He would become a Hollywood legend and an iconic actor, making women swoon and men take notice.

William Clark Gable was born on February 1, 1901 to oil well driller William H. Gable and his wife Adeline Hershelman. Baptized Roman Catholic at 6 months old by his ailing mother, upon her passing when Gable was just 10 months old, a storm brewed between Gable’s father and his mother’s family, and resulted in Gable being denied a relationship with his mother’s side of the family until he was older. For the first two years of his life, Gable was raised by his father’s parents, and then taken into the home of his father and new stepmother Jennie Dunlap. She immediately accepted Gable as her own child, doting on him and caring for him. She was idolized by Clark, who referred to her as “one of the most tender human beings” he had ever known.

Jennie was a pianist, and spent many hours teaching Clark piano at their home. He was a tall, shy child and his father frequently ridiculed him for what he considered “sissy” behavior. Gable dropped out of high school in his junior year, moving to nearby Akron, Ohio to do factory work. It was in Akron that he discovered his love for the theatre and began volunteering with a local theatre company just to spend time at the theatre.

At the age of 17, Gable received word that his stepmother was desperately ill, and he raced home to Cadiz, Ohio. Her death just days after his arrival home was devastating to Clark. His father loathed the acting profession and refused to support Clark’s interest in the field. Where his stepmother had encouraged him to follow his heart, his father insisted he go to Oklahoma to work in the oil fields. Gable despised the work in the oil fields, and with the small inheritance he received from his grandfather at the age of 21, he left to pursue a career in acting. This move caused a 10 year estrangement from his father.

Clark worked his way across the Midwest to Portland, Oregon, working in theatres across the country when he could, but mostly taking manual labor jobs until his arrival in Portland, where he worked as a tie salesman. He fell in love with aspiring actress Franz Dorfler, and the two became engaged. She, however, refused to follow through with marriage because Gable did not have any money, and she left him to travel with a theatre group.

Returning his focus back on acting following Dorfler’s departure, Gable got in on the ground floor of a new theatre group that was forming. The group was run by Josephine Dillon, who was nearly 15 years older than Clark. She considered him her star pupil, and the two of them headed off to Hollywood, where Josephine was certain Clark would make an impression on the acting community. The two married on December 13, 1924, although Gable admitted the marriage was never consummated. Dillon did, however, groom Clark for his role as a Hollywood heartthrob. She transformed him from Midwest farm boy by teaching him proper etiquette, posture, having his hair styled, finding a dentist to fix his teeth, and suggesting that he drop his first name and use Clark Gable as his stage name. Josephine secured many small roles for him, but Clark soon became disillusioned with Dillon and his inability to break into a leading man role. He left Hollywood and went to New York City, where he hoped to find more success.

In New York, Gable became and remained lifelong friends with Lionel Barrymore, who encouraged him to set his sights on a career on the stage. He was well received by critics and theatre goers for his role in Machinal, but the depression hit, forcing many theatres to close their doors and work became increasingly difficult to obtain. It was during this time that Gable met second wife Ria Langham, who was 17 years his senior. She continued to groom him in the same manner wife Josephine had, and used her many connections to introduce Clark to some very influential social crowds. Gable and Langham eventually returned to Hollywood, and after an impressive performance in the play The Last Mile, he was signed to a contract with MGM Studios, which was looking to increase it’s stable of male stars. MGM frequently paired him with their stronger female lead actresses in an effort to gain popularity and notoriety for Gable, and Joan Crawford specifically requested him in several of her popular films.

In 1931, Gable was cast as a supporting actor in the film A Free Soul. It was reported in the Hollywood Reporter that “…a star in the making has been made…” Gable we never cast as a supporting actor again after this film. He began his rocket to stardom, and also began a steamy affair with frequent co-star Joan Crawford. The relationship caused such a stir in Hollywood, that both Gable and Crawford were threatened by Louis B. Mayer to have their contracts cancelled. The couple drifted apart, and Gable entered into a relationship with Marion Davies. He did not officially divorce Langham until 1939.

During his lengthy tenure with MGM Studios, Gable was loaned out to Columbia Studios, and it was during this point in his career that he gained the most success. Gable appeared in Columbia Studios low budget It Happened One Night, which became a box office smash and earned five Oscar nominations, including a nod to Gable for Best Actor. This was to be Gable’s only Oscar win, and as a result of the overwhelming success of the Frank Capra film, MGM Studios doubled Gable’s contracted salary, offering him $4000 weekly.

In 1935, after the filming of Mutiny on the Bounty, for which Gable earned his second Academy Award nomination, he began an affair with Call of the Wild co-star Loretta Young. Young became pregnant during the affair, but an elaborate scheme was hatched to cover up the paternity of the child. Young took an extended European vacation, and returned home with a baby daughter she claimed to have adopted. It was widely known, however, that the child was not adopted, but Young refused to acknowledge her daughter’s paternity until she eventually gave a biographer permission to print the truth in a book to be published after her death.

He was prompted to take arguably his most famous role of Rhett Butler by Carole Lombard. Lombard was the one and only true love in Gable’s life, and for the first time, his marriage was based on love. The couple married in 1939, but in 1942, having completed filming a movie, Lombard was on tour with her mother and an entourage to sell War Bonds. The small plane that carried them crashed and burned near Las Vegas. Everyone on the plane perished in the crash, including the 33 year old Lombard, who was decapitated in the accident.

After losing Lombard, Gable joined the Army Air Forces, and flew in five combat missions. Adolph Hitler put a hefty price tag on the capture of Clark Gable, indicating the actor should be brought to Hitler unscathed. He was discharged from the military honorably with the rank of Major.

Although Gable returned to Hollywood, he never recaptured the level of success he had in the years prior to Carole’s death. He briefly resumed his affair with Joan Crawford, but then he married in 1949 for the fourth time to Lady Sylvia Ashley, the widow of actor Douglas Fairbanks. The marriage was an undisputable disaster, and they divorced less than two years later.

In 1955, after 13 years in an on-again, off-again affair, Gable married Kay Spreckles, a former fashion model and actress. He doted on her two children from a previous marriage, but was thrilled to learn in 1960 that Kay was pregnant with his child.

Gable has ballooned in weight in his later years, up to over 230 pounds. He frequently resorted to crash dieting and allegedly relied on diet drugs to lose weight rapidly to take on film roles. It is rumored that people believed Gable to have Parkinson’s disease because of the tremors and shaking caused as a result of his over consumption of the diet drug Dexedrine.

On Sunday, November 6th, Gable woke in excruciating pain. He had gone to bed early the evening before, suffering what he believed to be indigestion. He was rushed to the hospital, where he remained resting to recover from the apparent heart attack. His wife Kay, just over 3 months pregnant, remained at his side nearly night and day, sleeping in an adjoining room at the hospital.

Gable appeared to be recuperating very well. His wife began venturing home to check on things at the couple’s ranch for a few hours during the day, and he was sitting up in bed, reading, chatting with nurses, and looking well. On Friday evening, November 16th, Kay retired around 10:30 in the evening to her adjoining room at the hospital, leaving Clark reading a magazine. At approximately 10:50, just twenty minutes later, Gable rested his head back on his pillow, and quietly passed away.

William Clark Gable, the undisputed King of Hollywood, had died from coronary thrombosis at the age of 59. He did not live to see the birth of his only son, John Clark Gable, who arrived six months after his father’s passing. Gable was buried, after a funeral attended by more than 200 of Hollywood’s most famous people, in a crypt next to his beloved Carole Lombard.