CLARK GABLE- The Actor Who Took on Hitler

He was the king of Hollywood, box office gold, and a face known across the world. He served in World War II with genuine courage and patriotism, but due to his age he was not required to serve, being over 40. By 1942 he was living the American dream, was an Academy Award winning actor, national heartthrob, and married to Carol Lombard, considered Hollywood's beloved funny girl. World War II was unique in that celebrities from every nation joined the militaries of their respective countries, allied and axis, and the United States led the world with the greatest number of highest profile celebrities volunteering to serve in uniform. Here we examine one in great detail. Who was Clark Gable? Why was he famous before the war? Why did he enlist? What did he do during the war? What made him unique? Hello, I'm Colin Heaton, former history professor, Army and Marine Corps veteran, and welcome to this episode of Forgotten History. William Clark Gable was born on February 1st, 1901 in Cadiz, Ohio. His father, William Henry Will Gable, was an oil well driller who was Methodist and his mother, Adeline, was Catholic. Gable was six months old when he was baptized as a Roman Catholic in the church in Denison, Ohio. His mother died when he was 10 months old and his father refused to raise him as a Catholic, but rather as a Methodist Sunday school teacher. He decided that was the way to go, which created strains with his mother's late family, the Herschelmans. Gable's father then married Ginny Dunlap in April 1903. There was finally an agreement reached when his father agreed to allow young Clark to spend time with his uncle Charles Herschelman and his wife on their working farm in Vernon Township, Pennsylvania. Gable's new stepmother raised him to be well-dressed and well-groomed. She played the piano and gave him lessons, and Gable also took up brass instruments, becoming the only boy in the Hopedale Men's Town Band at age 13. Gable was mechanically inclined and repaired cars with his father, who demanded that he engage in masculine activities such as hunting and hard physical work, but Gable also loved literature and he would recite Shakespeare among trusted company, particularly the sonnets. His father had financial difficulties in 1917 and decided to try his hand at farming and moved the family to Palmyra Township near Akron, Ohio. His father insisted that he work the farm, but Gable dropped out of high school at age 16 and soon found work in Akron, working for the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company. This was when he saw the play Bird of Paradise and decided to become an actor, and he worked his way in by taking an unpaid job with a theater company, but his dream was temporarily derailed when his stepmother died in 1919 and he went to help his father work in the oil fields of Oklahoma. Finally, after three years, he left and joined a traveling theater company, which after going bankrupt left him stranded in Montana. He hitchhiked to Oregon and joined another theater company where he met the theater stage manager, Josephine Dillon. Dillon was a former actress and well-regarded theater teacher, 17 years older than Gable. She became his acting coach and paid to have his teeth fixed and his hair and eyebrows styled. Before long, they were married and they moved to Hollywood, California. Gable took work as an extra in several films and then returned to doing theater work. Later, they divorced. Gable was initially rejected during screen test because casting agents thought his ears were too big for him to be a leading man, but he landed his first speaking role in The Painted Desert in 1931. After that, MGM offered him a contract and his first leading role was in Dance Fool's Dance with Joan Crawford. Gable and the film were well received and the studio began casting him as a roughneck villain opposite newcomers such as Gene Harlow, Greta Garbo, and Norma Shearer. By 1932, he had been in a dozen films and launched his career as a leading man, but Gable grew tired of playing the bad guy villains and thugs and wanted other roles. By the late 1930s, Gable was one of America's leading actors, starring in many films such as Boomtown, San Francisco, and Mutiny on the Bounty, but his most memorable role was in 1939's Gone with the Wind. Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn. Opposite English actress Vivian Leigh, this film would later put a price on his head. Clark Gable and actress Carol Lombard met while acting opposite each other in 1932's No Man of Her Own. Clark was 31 and still married to Houston socialite Maria Langham, his second wife. Lombard herself was just 24 and in an unhappy marriage herself with actor William Powell. During a break from filming with Gone with the Wind, the two eloped and remarried in Arizona in 1939 after Lombard's divorce was final, as was Gable's. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, many Hollywood stars joined the war effort, such as James Stewart and Sterling Hayden, who enlisted. Carol Lombard sent a telegram to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on behalf of Clark Gable expressing his interest in enlisting, but FDR thought the 41-year-old actor would best serve by increased patriotic roles in movies and bond drives, which Lombard tirelessly began doing along with other celebrities. Sadly, she was a passenger on transcontinental and western Air Flight 3 with her mother, press agent Otto Winkler, including 15 servicemen en route to training in California. She had just finished her 57th movie, To Be or Not to Be, and was on her way home from a successful war bond selling tour when on January 16, 1942, her DC-3 crashed at Mount Potosi, Nevada, killing all aboard. Gable was devastated by her loss. Clark Gable received a personal note of condolence from President Roosevelt, and the Civil Aeronautics Board investigation into the crash concluded that pilot error was the cause. After he finished filming Somewhere I'll Find You, he enlisted as a private in the U.S. Army Air Corps on August 12, 1942, after MGM, which had resisted releasing him under pressure, agreed to do so. He followed fellow actor James Maitland Stewart in the Air Service, and see our video on James Stewart. Many other actors had already enlisted, such as Sterling Hayden, as we mentioned, and Ronald Reagan, who was also in the U.S. Army Air Corps, later the U.S. Army Air Forces. The Commanding General of the U.S. Army Air Forces, Henry H. Happ Arnold, offered Gable a special assignment with the 1st Motion Picture Unit following basic training. But Gable was the biggest name of all, and next to Jimmy Stewart, was a great celebrity. He had won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Frank Capra's It Happened One Night in 1934, and earned nominations in the same category for portraying Fletcher Christian in Frank Lloyd's Mutiny on the Bounty in 1935, and again nominated when he played Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind in 1939, and previous mentions and nominations for Call of the Wild in 1935, Hold Your Man in 1933, China's Seas in 1935, Wife vs. Secretary in 1936, Saratoga in 1937, San Francisco in 1936, Boomtown in 1940, and Test Pilot in 1938. He was the greatest money-making actor in the world. His total salary for Gone with the Wind was $117,917, or about $2.8 million in today's dollars. But Gable was already well known as a rebel, and he was seriously against racial prejudice. Gable almost walked off the set when he discovered the studio facilities were segregated, and signs were posted white and colored while filming Gone with the Wind. Gable phoned the film's director, Victor Fleming, and told him, if you don't get those signs down, you won't get your Rhett Butler. The signs were then taken down. Due to segregation, Gable tried to boycott the premiere of Gone with the Wind in Atlanta because Black actors Hattie McDaniel and Butterfly McQueen were not permitted to attend. McDaniel was refused admittance despite the fact that she had won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in Gone with the Wind, becoming the first African-American actor to win an Oscar. Hattie had become good friends with Gable and persuaded him to go regardless, and they remained lifelong friends until her death in 1952. The national press releases went wild with the story of Gable's enlistment, just as they had with James Stewart. The Star reported, Mr. Gable, it was learned from a source outside the War Department, conferred with Lieutenant General H.H. Arnold, head of the Air Forces, yesterday. It was understood that Mr. Gable, if he is commissioned, will make movies for the Air Forces. Lieutenant Jimmy Stewart, another actor in uniform, has been doing this. Like Reagan and Stewart, he would make recruiting films for the service, but like Stewart, there would be a twist. Gable met with Arnold, who was one of his fans, and had requested Officer's Candidate School, despite not having a high school diploma, but after passing his examinations, he was approved, and he attended the course USAAF OCS Class 42-E at Miami Beach, Florida. Due to his age, he was denied pilot training, and MGM arranged for cinematographer Andrew McIntyre to enlist with him and accompany him through training. Just taking that footage was enough propaganda gold for the recruiting effort. Gable graduated with high marks, and was commissioned as a second lieutenant. Both Gable and McIntyre completed training on October 28, 1942, and both were commissioned as second lieutenants. Gable ranked 700 in his class of about 2,600 students, and they chose Gable to be the graduation speaker. General Arnold presented the cadets with their commissions, and informed Gable of his special assignment. He was to make recruiting films in combat with the 8th Air Force to recruit aerial gunners. Gable then trained as an aerial gunner, which was highly unusual, since gunners were normally enlisted men. Officers were navigators, bombardiers, and pilots, but he was very good at it. Service in the Air Corps, like submarine duty or parachute duty, was totally voluntary, so Gable and McIntyre were immediately sent to Flexible Gunnery School at Tyndall Field, Florida, followed by a photography course at Fort George Wright, Washington State, and they both were promoted to first lieutenant upon completion. On January 27, 1943, Gable and McIntyre reported to Biggs Army Airfield, Texas, to train with the 351st Bomb Group headed to England, with Gable assigned as head of a six-man motion picture unit. Screenwriter John LeMond was also recruited, along with camera operators Sergeants Mario Toti and Robert Bowles, and sound man Lieutenant Howard Voss to complete his crew. Gable and his team had free reign and answered only to half Arnold, and Gable was promoted to captain while he was in the 351st Bomb Group at Pueblo Army Air Base, Colorado, a ranked commensurate with his position as a unit commander. Gable's arrival in England received the same sort of paparazzi treatment as Jimmy Stewart had received. According to Pamela Churchill Harriman, when Clark Gable arrived, it was the talk of all London. Our biggest stars knew him, such as Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier. He was invited to every large party being thrown, but he rarely attended. He was really dedicated to his work. The 351st Bomb Group of the 8th Air Force arrived at RAF Polbrook, England, in 1943. Gable was scheduled to fly only five missions with a cameraman on board shooting war footage, including one mission to Germany as an observer gunner in a B-17 flying fortress between May 4th and September 23rd, 1943. Gable's first combat mission was on May 4th, 1943, when Gable joined the 351st group commander Lieutenant Colonel William A. Hatcher on a late afternoon familiarization mission before the unit became fully operational. Flying squadron lead with Captain William R. Calhoun of the 303rd Bomb Group, RAF Molesworth, against the Ford and General Motors plants at Antwerp, Belgium. Hatcher and Gable's B-17 was nicknamed the Eightball Mark II, serial number 41-24635. Gable himself suffered a minor case of frostbite from wearing leather gloves in the extreme cold while manning the .50 caliber machine gun. Gable's second mission was on July 10th, 1943, and he flew with Second Lieutenant Theodore Agaropoulos of the 351st 508th Bomb Squadron in Argonaut III, serial number 42-29851, to bomb the airfield at Villecouble, France, the home of the Luftwaffe's famous JG-26. The mission was incomplete due to clouds obscuring the target area, which forced the bombers to return without dropping their ordnance. However, they did have a visit from JG-26, but did not prevent German fighter attacks. Despite this, only one bomber was damaged and no losses, and only one man was wounded on another bomber. His third combat mission occurred on July 24th, 1943, again in Argonaut III, as the lead aircraft of the 351st, with Group Executive Officer Lieutenant Colonel Robert W. Burns. The mission to bomb the Norsk Hydrochemical Plant in Haruria, Norway, part of Hitler's heavy water program to build an atomic bomb, saw no enemy action, but it was the longest Eighth Air Force mission to that date. Only one bomber was damaged by flak. On the morning of August 12th, 1943, Gable's fourth mission was to bomb a synthetic oil plant at Gelsenkirchen in the Ruhr, joining 351st Operations Officer Major Theodore Ross Milton and Captain John B. Carraway's crew in Ain't It Gruesome, Serial Number 42-29863. Bombing Bochum, Germany, was a target of opportunity in bad weather. Gable's most experienced crew in the Eighth Air Force's most dangerous mission to date, with 23 of his 330 B-17s shot down and two others scrapped upon return. Gable's B-17 was damaged by flak and attacked by fighters, which shot out one of the engines and the vertical stabilizer. Gable wedged himself behind the top turret gunner for a better view as German fighters, Fw 190s and Me 109s, made five passes at his formation. Then the flak came up and a shell blew through the fuselage, killing one man with two others being badly wounded. Gable worked to apply first aid as best he could to the two wounded men until the fighters reappeared on the return leg after the bomb run. During this next attack, an explosive 20 millimeter shell came up through Ain't It Gruesome's flight deck and tore the heel from Gable's boot and exited just above his head without exploding. Afterward, the crew noticed the 15 holes in the aircraft and Gable noticed that his boot was missing its heel. Although none of the 351st fortresses went down, 11 suffered battle damage. One crash landed on return and the group's crew suffered one killed, the man on Gable's bomber and seven wounded, including the other two on Ain't It Gruesome. After landing, he was swarmed by reporters grilling him, but Gable said, I didn't know what happened. I didn't know anything about it until we had dropped 11,000 feet and could get off oxygen and look around. Only then did I see the hole in the turret. When MGM found out about the scenario, the studio executives asked Arnold to reassign its most valuable screen actor to non-combat duty. Gable's last mission was an early morning strike to the port area of Nantes, France, on September 23, 1943. He flew with Lieutenant Colonel Burns and the 510th Bomb Squadron, commanded by Major John Blalock, leading the 351st and the Duchess, serial number 42-29925. Half of the six groups assigned failed to assemble in bad weather, and intercepting fighters inflicted extensive battle damage to the other half, damaging 16 bombers, but no bombers were lost. Gable left his film crew in the waist of the bomber and manned a gun in the nose. But Gable had been secretly flying far more missions that were not authorized, and these were never recorded in his logbook. This was dangerous for Gable, and not just because of the flak and fighters, because the news of one of Hollywood's greatest film stars flying over Europe was well known to the Germans. Adolf Hitler and most of the Third Reich hierarchy admired both Gable and Jimmy Stewart, and again see our video on him, and Hitler's girlfriend and future wife, Eva Braun, was enamored with Gable. Her favorite film was Gone with the Wind, which she watched many times with Magda Goebbels, wife of propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, and others in the private theater in the Berghof. General Leutnant, or Major General Hans Bauer, a World War I ace himself, and Hitler's personal pilot, was often present when films were played. During his interview he said, James Stewart and Clark Gable were very popular in Germany and their films were translated into German and shown in cinemas. Once it was known that Stewart was flying, Goering himself placed a 100,000 mark price on his head, hoping that he would be captured. This was because Goering already knew Lindbergh, who was a fellow aviator like Stewart. I understood this curiosity being a pilot myself, but when it was learned that Gable was also flying, that piqued Eva Braun's interest, as he was her favorite actor. So, not to be outdone by Goering, Hitler also offered 100,000 marks to any pilot who shot down his bomber. Both men would have been treated as honored guests, had they been captured. SS-Sturmbannfuhrer, or Major Otto Gunsche, alternated from front-line combat service to serving as Hitler's adjutant several times, and was also his bodyguard. His comments are interesting. When I returned to Berlin, I was with Hitler, Braun, and others, and once again they were watching Gone with the Wind. Every time Clark Gable appeared on screen, she would shriek, there he is, like a silly child. Personally, I never saw the attraction. That's what's wrong with you. Captain Clark Gable was awarded the Air Medal on October 4th, 1944, for completing five combat missions, and later, the Distinguished Flying Cross. Gable was still sneaking aboard B-17s until he was given a direct order not to leave the ground in October, 1944. Gable left the 351st on November 5th, 1943, returning to the U.S. with over 50,000 feet of 16mm color film covering the air war. In 1944, the film, Combat America, narrated by Gable, was shown in theaters. Gable's departure made everyone breathe easier, as stated by General James H. Doolittle, who said, he, meaning Stuart, was willing to give all that up to continue flying. Same with Clark Gable, both of whom I knew well. Both men received their orders home from much higher authority. Given who they were, I did not even think about petitioning for their extensions, as that would have been career suicide. I could see it now, either Stuart or Gable getting shot down, captured, or killed, and the newspapers back home saying, Doolittle kills movie stars on the front page. We knew that Hitler had placed bounties on both their heads. Gable returned to the United States to edit his film on an old Warner Brothers lot donated to the war effort, and he was assigned to the 18th Army Air Force Base Unit Motion Picture Unit at Culver City, California, where other stars contributed with any film equipment they had as well. In June, 1944, Gable was promoted to major, and he hoped for another combat assignment, but he had been placed on inactive reserve status. On June 12, 1944, his discharge papers were signed by Captain, later U.S. President, Ronald Reagan. Gable was a conservative Republican. In 1944, Gable became a member of the Conservative Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, a group created to help root out communists from the film industry. Other members included such industry heavyweights as Walt Disney, Ayn Rand, Ronald Reagan, and John Wayne, and they helped create and enforce the Hollywood Blacklist, often testifying under oath before House Un-American Activities Committees. Gable completed editing the film, Combat America, in September 1944, giving the narration himself, and making use of numerous interviews with enlisted gunners as focus of the film. The film debuted in theaters in 1945. With the war over, Gable slowly returned to making movies, and due to his hectic production schedule, it was impossible for him to continue his military duties, so he resigned his commission on September 26, 1947, just a week after the Air Force became an independent service branch. Gable was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, Air Medal, American Campaign Medal, European African Middle Eastern Campaign Medal, and World War II Victory Medal. Others who knew him for many years all agreed that Gable, like Stewart, who had seen far more combat time and trauma, was never the same man after the war. In 1949, Gable married English model and actress Sylvia Ashley, the widow of Douglas Fairbanks, but they divorced in 1952. He retired to his ranch, awaiting more roles, and after a long series of unsuccessful but high-profile relationships with a list of women longer than his film credits, he married his fifth wife, Kaye Spreckles, in 1955. She was a former fashion model and actress, and previously married three times. Gable became stepfather to her son, Bunker Spreckles, who developed a somewhat notorious celebrity lifestyle in the late 1960s and early 1970s surfing scene, which led to his early death in 1977. The film, Run Silent, Run Deep, was released in 1958 with co-star and producer Burt Lancaster, and received good reviews, which led to Gable receiving television offers, but he rejected all of these. At age 57, Gable said, Now it's time I acted my age. But his health began to deteriorate due to a heart ailment, and his new contracts included a clause that his work days on the set ended at 5 p.m. On February 8, 1960, Gable received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his work in motion pictures. His last film was The Misfits, opposite Marilyn Monroe, which was released in 1961. But in early November 1960, he was hospitalized with a heart attack. By the morning of November 16, he seemed to be improving, but he died that evening at the age of 59 from a second heart attack caused by an infection. The medical staff did not perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation for fear that the procedure would rupture Gable's heart, and a defibrillator was not available. His funeral service included Hollywood's elite as well as a military honor guard, and his pallbearers included Spencer Tracy and James Stewart. Clark Gable was interred in the Great Mausoleum Memorial Terrace at Glendale's Forest Lawn Memorial Park next to his late wife Carol Lombard and her mother. 22 years later, Kay Gable died and was interred there as well. Four months after his 1960 death, Kay Gable gave birth to his only son, John Clark Gable, but he did have a daughter out of wedlock with actress Loretta Young much earlier. During his career, Clark Gable appeared in more than 60 motion pictures in a career that lasted 37 years, most as a leading man. Whether in the air or behind the camera or in front of the camera, he was a Hollywood legend. Thank you for watching this episode of Forgotten History. If you liked what you saw, please click like, share, and subscribe, and if you would like to assist with the ever-increasing costs of production, please consider becoming a channel member and joining our Patreon page. Please check out our merchandise store, and thanks for watching.