February 1
KING OF HOLLYWOOD DAY
On this day in 1901 in Cadiz, Ohio, William Clark Gable, ‘King of Hollywood’, was born. Of course, he wasn’t born King of Hollywood. That came later. Some thirty-three years later, to be more precise. Just as Hollywood was making the transition from silent movies to talkies, Clark Gable was making his first movie, Painted Desert. It was 1931 and he wasn’t anywhere near being King -- more like Ape -- of the Movies. Darryl Zanuck commented: “His ears are too big. He looks like an ape.”
The big ape obviously didn’t listen with those big ears. Within the next three years Clark Gable made twenty films with leading ladies like Jean Harlow, Greta Garbo and Joan Crawford; winning the coveted Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in It Happened One Night. The year was 1934, and a new, romantic, screen idol and King of Hollywood was born. Men shed their undershirts to imitate Clark’s barechested look as revealed in the film. Women swooned and undershirt sales plummeted throughout the U.S.
The following year, Clark starred as Fletcher Christian in the Oscar-winning picture, Mutiny on the Bounty. Then in 1939, Clark became Rhett Butler in the movie for which he will always be remembered, another Oscar-winner, Gone with the Wind; and married Carole Lombard. Theirs was a storybook marriage that ended in tragedy three years later when Lombard was killed in a plane crash.
A stint in the Air Force and two decades of films followed; the last (just before he died) was The Misfits opposite Marilyn Monroe. After thirty years, Clark Gable was still the leading man ... King of Hollywood.
Those Were the Days, the Today in History service from 440 International
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