have contributed to the
star's death, but Gable was also a chronic smoker and
a heavy drinker, and he spent his reign as the
(06:39):
King of Hollywood living large and trying to live up
to his larger than life image. Gable starred in some
of Hollywood's best films, including It Happened One Night, Mutiny
on the Bounty, and of course, Gone with the Wind. MGM,
the studio that owned Clark Gable services for decades, structs
(07:00):
Aintematic Gold when they discovered him. This is E. J. Flemett,
author of several books on early Hollywood and stars like Gable.
Clark Gable's success really was based upon the fact that
the product that M. Jim put on the screen, the
movie Clark Gable was an every man. But Gable was
so much more than an every man. There had been
(07:22):
other super masculine men in Hollywood and Helen Peterson is
the author of Scandals of Classic Hollywood and a senior
culture writer for BuzzFeed. But no one had that sort
of like swarthy, unshaven masculinity that Clark Gable popularized over
the course of the nineteen thirties. Gables frequent co star
and even more frequent lover. Actress Joan Crawford perhaps summed
(07:45):
up Gable best. She said, he represented man at his
most primeval viril, rough and ready, with the instincts of
a wild beast. Gable had more balls than any man
I've ever known. So one of the things that made
women go wild old was that in a lot of
his performances he had stubble, like he was a slightly unshaven,
(08:07):
and that at the time, you know, it was a
signifier of this sort of unmitigated masculinity. Gable cemented this
impression and one of the scenes from the nineteen four
classic It happened one night he took off his shirt
and he wasn't wearing an undershirt, which was just scandalous
(08:27):
at the time. Gable won the Oscar for Best Actor
for his performance in that film. He was also given
another honor, Hollywood Colnation Gable and Maniva Crown, King and
Queen of the Street to Gable and behalf of the
twenty minutes fans, I present to you this kingly crown.
Thank you. Ed. You know I play gamblers, newspaper men,
(08:48):
pondike miners and now a test pilot. But this is
the first time I've ever played the role of a game.
Gable scoffed at his honorific title. In private, he said,
this king stuff is pure. I'm just a lucky slab
from Ohio. I happened to be in the right place
at the right time, and I had a lot of
smart guys helping me. That's all. It's true. Gable had
(09:09):
a lot of guys to help him, and even more women.
He slept with virtually every woman acrossed paths with Marna
Lloyd later said that he was the least selective man
in the hemisphere. Had screw anything. It didn't even have
to be pretty or clean. Gable was legendary around MGM
for his womanizing. One day, Gable was in a studio
(09:30):
executive's office and his desk was covered with hundreds of
studio stills of the contract actresses at MGM and Gabel
looked at them and said, I've had every single one
of them. It didn't stop with the contract actresses. He
had affairs with virtually every famous MGM star, John Crawford,
(09:54):
Marilena Dietrich, Marian Davies. It's hard to actually find one
that he did not have a fair but at least
one of those alleged conquests had broader consequences. It was
Gable's relationship with a twenty two year old rising film
star named Loretta Young. Loretta Young was kind of like
the Jennifer Anison of the nineteen thirties, just you know,
(10:16):
a very very steady and lovable star that wasn't necessarily
an incredible actress, but was widely beloved. Loretta Young signed
on to make a film with Clark Gable, Call of
the Wild, about gold prospectors in the Klondike. And she
goes with Clark Gable to shoot Call of the Wild,
which is based on the Jack London novel. And they're
(10:37):
in the wilderness in you know, the forest outside of
Seattle and on location, which was somewhat rare at the time.
Despite the frigid weather, Sparks flew between Young and the
married Gable and not just on screen. So you have
this long shoot in the winter, in the middle of nowhere,
and you have a beautiful star and Laretta Young, and
(10:57):
then another very handsome and flirtation a star in Clark Gable,
and you know there's home movies of them being flirtatious
with one another, and people on the set said that
they were flirting. Young, Gable and the rest of the
casting crew boarded an overnight train back to Hollywood when
filming came to an end. The stars were given individual
(11:18):
compartments for the journey. Loretta Young was in her compartment
in the overnight train and Clark Gable knocked on the
compartment door, and, as she told her biographer and also
her son and daughter in law, he knocked on the
door and she didn't know how to say no. Young
(11:39):
later said that she thought Gable just wanted to visit
her compartment, but according to Young, he had other ideas
in mind. She said quote, he wasn't rough, but I
kept saying no, and he wouldn't take no for an answer.
Clark Gable returned home to his wife, Real Langham after
shooting finished on Call of the Wild. His first words were,
(12:03):
I want my freedom. He didn't get it, at least
not then. Not long after, Gable received some news Loretta
Young was pregnant. He ignored it. Young was devastated. She
was freaked out. I mean, the thing to be an
unwed mother at that time in Hollywood, you know, it
would be the end of her career and she would
(12:24):
be a fallen woman. I mean, when that happened with
Hollywood starlet's usually the course of action and was to
get an abortion, but Loretta refused. Instead, she orchestrated one
of the greatest cover ups in Hollywood history. Young told
the studio she needed a vacation and left for Europe
with her mother. She remained there for months, explaining that
she was ill. Young then secretly returned to her mom's
(12:47):
house in California for her final trimester. She would go
out at night only and walk around the neighborhood to
get a little bit of exercise because she was still crazy.
But there were rumors that she was pregnant. Young invited
one prominent gossip columnists to her mom's house to dispel
the rumors. She greeted the calumnists from her bed and
they piled pillows all over her and they said, she's
(13:09):
just sick. She can't get out of bed, and they
essentially convinced the world that she was not pregnant by
putting pillows on top of her bed. One evening, about
nine months after Call of the Wild ceased filming on location,
Clark Gable attended the New York premiere of his next film. Afterwards,
Gable received an unsigned telegram in his hotel room. It read, beautiful,
(13:32):
blue eyed, blonde baby girl for an eight fifteen. This morning,
Gabel walked into the bathroom, tore up the telegram, and
flushed it down the toilet. It took decades for Young
to come to terms with what she claimed happened to
her that night in the train compartment, says Anne Helen Peterson.
In the nineties, Loretta Young was watching a program that
(13:55):
described day rape or you know, acquaintance rape, and the
dynamics of how that worked. That's someone that you know
that you know it's not a violent thing, but that
it is unwanted sex. And she saw that program and
heard that definition, and she said, that's what happened between
me and Clerk Gable. Loretta Young devised even more elaborate
(14:18):
plans after giving birth. She placed her baby in an
orphanage for the time being, and went back to work
on her next movie. Over a year later, she told
the press she decided to adopt two babies. What eventually
happened is those two children turned into one child, and
that one child that she adopted turned out to be
her own child. Thanks to Young's efforts, the story would
(14:40):
remain just a Hollywood r She was so smart, she
was so savvy. She pulled it off with no help.
She didn't have like a publicist who was coaching her
on us. Was like her her mom and her sisters,
who figured out how to game the entire publicity apparatus
so that she could keep her daughter like that's amazing.
(15:01):
Loretta Young did not get a lot of help from
the studio and navigating the rocky shoals of Hollywood morality
and scandal. She was unmarried, female, pregnant, and unwilling to
get an abortion. But her male co star, Clark Gable,
had plenty of help with his career threatening scandals up
next the men they called the Hollywood Fixers, an elite
(15:23):
special forces unit for scandal management. Clark Gable may never
have become Marilyn Monroe's hero or the King of Hollywood
without the help of some powerful allies within the studio system.
The fixers at MGM saved gable skin more than once,
and they were also responsible for his ill fated marriage
to relaying them. Historians call the nineteen thirties the golden
(15:59):
Age of Hollywood, and more than anything, that golden age
was defined by stars. The studios realized right away that
the fans reacted to the stars as much as they
did to the movie This is e. J. Fleming again.
And the studios also realized that the individual stars translated
(16:20):
to money, so it was imperative that they had an
organized system in place to take care of any problems
that came up. There was one studio in particular that
stood out as a star making machine, Anne Helen Peterson
MGM was the King, so they had one of their
slogans was more stars in the heavens. They were like
(16:40):
the HBO of nineteen thirties Hollywood. MGM stable of stars
included Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, Fred Astaire, Gene Harlow, and
Judy Garland. MGM and other studios took the personal behavior
of their stars very seriously. Any hint of scandal could
sink a star, and more importantly, the studio's large investment
(17:01):
in them. So MGM, like all of the other major
studios at the time, had what we're called fixers, and
those are people who collaborated with the publicity department to
make sure that no negative stories or stories that didn't
match the public image of the star would be released.
Clark Gable encountered MGMs fixers early on in his career
(17:24):
at the studio. In fact, that's how he came to
be married to Real Langham in the first place. Gable's
first major films were coming out in nine At the time,
he was living with Langham, a wealthy woman seventeen years
his senior. One day, Langham came to see MGM boss
Louis B. Mayer. Mayor had an experienced secretary who was
used to handling disgruntled wives and girlfriends. Her name was
(17:47):
Ida Koverman. Remember that name. We will get back to
Ida in the next episode. Ida Cooverman quickly redirected the
distraught Real Langham to a studio executive named Howard Strickling.
Howard Strickling was the publicity director and m JAM. He
was the guy that had to develop the stories, designed
the spin and sell then narratives. Langham broke down in
(18:09):
Strickling's office. She told him how she was living with
Gable for years with the understanding they would marry. She
threatened to raise a stink in the press if he
didn't propose. Studio executive summoned Gable and waived his contract
in front of him. The entire contract could be avoided
if the actor engaged in sexual or criminal misconduct. To
save his career, Clark Gable agreed to marry Real Langham.
(18:36):
MGM did much more than force its young stars to
marry live in lovers. They made sure no rough edges
came into public views, says Anne Helen Peterson. So anything
that they did, whether it was drunken mischief, punching a
waiter at a bar, um, abusing a wife or a partner,
those things were covered up in collaboration with the press
(18:58):
and the police department. MGM controlled every police force within
fifty miles. It had an army of doctors, psychiatrists, pharmacists,
lawyers and reporters that it could enlist at any time
to fix a problem. And MGM's chief fixer was a
man named Eddie Mannix. Mannix was a former amusement park
bouncer from New Jersey. One of the jobs Mannix was
(19:19):
tasked with was to keep an eye on Clark Gable.
Both men were inveterate gamblers, drinkers, and womanizers. They quickly
became close friends, and whenever Gable had a problem, Mannix,
along with Howard Strickling, was there to solve it. Yes,
Gable felt the blade of the studio's almighty sword when
he was forced to marry Realangum. But as Gable star rose,
(19:41):
he saw that same sword go to work for him.
He was driving drunk in Hollywood and he hit a
woman in a crosswalk and drove away. Clark Gable had
a lot of car accidents in his life, according to E. J. Fleming,
This one in three was the worst. He immediately called
Strickling and said he thought he hit somebody with his car.
(20:04):
Strickling called the Hollywood police and they confirmed that yes,
there was a dead woman on a crosswalk and people
identified gables car. MGMs fixers went to work, says Fleming.
MGM reportedly paid off the victim's family and paid another
employee to take the rap for the accident. Twelve years later,
(20:25):
Gable was driving home drunk again when he lost control
of his car on Sunset Boulevard and plowed into a tree.
Gable was taken to a nearby hospital. News of the
accident leaked to the press. MGM's publicity team, never cowed
by irony, told reporters that Gable was sideswiped by a
drunk driver. Like so many other royals in history, Clark
(20:50):
Gable got away with just about everything. But even before
he became a star, Gable was an unflinching opportunist, one
who would do almost anything and sleep with anyone that
might advance his career. Real langenm was just one of
several women who served his rungs in the ladder that
Gable used to climb to the top of Hollywood. Clark
(21:12):
Gable's route to Hollywood was an orthodox, to say the least.
He was from Cadiz, Ohio, a small river town in
the middle of nowhere. The young man, then known as
Billy Gable, quit school and went to work in Akron
doing odd jobs and Helen Peterson. Again. Like many classic
Hollywood stars, he had a pretty poor and rough and
tumble childhood, His parents were in and out of pictures.
(21:34):
His mom died when he was young um, and he
made his way to start um kind of by fits
and starts. Eventually Gable found his way to Portland, Oregon.
There he met the first of a series of older
women that would change his life. E. J. Fleming explains
Gable used women his entire life. He was with a
traveling stage crew in Oregon early in his career, and
(22:00):
he hooked up with the lead actress, a woman named
Franz door Fler. She actually got him his first job acting,
and he promised to marry her, uh so she would
keep giving him jobs. Gable broke that promise. He left
door Floer a year later when he met Josephine Dillon.
Josephine was a kind of a homely acting coach. He
(22:24):
was twenty years older than than Gable, but she took
a liking to him all women did. She renamed him Clark.
Dylan soon became the first Mrs Clark Gable. The newly
weds moved into a Hollywood bungalow. Gable worked as a
garage mechanic and struggled as a studio extra. He was
tall and handsome, but he had enormous ears and unattractive teeth.
(22:46):
So one of the things that Josephine Dillon for how
did for him was basically instruct him on how he
could make it as a Hollywood star and not just
as a you know, sort of handsome guy from Ohio.
And what she did was paid for him to get
new teeth. His teeth were crooked and bad. She also
(23:07):
taught him how to speak in a way that it
was less high pitched and feminine. Gable rewarded Dylan's efforts
on his behalf by abandoning her. He took up with
yet another older woman, actress Pauline Frederick. She had this
huge mansion on since at Bovard. He moved in with her.
He never told Dylan he was even in town, and
he was basically a kept man. He didn't do any acting.
(23:30):
She just kept giving him sports cars and jewelry. Gable
was indeed it kept man, even if no single woman
kept him for all that long. Finally he met a
wealthy forty four year old divorce and socialite from Texas
named Real Langham, and it was kind of a full marriage.
They pretended they were married. They introduced themselves as Mr
(23:50):
and Miss as Gable. With Langham bank rolling him, Gable
pursued a career on Broadway and then back in Hollywood.
The Ohio Ruffian blossomed into a suave or be night.
He wore Brooks Brothers suits. Sometimes he carried a cane.
I think that you could safely call Clark Gable a
gold digger. He saw opportunity in a way to rise
(24:13):
through their ranks in Hollywood, and that was given to
him by the rank and money and success of his
respective wives. You'll recall that Marilyn Monroe had no desire
to be a kept woman, despite no shortage of opportunities.
As a result, she often lent paycheck to paycheck. Gable
took a very different tack. One of the interesting things
(24:35):
about Gable is that during his early career as a
stage actor was that he never had to worry about
the types of things that most struggling actors had to
worry about. He never had to worry about money, He
never had to worry about a place to stay, he
never had to worry about food. He didn't have to
(24:56):
worry about anything because door flour Dylan Paulian, Frederick real
laying him had him on the payroll. Gable was more
than a boy toy. He was a Pygmalion like project.
His female keepers could play Henry Higgins to his Eliza Doolittle.
After Gable signed with MGM, the starmakers at the studio
(25:16):
continued the transformation. Gable was a complete studio creation. The
Clark Gable that everybody remembers and saw in all the
movies was the antithesis of the real Clark Gable. He
was almost laughably hypochondriac. He had to be taught the
(25:41):
basic manners because he was basically kind of an uncouth
Ohio bumpkin. MGM sent Gable for new dentures. They restyled
his hair, plucked his eyebrows, and sent him to the gym.
They even tried pinning his ears back with tape. It
didn't work, so studio cameramen were instructed to film him
from the side as much as possible. The end result,
(26:02):
MGM cast him in a series of increasingly big roles.
In ninety one, the same year the studio forced him
to marry Real Agum. Movie goers had never seen anyone
like him. One magazine dubbed him the Great God Gable.
Here he is with Carol Lombard in the nineteen thirty
two film No Man of her Own. Sure go so FATCHO?
(26:23):
I wouldn't be and I was sure of you. Men
all over America started to imitate his brash, macho style.
It was not uncommon to overhear a woman responding to
those men by saying, who do you think you are?
Clark Gable. Clark Gable was in the right place at
the right time in Hollywood. MGM was loaded with female
(26:46):
stars but short of romantic leading men. By the end
of the decade, and after his stint as Rhett Butler,
Clark Gable was the biggest star on the planet. Gable's
massive fame also helped fire up the divorce courts of
Las Vegas, and aren't a chain of events that shaped
the lives of Marilyn Monroe, Hugh Hefner, and Gloria Steinem
Next week, in our final episode of the season, we
(27:08):
find out what launched Clark Gable. Even with all the
help from his various wives and female patrons, the young
Gable might not have succeeded in Hollywood without a little
good fortune, including a single test audience that was stacked
in his favor. We also retrace our steps and learn
more about the casting couches of early Hollywood and how
they connect to Gloria Steinham and the women's movement today.
(27:32):
Womanizing Daddio, he had got the swagger of a champion.
So bad for you. You just can't find the right company,
And I guess when you have one makes it hard.
It could be easy who you are. That's just who
you are. Baby. The Threat is produced by Libby Coleman
(27:53):
and me Sean Braswell. Chris Hoff engineered our show special
thanks to Cindy Carpian, Tracy Moran, and James Watkins. This
episode features a cover of the song Womanizer by Britney
Spears that was recorded at the New Foundry Studios by
Sophie Goldby. To learn more about the Thread, visit ausi
dot com, slash the thread all one word, and make
(28:13):
sure to subscribe to the Threat on Apple Podcasts. Check
us out at ausi dot com or on Twitter and Facebook.
If you love surprising, engaging stories from history, look no
further than the flashback section of ausy dot com. That's
o z y dot com. Or you don't trying to
run no, just just what you up by. You don't
(28:35):
trying to fright. No, just just do what you are,
Sam crazy. I've got your crazy, nothing but the woman. No,
you're a woman now
Why Uzzy Media Productions. The Misfits was a much anticipated
film when it was released in nineteen sixty one. The
movie featured two enormous Hollywood stars, Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable,
(00:23):
but The Misfits was a box office flop. A year later,
Monroe was found dead from a drug overdose. The Misfits
was not just the last film that Monroe completed, it
was also Clark Gable's final appearance on screen. The fifty
nine year old Gable died from a heart attack just
twelve days after shooting finished. Monroe was stunned and heartbroken
(00:45):
when she learned of Gable's death. She told one reporter quote,
nobody was more of a man's man than he was,
but he appreciated women. It's clear Monroe was talking about
someone who was much more than a co star to her.
Lark Gable was like a father to Monroe. When she
was being shuffled between orphanages and foster homes as a child,
(01:06):
she slept with the movie stars picture under her pillow,
which is why on the final day of shooting for
The Misfits, Monroe reportedly walked over to her famous costar
and made a confession, She told Gable, do you know something?
You're my hero and I never had a hero before.
(01:26):
Clark Gable's rise to the top of Hollywood during the
nineteen thirties was much different than Monroe's two decades later.
Both actors came from humble origins and we're products of
a studio system that transformed them into larger than life figures. Monroe, however,
as we learned in episode three, thought of Hollywood as
quote a merry go round with beds for horses, and
she resented the fact that her career advancement depended upon
(01:48):
pleasing the predatory male executive she called the wolves. Monroe's hero,
Clark Gable did not have to confront the wolves the
way that women did in early Hollywood, but unlike Monroe,
he was willing to do whatever it took to become
a star. In this episode, we chart Clark Gable's journey
to screen legend, including how Hollywood's archetypal man reportedly used
(02:10):
and abused women along the way. Suit the star away
from how's it going, I know you got a clue?
What you do? You complain brand new to all the
other chicks out here that I know what you are
(02:31):
what you are, baby, look at you. I'm Sean Braswell.
Welcome back to the Thread. This season is about the
chain of historical events behind the rise of feminist leader
Gloria Steinham. The chain we follow takes us back to
the Hollywood of the nineteen thirties and Clark Gable. He's
the man who uttered perhaps the most famous line in
(02:52):
film history as Rhett Butler and Gone with the Wind. Frankly,
my here, I don't give a damn. Here's a quick
recap to follow our thread so far, but please listen
to the previous episodes if you haven't already. Las Vegas, Nevada,
(03:15):
was a desolate, struggling town in the late nineteen thirties
that changed dramatically after Clark Gable's wife, Real Langham, went
there to get a quickie divorce while Gable filmed Gone
with the Wind, and pretty soon people were running. You
might say, to Las Vegas to get a divorce, because
everyone wanted to get a divorce where the Gables had
gotten theirs. Seven years later, a nineteen year old Marilyn
(03:38):
Monroe obtained her own divorce there. Maryland clearly felt that
it would be easier for her to pursue her modeling
and acting career if she were single. Fast forward another
seven years, A magazine publisher named Hugh Hefner uses a
nude photo of Monroe taken when she was a struggling model,
to sell the first issue of Playboy magazine. She was
(03:59):
the the launching key to the beginning of Playboy. Fast
forward another seven years, and Hefner founds the first Playboy club,
whose bunny clad employees revolutionized the nightclub scene. A young
reporter named Gloria Steinham then writes an expose of life
as a bunny, one which helps spark her resolve to
(04:20):
spend a lifetime on women's rights. It was subject to
constant what we would now term sexual harassment, but there
wasn't even a word for it. Then. In this episode,
we turn our attention to the movie star whose landmark
divorce helped launch Las Vegas, the man they called the
King of Hollywood, Clark Gable. Clark Gable plays a Nevada
(04:48):
cowboy in The Misfits, one who finds love and companionship
with a recently divorced younger woman played by Monroe. In
the final scene of the movie, Monroe turns to Gable
as they drive down desert road at night. How do
you find your way back in the dark? Just head
(05:09):
for that big star, straight on the high. Raise Catt'll
take us right home. Those would be the last lines
Clark Gable would utter on screen. Two weeks later, he
died from a heart attack. The New York Times headline
read the King is Dead. Gable's widow and fifth wife,
(05:31):
Kay blamed one person for her husband's sudden death. Marilyn Monroe,
the actress, had a reputation for causing delays and problems
on set, and The Misfits was no different. Monroe was
always late, She forgot her lines. She fought constantly on
set with her husband, Arthur Miller, the playwright who had
written The Misfits for her. She also popped amphetamines and tranquilizers.
(05:54):
The filming was very, very difficult. This is Monroe. Biographer
Sarah church Well, her relationship with Arthur Miller was breaking down,
um and um. There were many many problems on the set, uh,
some of which had to do with Maryland's own problems
with addiction, but also with her unhappiness in her marriage.
To make matters worse, the Nevada summer heat was oppressive.
(06:17):
The delays, the waiting, and the heat were hard on
the aging Gable. He also insisted on doing many of
his own stunts, including being dragged by a truck for
over four hundred feet across the desert. The physical strain
on Gable during the Misfits may have contributed to the
star's death, but Gable was also a chronic smoker and
a heavy drinker, and he spent his reign as the
(06:39):
King of Hollywood living large and trying to live up
to his larger than life image. Gable starred in some
of Hollywood's best films, including It Happened One Night, Mutiny
on the Bounty, and of course, Gone with the Wind. MGM,
the studio that owned Clark Gable services for decades, structs
(07:00):
Aintematic Gold when they discovered him. This is E. J. Flemett,
author of several books on early Hollywood and stars like Gable.
Clark Gable's success really was based upon the fact that
the product that M. Jim put on the screen, the
movie Clark Gable was an every man. But Gable was
so much more than an every man. There had been
(07:22):
other super masculine men in Hollywood and Helen Peterson is
the author of Scandals of Classic Hollywood and a senior
culture writer for BuzzFeed. But no one had that sort
of like swarthy, unshaven masculinity that Clark Gable popularized over
the course of the nineteen thirties. Gables frequent co star
and even more frequent lover. Actress Joan Crawford perhaps summed
(07:45):
up Gable best. She said, he represented man at his
most primeval viril, rough and ready, with the instincts of
a wild beast. Gable had more balls than any man
I've ever known. So one of the things that made
women go wild old was that in a lot of
his performances he had stubble, like he was a slightly unshaven,
(08:07):
and that at the time, you know, it was a
signifier of this sort of unmitigated masculinity. Gable cemented this
impression and one of the scenes from the nineteen four
classic It happened one night he took off his shirt
and he wasn't wearing an undershirt, which was just scandalous
(08:27):
at the time. Gable won the Oscar for Best Actor
for his performance in that film. He was also given
another honor, Hollywood Colnation Gable and Maniva Crown, King and
Queen of the Street to Gable and behalf of the
twenty minutes fans, I present to you this kingly crown.
Thank you. Ed. You know I play gamblers, newspaper men,
(08:48):
pondike miners and now a test pilot. But this is
the first time I've ever played the role of a game.
Gable scoffed at his honorific title. In private, he said,
this king stuff is pure. I'm just a lucky slab
from Ohio. I happened to be in the right place
at the right time, and I had a lot of
smart guys helping me. That's all. It's true. Gable had
(09:09):
a lot of guys to help him, and even more women.
He slept with virtually every woman acrossed paths with Marna
Lloyd later said that he was the least selective man
in the hemisphere. Had screw anything. It didn't even have
to be pretty or clean. Gable was legendary around MGM
for his womanizing. One day, Gable was in a studio
(09:30):
executive's office and his desk was covered with hundreds of
studio stills of the contract actresses at MGM and Gabel
looked at them and said, I've had every single one
of them. It didn't stop with the contract actresses. He
had affairs with virtually every famous MGM star, John Crawford,
(09:54):
Marilena Dietrich, Marian Davies. It's hard to actually find one
that he did not have a fair but at least
one of those alleged conquests had broader consequences. It was
Gable's relationship with a twenty two year old rising film
star named Loretta Young. Loretta Young was kind of like
the Jennifer Anison of the nineteen thirties, just you know,
(10:16):
a very very steady and lovable star that wasn't necessarily
an incredible actress, but was widely beloved. Loretta Young signed
on to make a film with Clark Gable, Call of
the Wild, about gold prospectors in the Klondike. And she
goes with Clark Gable to shoot Call of the Wild,
which is based on the Jack London novel. And they're
(10:37):
in the wilderness in you know, the forest outside of
Seattle and on location, which was somewhat rare at the time.
Despite the frigid weather, Sparks flew between Young and the
married Gable and not just on screen. So you have
this long shoot in the winter, in the middle of nowhere,
and you have a beautiful star and Laretta Young, and
(10:57):
then another very handsome and flirtation a star in Clark Gable,
and you know there's home movies of them being flirtatious
with one another, and people on the set said that
they were flirting. Young, Gable and the rest of the
casting crew boarded an overnight train back to Hollywood when
filming came to an end. The stars were given individual
(11:18):
compartments for the journey. Loretta Young was in her compartment
in the overnight train and Clark Gable knocked on the
compartment door, and, as she told her biographer and also
her son and daughter in law, he knocked on the
door and she didn't know how to say no. Young
(11:39):
later said that she thought Gable just wanted to visit
her compartment, but according to Young, he had other ideas
in mind. She said quote, he wasn't rough, but I
kept saying no, and he wouldn't take no for an answer.
Clark Gable returned home to his wife, Real Langham after
shooting finished on Call of the Wild. His first words were,
(12:03):
I want my freedom. He didn't get it, at least
not then. Not long after, Gable received some news Loretta
Young was pregnant. He ignored it. Young was devastated. She
was freaked out. I mean, the thing to be an
unwed mother at that time in Hollywood, you know, it
would be the end of her career and she would
(12:24):
be a fallen woman. I mean, when that happened with
Hollywood starlet's usually the course of action and was to
get an abortion, but Loretta refused. Instead, she orchestrated one
of the greatest cover ups in Hollywood history. Young told
the studio she needed a vacation and left for Europe
with her mother. She remained there for months, explaining that
she was ill. Young then secretly returned to her mom's
(12:47):
house in California for her final trimester. She would go
out at night only and walk around the neighborhood to
get a little bit of exercise because she was still crazy.
But there were rumors that she was pregnant. Young invited
one prominent gossip columnists to her mom's house to dispel
the rumors. She greeted the calumnists from her bed and
they piled pillows all over her and they said, she's
(13:09):
just sick. She can't get out of bed, and they
essentially convinced the world that she was not pregnant by
putting pillows on top of her bed. One evening, about
nine months after Call of the Wild ceased filming on location,
Clark Gable attended the New York premiere of his next film. Afterwards,
Gable received an unsigned telegram in his hotel room. It read, beautiful,
(13:32):
blue eyed, blonde baby girl for an eight fifteen. This morning,
Gabel walked into the bathroom, tore up the telegram, and
flushed it down the toilet. It took decades for Young
to come to terms with what she claimed happened to
her that night in the train compartment, says Anne Helen Peterson.
In the nineties, Loretta Young was watching a program that
(13:55):
described day rape or you know, acquaintance rape, and the
dynamics of how that worked. That's someone that you know
that you know it's not a violent thing, but that
it is unwanted sex. And she saw that program and
heard that definition, and she said, that's what happened between
me and Clerk Gable. Loretta Young devised even more elaborate
(14:18):
plans after giving birth. She placed her baby in an
orphanage for the time being, and went back to work
on her next movie. Over a year later, she told
the press she decided to adopt two babies. What eventually
happened is those two children turned into one child, and
that one child that she adopted turned out to be
her own child. Thanks to Young's efforts, the story would
(14:40):
remain just a Hollywood r She was so smart, she
was so savvy. She pulled it off with no help.
She didn't have like a publicist who was coaching her
on us. Was like her her mom and her sisters,
who figured out how to game the entire publicity apparatus
so that she could keep her daughter like that's amazing.
(15:01):
Loretta Young did not get a lot of help from
the studio and navigating the rocky shoals of Hollywood morality
and scandal. She was unmarried, female, pregnant, and unwilling to
get an abortion. But her male co star, Clark Gable,
had plenty of help with his career threatening scandals up
next the men they called the Hollywood Fixers, an elite
(15:23):
special forces unit for scandal management. Clark Gable may never
have become Marilyn Monroe's hero or the King of Hollywood
without the help of some powerful allies within the studio system.
The fixers at MGM saved gable skin more than once,
and they were also responsible for his ill fated marriage
to relaying them. Historians call the nineteen thirties the golden
(15:59):
Age of Hollywood, and more than anything, that golden age
was defined by stars. The studios realized right away that
the fans reacted to the stars as much as they
did to the movie This is e. J. Fleming again.
And the studios also realized that the individual stars translated
(16:20):
to money, so it was imperative that they had an
organized system in place to take care of any problems
that came up. There was one studio in particular that
stood out as a star making machine, Anne Helen Peterson
MGM was the King, so they had one of their
slogans was more stars in the heavens. They were like
(16:40):
the HBO of nineteen thirties Hollywood. MGM stable of stars
included Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, Fred Astaire, Gene Harlow, and
Judy Garland. MGM and other studios took the personal behavior
of their stars very seriously. Any hint of scandal could
sink a star, and more importantly, the studio's large investment
(17:01):
in them. So MGM, like all of the other major
studios at the time, had what we're called fixers, and
those are people who collaborated with the publicity department to
make sure that no negative stories or stories that didn't
match the public image of the star would be released.
Clark Gable encountered MGMs fixers early on in his career
(17:24):
at the studio. In fact, that's how he came to
be married to Real Langham in the first place. Gable's
first major films were coming out in nine At the time,
he was living with Langham, a wealthy woman seventeen years
his senior. One day, Langham came to see MGM boss
Louis B. Mayer. Mayor had an experienced secretary who was
used to handling disgruntled wives and girlfriends. Her name was
(17:47):
Ida Koverman. Remember that name. We will get back to
Ida in the next episode. Ida Cooverman quickly redirected the
distraught Real Langham to a studio executive named Howard Strickling.
Howard Strickling was the publicity director and m JAM. He
was the guy that had to develop the stories, designed
the spin and sell then narratives. Langham broke down in
(18:09):
Strickling's office. She told him how she was living with
Gable for years with the understanding they would marry. She
threatened to raise a stink in the press if he
didn't propose. Studio executive summoned Gable and waived his contract
in front of him. The entire contract could be avoided
if the actor engaged in sexual or criminal misconduct. To
save his career, Clark Gable agreed to marry Real Langham.
(18:36):
MGM did much more than force its young stars to
marry live in lovers. They made sure no rough edges
came into public views, says Anne Helen Peterson. So anything
that they did, whether it was drunken mischief, punching a
waiter at a bar, um, abusing a wife or a partner,
those things were covered up in collaboration with the press
(18:58):
and the police department. MGM controlled every police force within
fifty miles. It had an army of doctors, psychiatrists, pharmacists,
lawyers and reporters that it could enlist at any time
to fix a problem. And MGM's chief fixer was a
man named Eddie Mannix. Mannix was a former amusement park
bouncer from New Jersey. One of the jobs Mannix was
(19:19):
tasked with was to keep an eye on Clark Gable.
Both men were inveterate gamblers, drinkers, and womanizers. They quickly
became close friends, and whenever Gable had a problem, Mannix,
along with Howard Strickling, was there to solve it. Yes,
Gable felt the blade of the studio's almighty sword when
he was forced to marry Realangum. But as Gable star rose,
(19:41):
he saw that same sword go to work for him.
He was driving drunk in Hollywood and he hit a
woman in a crosswalk and drove away. Clark Gable had
a lot of car accidents in his life, according to E. J. Fleming,
This one in three was the worst. He immediately called
Strickling and said he thought he hit somebody with his car.
(20:04):
Strickling called the Hollywood police and they confirmed that yes,
there was a dead woman on a crosswalk and people
identified gables car. MGMs fixers went to work, says Fleming.
MGM reportedly paid off the victim's family and paid another
employee to take the rap for the accident. Twelve years later,
(20:25):
Gable was driving home drunk again when he lost control
of his car on Sunset Boulevard and plowed into a tree.
Gable was taken to a nearby hospital. News of the
accident leaked to the press. MGM's publicity team, never cowed
by irony, told reporters that Gable was sideswiped by a
drunk driver. Like so many other royals in history, Clark
(20:50):
Gable got away with just about everything. But even before
he became a star, Gable was an unflinching opportunist, one
who would do almost anything and sleep with anyone that
might advance his career. Real langenm was just one of
several women who served his rungs in the ladder that
Gable used to climb to the top of Hollywood. Clark
(21:12):
Gable's route to Hollywood was an orthodox, to say the least.
He was from Cadiz, Ohio, a small river town in
the middle of nowhere. The young man, then known as
Billy Gable, quit school and went to work in Akron
doing odd jobs and Helen Peterson. Again. Like many classic
Hollywood stars, he had a pretty poor and rough and
tumble childhood, His parents were in and out of pictures.
(21:34):
His mom died when he was young um, and he
made his way to start um kind of by fits
and starts. Eventually Gable found his way to Portland, Oregon.
There he met the first of a series of older
women that would change his life. E. J. Fleming explains
Gable used women his entire life. He was with a
traveling stage crew in Oregon early in his career, and
(22:00):
he hooked up with the lead actress, a woman named
Franz door Fler. She actually got him his first job acting,
and he promised to marry her, uh so she would
keep giving him jobs. Gable broke that promise. He left
door Floer a year later when he met Josephine Dillon.
Josephine was a kind of a homely acting coach. He
(22:24):
was twenty years older than than Gable, but she took
a liking to him all women did. She renamed him Clark.
Dylan soon became the first Mrs Clark Gable. The newly
weds moved into a Hollywood bungalow. Gable worked as a
garage mechanic and struggled as a studio extra. He was
tall and handsome, but he had enormous ears and unattractive teeth.
(22:46):
So one of the things that Josephine Dillon for how
did for him was basically instruct him on how he
could make it as a Hollywood star and not just
as a you know, sort of handsome guy from Ohio.
And what she did was paid for him to get
new teeth. His teeth were crooked and bad. She also
(23:07):
taught him how to speak in a way that it
was less high pitched and feminine. Gable rewarded Dylan's efforts
on his behalf by abandoning her. He took up with
yet another older woman, actress Pauline Frederick. She had this
huge mansion on since at Bovard. He moved in with her.
He never told Dylan he was even in town, and
he was basically a kept man. He didn't do any acting.
(23:30):
She just kept giving him sports cars and jewelry. Gable
was indeed it kept man, even if no single woman
kept him for all that long. Finally he met a
wealthy forty four year old divorce and socialite from Texas
named Real Langham, and it was kind of a full marriage.
They pretended they were married. They introduced themselves as Mr
(23:50):
and Miss as Gable. With Langham bank rolling him, Gable
pursued a career on Broadway and then back in Hollywood.
The Ohio Ruffian blossomed into a suave or be night.
He wore Brooks Brothers suits. Sometimes he carried a cane.
I think that you could safely call Clark Gable a
gold digger. He saw opportunity in a way to rise
(24:13):
through their ranks in Hollywood, and that was given to
him by the rank and money and success of his
respective wives. You'll recall that Marilyn Monroe had no desire
to be a kept woman, despite no shortage of opportunities.
As a result, she often lent paycheck to paycheck. Gable
took a very different tack. One of the interesting things
(24:35):
about Gable is that during his early career as a
stage actor was that he never had to worry about
the types of things that most struggling actors had to
worry about. He never had to worry about money, He
never had to worry about a place to stay, he
never had to worry about food. He didn't have to
(24:56):
worry about anything because door flour Dylan Paulian, Frederick real
laying him had him on the payroll. Gable was more
than a boy toy. He was a Pygmalion like project.
His female keepers could play Henry Higgins to his Eliza Doolittle.
After Gable signed with MGM, the starmakers at the studio
(25:16):
continued the transformation. Gable was a complete studio creation. The
Clark Gable that everybody remembers and saw in all the
movies was the antithesis of the real Clark Gable. He
was almost laughably hypochondriac. He had to be taught the
(25:41):
basic manners because he was basically kind of an uncouth
Ohio bumpkin. MGM sent Gable for new dentures. They restyled
his hair, plucked his eyebrows, and sent him to the gym.
They even tried pinning his ears back with tape. It
didn't work, so studio cameramen were instructed to film him
from the side as much as possible. The end result,
(26:02):
MGM cast him in a series of increasingly big roles.
In ninety one, the same year the studio forced him
to marry Real Agum. Movie goers had never seen anyone
like him. One magazine dubbed him the Great God Gable.
Here he is with Carol Lombard in the nineteen thirty
two film No Man of her Own. Sure go so FATCHO?
(26:23):
I wouldn't be and I was sure of you. Men
all over America started to imitate his brash, macho style.
It was not uncommon to overhear a woman responding to
those men by saying, who do you think you are?
Clark Gable. Clark Gable was in the right place at
the right time in Hollywood. MGM was loaded with female
(26:46):
stars but short of romantic leading men. By the end
of the decade, and after his stint as Rhett Butler,
Clark Gable was the biggest star on the planet. Gable's
massive fame also helped fire up the divorce courts of
Las Vegas, and aren't a chain of events that shaped
the lives of Marilyn Monroe, Hugh Hefner, and Gloria Steinem
Next week, in our final episode of the season, we
(27:08):
find out what launched Clark Gable. Even with all the
help from his various wives and female patrons, the young
Gable might not have succeeded in Hollywood without a little
good fortune, including a single test audience that was stacked
in his favor. We also retrace our steps and learn
more about the casting couches of early Hollywood and how
they connect to Gloria Steinham and the women's movement today.
(27:32):
Womanizing Daddio, he had got the swagger of a champion.
So bad for you. You just can't find the right company,
And I guess when you have one makes it hard.
It could be easy who you are. That's just who
you are. Baby. The Threat is produced by Libby Coleman
(27:53):
and me Sean Braswell. Chris Hoff engineered our show special
thanks to Cindy Carpian, Tracy Moran, and James Watkins. This
episode features a cover of the song Womanizer by Britney
Spears that was recorded at the New Foundry Studios by
Sophie Goldby. To learn more about the Thread, visit ausi
dot com, slash the thread all one word, and make
(28:13):
sure to subscribe to the Threat on Apple Podcasts. Check
us out at ausi dot com or on Twitter and Facebook.
If you love surprising, engaging stories from history, look no
further than the flashback section of ausy dot com. That's
o z y dot com. Or you don't trying to
run no, just just what you up by. You don't
(28:35):
trying to fright. No, just just do what you are,
Sam crazy. I've got your crazy, nothing but the woman. No,
you're a woman now
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