eMoviePoster.com

What are the objects in the corners of some images? Learn More

Clark Gable was born William Clark Gable in Cadiz, Ohio in 1901. His mom died when he was an infant, and his dad remarried and his step-mother encouraged him to pursue singing, playing music, and acting. At 21, he came into an inheritance and began trying to make a living acting. He moved to Oregon, where he met Josephine Dillon, a stage manager 17 years older than he was. She became his personal "coach", teaching him acting, and also paying to have his teeth fixed and to dress better. In 1924 they moved to Hollywood and were married. But Gable had very limited success in getting parts until he moved to New York. After he played a killer in The Last Mile on Broadway, he was signed by MGM, in 1930 and he also divorced his wife and immediately married again. In 1931, Gable was the lead "heavy" in in The Painted Desert, a cowboy movie starring William Boyd, and he also appeared in 12 other MGM movies that year! Most were pretty minor roles, but Joan Crawford had spotted him and asked for him to play a key role in Dance, Fools, Dance, and they ended up making a total of eight films together, and they had an on-again off-again affair for many years, including when one or both were married! Gable was the top male star of the 1930s, and his good friend Spencer Tracy dubbed him the King of Hollywood, and the nickname stuck. He co-starred opposite every top female MGM star, most notably Crawford and Jean Harlow. In 1934 MGM "loaned" Gable to Columbia to make It Happened One Night, and he won the Best Actor Oscar. In 1939 he was loaned to David Selznick to make Gone With the Wind, so ironically, even though Gable is strongly identified with MGM, his two greatest hits were made for other studios (although MGM did distribute Gone With the Wind). In 1935 Gable made The Call of the Wild with Loretta Young, and they had an affair, which resulted in a baby, and since that could have meant the end of both their careers, Young took a year off and pretended to adopt her own baby! In 1939 Gable divorced again and immediately married again, this time to film star Carole Lombard. By all accounts they were very happy together, but in 1942, Lombard was killed in a plane crash while selling war bonds, and Gable was devastated, and joined the Army Air Force at the age of 41. There he made recruiting films, but also went on five combat missions. After the war, Gable married two more times, in 1949, and in 1955. His post-War movies are mostly not very good, in part because Gable insisted on always playing a romantic lead, often with a much younger leading lady. In 1961 he was paired with Marilyn Monroe (and Montgomery Clift) in The Misfits, and that proved to be both Gable and Monroe's final movie. Gable had been a heavy smoker and drinker all his life, and he wanted to look his best opposite Marilyn, and he went on a crash diet, and soon after the movie was finished he had a heart attack. Four months after his death, his wife gave birth to their son, John Clark Gable. If you want to understand why Gable was such an incredibly popular male star (maybe the greatest of all time) I suggest you begin with It Happened One Night. Gable is wonderful, as is the entire movie! AND Jimmy McLarnin was an Irish-Canadian professional boxer from the 1920s to the 1930s. He was a two-time welterweight world champion and an International Boxing Hall of Fame inductee. He was notable for several reasons. For one, he is the incredibly rare boxer who retired at the very height of his career in 1936, and likely because of that, he lived until the age of 96 (he had invested his earnings, and was wealthy when he retired). He was voted the fifth greatest welterweight of all time, and the highlight of his career was an epic three-fight series with Barney Ross, where he lost the first one, regained his title in the second one, and then narrowly lost the third one (and McLarnin claimed he was "robbed" in that one). Also, he fought in the days when there was no political correctness whatsoever, and he was a noted Irish fighter who often fought noted Jewish fighters, and his many nicknames included Baby Faced Assassin, Beltin' Celt, Dublin Dynamiter, Dublin Destroyer, Murderous Mick, The Belfast Spider, The Jew Killer, The Jew Beater, Hebrew Scourge, and The Irish Lullaby (I don't think we have to worry about seeing most of those nicknames ever again!).

Important Added Info: Note that this cool still shows Clark Gable meeting welterweight champ Jimmy McLarnin. Based on the reference on the back of the still to McLarnin beating Young Corbett III in 1933, and Gable's look, we would say it almost surely dates to 1933 or 1934. If anyone knows more about this still, please e-mail us and we will post it here.

Our address for UPS or FedEx only is:
Bruce Hershenson,
306 Washington Avenue, West Plains, MO 65775