Clark Gable and His WW2 Death Wish
Clark Gable did not intend to meet action when Globe War II came to America. Which is non to say he ignored the war. Gable was there that day in 1940 when President Franklin Roosevelt gave his famous "Armory of Democracy" voice communication from the Oval Office. And, indeed, the beginning thing the movie star did when he heard about the Pearl Harbor attack was cablevision FDR to offer his total support—and, tellingly, the besieged president promptly answered correct back.
Only then in the 1930s and early '40s, Gable was "the King of Hollywood;" the reigning flick star who could sell more tickets than anybody this side of Shirley Temple, and he didn't have to sing or trip the light fantastic toe to exercise it either. He was a mustachioed and muscular alpha who appealed to everybody, even presidents, and was one of the few leading men who would tell Louis B. Mayer no (at least until casting for Gone with the Wind came along). The government saw the value in that kind of celebrity when the dark storm clouds of war gathered over Europe and the South Pacific, and and then did Gable. Notwithstanding, he was practically 41 when the bombs savage in Hawaii and more than happy to support the state of war from afar.
As he told fellow MGM stablemate Jimmy Stewart at the latter'due south going abroad party in 1940—Stewart had just happily joined the Army—"You know y'all're throwing away your career, don't you?" When Stewart answered yes, Gable added, "You won't catch me doing that, only I wish yous godspeed."
Gable had success, Gable had power, and for the first fourth dimension in his iv decades on this earth, Gable had something approaching peace thanks to his marriage to Carole Lombard, the firecracker screwball star. Yet in less than a year, all of those things turned to ash following Lombard's tearing decease. When her plane went downwards in a fiery blaze, it was treated as a national tragedy around the country, and for her husband it was the beginning of the end.
The Male monarch became broken, despondent, and finally disillusioned enough to enlist in the U.S. Army Air Corps. To this twenty-four hour period, some say he went to Europe with a decease wish, and on at least i bombing raid, Capt. Gable almost had information technology granted as a Luftwaffe crush passed correct between his feet.
The King and Queen of Hollywood
Women were always easy for Clark Gable, and for a time so were wives. The first Mrs. Gable was Josephine Dillon, 17 years his senior, and she was introduced to him as an acting passenger vehicle by another woman who was his so-fiancée. As a handsome, if unrefined son of an Ohioan farmer, the 23-year-old Gable was perfect dirt for Dillon. She turned him into her greatest student, instruction him how to lower his voice and agree your attending. As his patron and wife, Dillon also introduced Gable to all her Broadway connections and the adjacent stock companies. It was even as the star of one of those companies that he met Maria Langham, a wealthy widow and oil heiress who was likewise 17 years his senior.
As the second Mrs. Gable, Ria introduced Gable to Manhattan's loftier lodge and exquisite living, instruction him social etiquette and the value of a finely tailored tuxedo. One wife taught him how to play at being an role player, and the other taught him how to play at beingness a admirer. They served their purposes and they were both brushed off.
Only Lombard? He couldn't brush her off always.
The first time Clark met Carole, it was a surprisingly chaste matter. The two were cast every bit the leads of 1932'southward No Man of Her Ain . Unlike many of his leading ladies in the 1930s, Gable made no passes at Lombard, who was married to movie star William Powell at the time and intended to remain that style. Nevertheless, they striking it off, as the breathlessly quick-witted Lombard did with well-nigh everyone.
Gable wasn't yet "the King of Hollywood" and then, but he was well on his way. Two years after, he'd star in the moving picture that popularized screwball comedies, Information technology Happened One Night (1934), which won him an Oscar for Best Actor, and two years subsequently that he would lead the granddaddy of all disaster movies, San Francisco (1936). By '38, he was already Tinseltown royalty when then-gossip columnist Ed Sullivan overheard Gable's drinking buddy and sometime-rival, Spencer Tracy, affectionately refer to him as "King." Sullivan immediately lit upon the idea of holding a national poll for the "King and Queen of Hollywood."
More than than 20 1000000 people voted and, by a huge majority, Gable was crowned "King" for the rest of his career. Meanwhile, Myrna Loy was elected "Queen of Hollywood." The fact they were then filming MGM'southward Test Pilot (with Tracy) certainly suggests the results might've been tampered with. Information technology also likely struck Loy as ironic since her first encounter with Gable ended with her pushing him into a hedge bush after he drunkenly bit the back of her neck while his second wife, Ria, was sitting in a nearby car. Gable refused for years to talk to Loy socially subsequently that rejection, including between takes on pic sets.
So yep, the Male monarch was a womanizer—consummate with a secret baby born out of wedlock to co-star Loretta Young—in a sham marriage at the beginning of his reign. But things began changing when he finally ran into Lombard once again, and at last he establish his matching monarch.
Information technology was at the White Ball in 1936 that the pair's paths crossed a second time. By now, Clark was fully estranged from Ria, and the two lived in split houses. Lombard, meanwhile, had risen to her own stardom by bringing her transgressive life-of-the-party persona to recent screwball comedies directed by Howard Hawks and Ernst Lubitsch. Vivacious, whip smart, and an eventual inspiration for Marion Ravenwood in Raiders of the Lost Ark , Lombard was a hard-drinking and giddy star with her own orbit.
According to Clark Gable: A Biography past Warren G. Harris, when Gable saw Lombard on the dance floor, he went up and said, "I go for you, Ma." After a moment'southward confusion, Lombard realized he was quoting their characters' nicknames for each other in No Man of Her Own from iv years earlier. She responded, "I get for you too, Pa."
For the rest of their lives, they'd always refer to each other every bit "Ma" and "Pa."
The Love of His Life
That first night on the trip the light fantastic toe floor really ended in the pair'southward first of many fights. But in a trick that would come to define the pattern of their relationship, Gable woke upwards the side by side morn in his hotel room with two doves sitting on his chest. They'd been secreted there with a notation on one's leg: "How near it? Carole."
Different Gable'southward other romantic entanglements, Lombard always controlled the tone and tempo of their courtship while Gable offered Lombard an escape from the glamour goddess, society girl epitome she'd molded herself to in Hollywood. She was an athlete growing up and, alongside Pa, she picked up outdoor-living again.
Clark taught Carole rifling, skeet-shooting, and camping ground. In '38, she joined what had upwards to that point been Gable'due south all-male person hunting society with beau actors and Hollywood talent. When the other men complained about a woman being nowadays and sharing their bathroom, she brought along her own trailer with a individual bathroom—taunting Clark and the others by then keeping him out. She crawled in the mud adjacent to the dudes, and would soon be on all of the Gables' hunting trips.
The pair eloped in '39 later on three years of courtship. This occurred in large function because Photoplay mag revealed the ii were living in sin (Gable was nonetheless married and too chintzy to get a divorce). Shortly after the embarrassment, however, Gable paid off his second married woman and Lombard became the third Mrs. Gable.
"I just call back of that married man of mine all the fourth dimension," Lombard once said with her usual candor. "I'm really stuck on the bounder. And it isn't all that swell lover crap, considering if you want to know the truth, I've had better. No, I'thou nuts about him and not but about his nuts."
When the two moved into their Encino ranch, Gable fabricated his gun collection the centerpiece when you walked in the forepart door, and Lombard began raising chickens and cattle. It was about as far from Beverly Hills as you lot could get, or as Lombard enthused, "The best little shit house in the San Fernando Valley."
It was here that Lombard planned to shortly retire, start with a ane-year sabbatical in an effort to have children. All the same after a yr of trying, they merely had two miscarriages to show for it. They agreed to keep trying, merely they'd shortly run out of chances.
The Loss of His Life
When the bombs fell in Pearl Harbor, it was Carole who urged Clark to telegraph Roosevelt as soon every bit possible. She was also in the White Firm for the president's fireside chat in 1940. And unlike Gable, she was furious when the president responded, "You are needed where you are."
With the war finally here, Lombard urged Gable to join the Army in December 1941 while she hoped to bring together the Scarlet Cross. For Christmas, instead of her usual lavish presents she sent all her friends engravings announcing she'd made a donation to the Reddish Cantankerous in their name. And when she got air current of MGM publicity master Howard Strickling trying to position Gable for a rubber desk chore in Washington D.C. for the form of the state of war, she told both men, "The last thing I want for Pappy is one of those phony commissions!"
Gable preferred helping the war where FDR told him he should—from the comfort of Hollywood. On Dec. 22, 1941, he presided over the commencement meeting of the Screen Actors Division of the Hollywood Victory Committee every bit its newly appointed chairman. The committee functioned as a style for Hollywood stars and leaders to organize all activities in support of the war effort. His wife was the first at the coming together to pledge her cooperation in donations, bond rallies, and touring the troops.
When a request came from the Treasury Department for the Victory Committee to launch Indiana'southward participation in the national campaign of selling war bonds on Jan. 15, 1942, Gable recognized his Indiana-built-in wife equally the perfect talent to transport along. Carole was thrilled to go, although apprehensive about leaving Clark behind.
Gable couldn't bring together his wife on her journeying by railroad train because he was nearly to start work on Somewhere I'll Find Yous : his second film with Lana Turner. Up until so, Carole had been very open-minded most Gable'due south continued infidelities and little affairs, even later on they were married. She turned a blind eye to more than one rumor of him sleeping with a co-star here, or a starstruck journalist at that place, considering she assumed you had to let Clark Gable be Clark Gable. Merely she drew the line over rumors about Clark and Lana, the latter of whom was infamously dubbed the "Sweater Girl" when she was discovered at a soda fountain at historic period 16. Blonde and buxom, Turner was 20-years-erstwhile when she first worked with the forty-year-erstwhile Gable. These stories did get to Lombard.
The evening before she left for Indiana, the couple had a huge blowout during which Clark failed to convince his married woman he never slept with Lana Turner. The last night Gable and Lombard were under the same roof, they slept in different beds. The side by side morning, he did non see his wife off to the train station.
Every bit with many of their fights, things cooled virtually immediately. Before she left, Lombard notwithstanding delivered a pack of handwritten love messages to her alive-in secretarial assistant Jean Garceau to evangelize to Clark, one at a time, everyday she was abroad. She as well had the prank she planned before their fight nonetheless be delivered, then when Gable returned habitation from work that nighttime he found a naked blonde dummy in his bed with a notation. "Then yous won't be lone." Gable reportedly laughed until he had tears in his eyes.
According to Garceau when the two talked by phone the side by side dark, they sounded like "lovebirds" again. And co-ordinate to the You Must Call back This podcast, Gable had Carole'due south hotel room in Indianapolis exist covered in blood-red roses when she got in. Simply before even then, Lombard's train stopped in Common salt Lake City where she saw the troops marching and immediately telegraphed her husband, "HEY PAPPY, You'D Improve Go INTO THIS MAN'S ARMY."
On Jan. 15, Lombard intended to heighten $500,000 in war bonds. Instead, she raised over $ii million. Afterward, she was and so eager to get dwelling house to Gable following their fight that she decided she'd fly dorsum to California instead of returning by train. This was expressly forbidden by the Treasury Section. Commercial travel was notwithstanding relatively dicey, and they feared she'd be a target for Nazi saboteurs. Additionally, she was traveling with her mother Elizabeth Peters, a superstitious woman who'd never flown and was deathly afraid to commencement at present. She was also in that location with Otto Winkler, Gable's publicist and buddy who was best human at their hymeneals.
The morning time their flight was to exit Indianapolis, Otto got Carole to at to the lowest degree concur to a coin toss. Heads they fly, tails they have the train. Carole won. From Indianapolis, they would make multiple stops, including Wichita, Albuquerque, and Las Vegas. TWA Flight Number 3 never reached Burbank.
That night Gable arranged a surprise party to welcome the three heroes back—as well every bit a surprise male dummy with an erection waiting for Carole upstairs. He was reportedly giddy waiting for the telephone call from limo commuter Larry Barbier, who was supposed to report when they landed. Instead, Clark got a call from MGM fixer Eddie Mannix.
"Can I go back to you?" Gable asked. "I'm expecting discussion on Ma'south arrival whatever minute."
Mannix cut him off. "King, that's why I'm calling. Larry Barbier just phoned from the drome. Carole's airplane went downwardly just a few minutes later on it left Las Vegas." She was gone.
Clark Gable Goes to War
The fallout from the literal wreckage of Lombard's flight was national news. A bewildered Gable joined Mannix and other MGM brass for their own chartered flying to Vegas. He could run into the burning debris that Lombard's flight smeared across Tabular array Rock Mountain from the air. Locals in the city described information technology as "apocalyptic" and like an "inferno."
Mannix refused to permit Gable go on the rescue party climbing the mount—convincing him Carole, Otto, and Bettie might have survived and were now walking to the urban center. So the star stayed behind and drank. The next forenoon, he received a cable from Mannix. "NO SURVIVORS. ALL KILLED INSTANTLY."
In truth, the bodies of Lombard and anybody else on board had been more or less cremated past the burn after touch on. And while Mannix couldn't exist sure, he believed he found what was left of Carole: a decapitated, charred body with a few blonde strands of hair and the remnants of a ruby and diamond pin Gable had given his wife the year earlier. He never told Clark nigh what he saw, but brought back the hairs and piece of ruby.
The next twenty-four hour period, FDR sent Gable private condolences and publicly awarded Lombard a medal every bit "the first woman to be killed in action in the defense of her country in its war against the Centrality powers."
The official and (likely) reason for that flight'due south crash is information technology was overloaded with servicemen and picture star baggage, and the pilot failed to see the mountain in forepart of him, on which all lights had been turned off to preserve wartime power. Although, according to Orson Welles (as per Yous Must Think This ), Hollywood and government insiders all knew Nazi saboteurs did in fact bring down the plane, and Roosevelt covered it up to prevent a nationwide panic.
In the months that followed, Gable grew serenity and despondent, losing 20 pounds despite drinking untold amounts of Scotch every day. He dined lone for all meals and began wearing a locket with Carole'south pilus and ruddy remnants within. Co-ordinate to household staff, he rarely slept and stayed up all hours of the night watching 16mm prints of Lombard's former movies he had sent over (she'd given him the projector equally a Christmas present). Now he had fourth dimension for no adult female except the one he lost.
When he discovered MGM was notwithstanding trying to proceed him from existence drafted—with the age range at present beingness raised to 45—Gable grew furious. A scriptwriter pal put him in touch with Col. Luke Smith of the Army Air Corps, who told Gable he should consider applying for grooming as an aeriform gunner since information technology'due south ane of those jobs no 1 seems interested in.
"Everybody wants to be a airplane pilot," Smith told Gable. "Your becoming a gunner would help to glorify the plane crews and the grease monkeys." Gable fabricated upwardly his listen to enlist in spite of the wrath of MGM head Louis B. Mayer. He also defied the constraints of his historic period of 41 by passing the physical—save for the need of getting triplicates of his new dentures (Gable had imitation teeth his whole career).
On Aug. 12, 1942, Gable enlisted into the Ground forces air force. Right beforehand he told Jill Winkler, Otto's widow, "I'm going in, and I don't await to come up dorsum, and I don't actually requite a hoot whether I do or not."
The Aerial Gunner with a Death Wish
At that place is yet much speculation over whether Gable actually wanted to die in World War 2. His superiors eventually reached that conclusion based on his cavalier mental attitude, and he at least seemed ambivalent well-nigh the whole affair. Yet, it is interesting he joined the air forcefulness because that, after Lombard'southward expiry, he developed a fear of flight for the remainder of his life. Following the war, he would always prefer to make his transatlantic crossings by ocean liners instead of planes.
But during the war? Frankly, he didn't seem to give a damn one way or the other.
Gable's biggest fear during the whole disharmonize was his struggle to pass officeholder's training in a 90-twenty-four hour period course stateside. A high school dropout, Gable was challenged by the bookish course work, which he ultimately got around by treating each textbook like a script he needed to memorize.
Once he was an officer (and immune to abound dorsum his trademark mustache), he seemed in relatively good spirits for the first time in months. Before going overseas, he told Garceau, "I take everything in the world anyone could desire, only for one thing. All I actually need and want is Ma."
In Apr 1943, Gable was shipped off to join the 351st Heavy Bombardment Grouping in Peterborough, England, about 80 miles north of London. Gable also received an automatic promotion to the rank of helm, although this had as much to exercise with the heavy losses of Allied officers as it did with Gable's leadership.
In truth, Gable probable enjoyed playing the function of officer more than he entirely became information technology. The armed forces loved letting him pose for the press as a gunner with a bombardier's bullets wrapped around his neck, but that wasn't his bodily job. While Gable did on at least 2 occasions accept on the office of aerial gunner in combat, his official role was as an observational gunner—he was in that location to selection up the weapons in the side or rear of a B-17 if the gunner operating it was injured or killed (which did happen).
Otherwise, Gable was at that place considering the Army wanted him to moving picture footage they could use as propaganda, glorifying the role of gunners. While in officer'south school, the Army reunited Gable with cinematographer Andy McIntyre, who would become his sidekick and cameraman in the air. And afterwards his graduation, Gable bundled the transfer of his scriptwriting buddy John Lee Mahin, then a lieutenant serving as an instructor in Combat Intelligence, to join them. In all, Gable and McIntyre built a film coiffure of 6 men to film the other fliers on B-17 missions. They were chosen "the Footling Hollywood Grouping."
More than twice the age of many of the pilots and gunners he flew with, Gable found himself facing heavy skepticism in his early training.
"None of the kids believed he was going to practise anything at all," Mahin recalled in Warren's Clark Gable biography. "They never thought he was going to expose himself to any kind of danger. They said it was all a lot of bullshit. It really killed Clark that the kids shunned him."
The brass, withal, loved Gable at first. Many of his superiors invited him near every nighttime to dinner, an annoyance he'd soon relegate to 1 evening a week. And while he welcomed the press to photograph him at the planes, he also refused the special treatment of having private quarters ready, which earned him more respect from the immature fliers.
He'd also soon testify himself equally a member of Col. William Hatcher's Chickens (a nickname for his bombing group) when he went up in the air on May 4, 1943. Hatcher was onboard the aforementioned B-17 that mean solar day as group commander and co-airplane pilot; the 351st were tasked with taking out several factories in Nazi-occupied Antwerp, Belgium.
During Gable'due south first combat mission, flak from ground defenses took out ane of the plane'south four engines and its stabilizer. More unnervingly, afterwards delivering the plane's payload, a German's 20mm beat out pierced the eye of the aeroplane, with the corner of the shell passing through the heel of Gable'south boot—lifting it clean off—and then exiting the aircraft inches in a higher place Gable'southward caput.
On another mission, Gable took over for gunners who were wounded or killed (there was at least one of each that day). 15 holes were establish in the fuselage. For Gable, such horrors were also a vindication, as he fully won the respect of the kids effectually him.
"They adored him," Mahin recalled. "They couldn't stay away from him. And he was proud that they accustomed him."
Hitler's Prize
At Peterborough, Gable grew increasingly chummy with the other fliers serving. He bought a used motorcycle and would make small talk on trips around the base. And on more than a few weekends, he would head to London to screen at MGM offices some of the footage he shot in the air. He as well would meet with his pre-war Hollywood chum, David Niven, who was serving as an teacher for British Commandos and had recently married and had a son.
"From and then on our cottage became Clark'south refuge from military life," Niven recalled. "With Carole'due south death, he had been dealt the cruelest of blows, but on the surface at to the lowest degree, he was making the all-time of information technology. In his own deep misery, he found it possible to rejoice over the bang-up happiness that had come up my way, and he became devoted to my little family."
Niven added, "Clark's personal wounds seemed to be healing, just Carole was never far from him, and the very happiness of our piffling group would sometimes overwhelm him. [My wife] found him one evening on an upturned wheelbarrow in the garden, his caput in his hands, weeping uncontrollably."
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However, Gable seemed to be settling into a new happy rhythm of camaraderie on the base of operations, frequent trips to London, and even playing the field. He renewed an affair with a pre-Lombard paramour in London, the English language (and now married with children) Elizabeth Allan. Nonetheless, he may accept been enjoying himself likewise much for his superiors' liking.
Robert Matzen, author of Mission: Jimmy Stewart and the Fight for Europe and Fireball: Carole Lombard and the Mystery of Flight 3 , told me he believed Gable had a death wish.
"Carole Lombard, his wife, wanted him to go fight and she's killed," Matzen said. "So he then decides, 'Alright, I'll go fight and hopefully I'll be killed besides.' That's why he wanted to be in the Eighth Air Force, because he wanted to dice in a airplane crash." Also, unlike Stewart, Matzen stressed, Gable never fully adapted to military civilisation.
Said Matzen, "Gable was much more interested in being Clark Gable in England than Jim Stewart was interested in being Jimmy Stewart in England." This weighed on the mind of Col. Hatcher, every bit did the growing understanding that every B-17 Gable was on became a prize for Nazi Federal republic of germany.
The day the 351st arrived in England, Nazi radio propagandist William Joyce, aka "Lord Haw Haw," circulate from Berlin the following: "Welcome to England, Hatcher'due south Chickens. Amongst whom is famous American movie house star, Clark Gable. We'll be seeing you soon in Germany, Clark. You will be welcome there besides."
Adolf Hitler apparently adored Clark Gable, considering him his favorite American actor. A flick nut with a love for British and Hollywood cinema, Hitler fifty-fifty allegedly smuggled a moving-picture show print of Gone with the Wind before information technology opened in the Great britain. Hitler therefore marked Gable as 1 of the most prized "war criminals" in the Allied Forces, offering a handsome advantage to any German soldiers who can bring Gable to him alive.
The thespian was terrified of being paraded through Berlin like King Kong and was just half-joking when he told a friend, "If Hitler catches me, the sonofabitch volition put me in a cage similar a gorilla and ship me on a tour of Germany. If a plane that I'm in ever gets hit, I'one thousand not bailing out."
While his superiors might've appreciated the sentiment, they feared the humiliating spectacle of one of their gunners becoming a Nazi political tool—or the actor putting a bigger target on their bombing group. Additionally, Gable didn't follow protocol as intended, at one point threatening a military physician afterwards the physician apparently said nonchalantly that Gable's pal had hours to alive while the beau was awake and listening. And, once again, the opinion became that he wanted to be shot down.
And then it was in October 1943, subsequently only five gainsay missions, Capt. Gable was awarded the Distinguished Flight Cantankerous and the Air Medal for "exceptionally meritorious achievement while participating in five separate bomber combat missions." Hatcher apparently pulled the strings to get Gable out.
The End
Fifty-fifty though Gable's time in combat ended in October of '43, he even so wound up with l,000 feet of pic at his disposal. He was plainly shocked when he learned the air strength actually didn't care what he did with the footage since gunner recruitment was upwardly. So he returned to Los Angeles, having been reassigned to the urban center's photographic partitioning. Immune to cutting the film at MGM, Gable put together 5 short films that could be used for instruction on operating B-17s. Only past the time information technology made its way through the Pentagon's concatenation of command… the war was over. The footage mostly still lies unused in regime archives.
After finishing the films, Gable had expected to be assigned to a new bombing division in the Pacific Theater. As he waited months for the orders to come up in, he found out on the news about the D-Twenty-four hour period landing in Europe on June 6, 1944. Feeling forgotten and discarded by the Air Corps, he requested to be discharged on June 12, which was his right equally a volunteer over the age of 42. A captain named Ronald Reagan granted Gable his discharge after 670 days of service.
Clark eventually re-acclimated to Hollywood and restarted his career, but by 1945 his days as "the King" were waning, and he saw more flops back-trail his diminishing hits. He besides had many more affairs with leading ladies, extras, and socialites. But for years he refused to marry, telling friends, "It wouldn't be fair. I accept nil left to give."
For the rest of his life, Clark mourned Carole, including on Jan. 15, 1944 when he was on manus for the launch of the SS Carole Lombard. Gable was supposed to speak at the event. Instead, he mostly cried.
Eventually he did remarry, twice, and finally had one child who wasn't disowned in secret. But later on the star died of a heart attack at age 59 in 1960, his 5th married woman, Kay Williams, honored his final wishes: Gable was interred at Glendale's Forest Lawn Memorial Park. Side by side to Ma.
Source: https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/clark-gable-ww2-death-wish-carole-lombard/
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