Speaker 1: Why Uzzy Media Productions. The Misfits was a much anticipated
Speaker 1: film when it was released in nineteen sixty one. The
Speaker 1: movie featured two enormous Hollywood stars, Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable,
Speaker 1: but The Misfits was a box office flop. A year later,
Speaker 1: Monroe was found dead from a drug overdose. The Misfits
Speaker 1: was not just the last film that Monroe completed, it
Speaker 1: was also Clark Gable's final appearance on screen. The fifty
Speaker 1: nine year old Gable died from a heart attack just
Speaker 1: twelve days after shooting finished. Monroe was stunned and heartbroken
Speaker 1: when she learned of Gable's death. She told one reporter quote,
Speaker 1: nobody was more of a man's man than he was,
Speaker 1: but he appreciated women. It's clear Monroe was talking about
Speaker 1: someone who was much more than a co star to her.
Speaker 1: Lark Gable was like a father to Monroe. When she
Speaker 1: was being shuffled between orphanages and foster homes as a child,
Speaker 1: she slept with the movie stars picture under her pillow,
Speaker 1: which is why on the final day of shooting for
Speaker 1: The Misfits, Monroe reportedly walked over to her famous costar
Speaker 1: and made a confession, She told Gable, do you know something?
Speaker 1: You're my hero and I never had a hero before.
Speaker 1: Clark Gable's rise to the top of Hollywood during the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties was much different than Monroe's two decades later.
Speaker 1: Both actors came from humble origins and we're products of
Speaker 1: a studio system that transformed them into larger than life figures. Monroe, however,
Speaker 1: as we learned in episode three, thought of Hollywood as
Speaker 1: quote a merry go round with beds for horses, and
Speaker 1: she resented the fact that her career advancement depended upon
Speaker 1: pleasing the predatory male executive she called the wolves. Monroe's hero,
Speaker 1: Clark Gable did not have to confront the wolves the
Speaker 1: way that women did in early Hollywood, but unlike Monroe,
Speaker 1: he was willing to do whatever it took to become
Speaker 1: a star. In this episode, we chart Clark Gable's journey
Speaker 1: to screen legend, including how Hollywood's archetypal man reportedly used
Speaker 1: and abused women along the way. Suit the star away
Speaker 1: from how's it going, I know you got a clue?
Speaker 1: What you do? You complain brand new to all the
Speaker 1: other chicks out here that I know what you are
Speaker 1: what you are, baby, look at you. I'm Sean Braswell.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Thread. This season is about the
Speaker 1: chain of historical events behind the rise of feminist leader
Speaker 1: Gloria Steinham. The chain we follow takes us back to
Speaker 1: the Hollywood of the nineteen thirties and Clark Gable. He's
Speaker 1: the man who uttered perhaps the most famous line in
Speaker 1: film history as Rhett Butler and Gone with the Wind. Frankly,
Speaker 1: my here, I don't give a damn. Here's a quick
Speaker 1: recap to follow our thread so far, but please listen
Speaker 1: to the previous episodes if you haven't already. Las Vegas, Nevada,
Speaker 1: was a desolate, struggling town in the late nineteen thirties
Speaker 1: that changed dramatically after Clark Gable's wife, Real Langham, went
Speaker 1: there to get a quickie divorce while Gable filmed Gone
Speaker 1: with the Wind, and pretty soon people were running. You
Speaker 1: might say, to Las Vegas to get a divorce, because
Speaker 1: everyone wanted to get a divorce where the Gables had
Speaker 1: gotten theirs. Seven years later, a nineteen year old Marilyn
Speaker 1: Monroe obtained her own divorce there. Maryland clearly felt that
Speaker 1: it would be easier for her to pursue her modeling
Speaker 1: and acting career if she were single. Fast forward another
Speaker 1: seven years, A magazine publisher named Hugh Hefner uses a
Speaker 1: nude photo of Monroe taken when she was a struggling model,
Speaker 1: to sell the first issue of Playboy magazine. She was
Speaker 1: the the launching key to the beginning of Playboy. Fast
Speaker 1: forward another seven years, and Hefner founds the first Playboy club,
Speaker 1: whose bunny clad employees revolutionized the nightclub scene. A young
Speaker 1: reporter named Gloria Steinham then writes an expose of life
Speaker 1: as a bunny, one which helps spark her resolve to
Speaker 1: spend a lifetime on women's rights. It was subject to
Speaker 1: constant what we would now term sexual harassment, but there
Speaker 1: wasn't even a word for it. Then. In this episode,
Speaker 1: we turn our attention to the movie star whose landmark
Speaker 1: divorce helped launch Las Vegas, the man they called the
Speaker 1: King of Hollywood, Clark Gable. Clark Gable plays a Nevada
Speaker 1: cowboy in The Misfits, one who finds love and companionship
Speaker 1: with a recently divorced younger woman played by Monroe. In
Speaker 1: the final scene of the movie, Monroe turns to Gable
Speaker 1: as they drive down desert road at night. How do
Speaker 1: you find your way back in the dark? Just head
Speaker 1: for that big star, straight on the high. Raise Catt'll
Speaker 1: take us right home. Those would be the last lines
Speaker 1: Clark Gable would utter on screen. Two weeks later, he
Speaker 1: died from a heart attack. The New York Times headline
Speaker 1: read the King is Dead. Gable's widow and fifth wife,
Speaker 1: Kay blamed one person for her husband's sudden death. Marilyn Monroe,
Speaker 1: the actress, had a reputation for causing delays and problems
Speaker 1: on set, and The Misfits was no different. Monroe was
Speaker 1: always late, She forgot her lines. She fought constantly on
Speaker 1: set with her husband, Arthur Miller, the playwright who had
Speaker 1: written The Misfits for her. She also popped amphetamines and tranquilizers.
Speaker 1: The filming was very, very difficult. This is Monroe. Biographer
Speaker 1: Sarah church Well, her relationship with Arthur Miller was breaking down,
Speaker 1: um and um. There were many many problems on the set, uh,
Speaker 1: some of which had to do with Maryland's own problems
Speaker 1: with addiction, but also with her unhappiness in her marriage.
Speaker 1: To make matters worse, the Nevada summer heat was oppressive.
Speaker 1: The delays, the waiting, and the heat were hard on
Speaker 1: the aging Gable. He also insisted on doing many of
Speaker 1: his own stunts, including being dragged by a truck for
Speaker 1: over four hundred feet across the desert. The physical strain
Speaker 1: on Gable during the Misfits may have contributed to the
Speaker 1: star's death, but Gable was also a chronic smoker and
Speaker 1: a heavy drinker, and he spent his reign as the
Speaker 1: King of Hollywood living large and trying to live up
Speaker 1: to his larger than life image. Gable starred in some
Speaker 1: of Hollywood's best films, including It Happened One Night, Mutiny
Speaker 1: on the Bounty, and of course, Gone with the Wind. MGM,
Speaker 1: the studio that owned Clark Gable services for decades, structs
Speaker 1: Aintematic Gold when they discovered him. This is E. J. Flemett,
Speaker 1: author of several books on early Hollywood and stars like Gable.
Speaker 1: Clark Gable's success really was based upon the fact that
Speaker 1: the product that M. Jim put on the screen, the
Speaker 1: movie Clark Gable was an every man. But Gable was
Speaker 1: so much more than an every man. There had been
Speaker 1: other super masculine men in Hollywood and Helen Peterson is
Speaker 1: the author of Scandals of Classic Hollywood and a senior
Speaker 1: culture writer for BuzzFeed. But no one had that sort
Speaker 1: of like swarthy, unshaven masculinity that Clark Gable popularized over
Speaker 1: the course of the nineteen thirties. Gables frequent co star
Speaker 1: and even more frequent lover. Actress Joan Crawford perhaps summed
Speaker 1: up Gable best. She said, he represented man at his
Speaker 1: most primeval viril, rough and ready, with the instincts of
Speaker 1: a wild beast. Gable had more balls than any man
Speaker 1: I've ever known. So one of the things that made
Speaker 1: women go wild old was that in a lot of
Speaker 1: his performances he had stubble, like he was a slightly unshaven,
Speaker 1: and that at the time, you know, it was a
Speaker 1: signifier of this sort of unmitigated masculinity. Gable cemented this
Speaker 1: impression and one of the scenes from the nineteen four
Speaker 1: classic It happened one night he took off his shirt
Speaker 1: and he wasn't wearing an undershirt, which was just scandalous
Speaker 1: at the time. Gable won the Oscar for Best Actor
Speaker 1: for his performance in that film. He was also given
Speaker 1: another honor, Hollywood Colnation Gable and Maniva Crown, King and
Speaker 1: Queen of the Street to Gable and behalf of the
Speaker 1: twenty minutes fans, I present to you this kingly crown.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Ed. You know I play gamblers, newspaper men,
Speaker 1: pondike miners and now a test pilot. But this is
Speaker 1: the first time I've ever played the role of a game.
Speaker 1: Gable scoffed at his honorific title. In private, he said,
Speaker 1: this king stuff is pure. I'm just a lucky slab
Speaker 1: from Ohio. I happened to be in the right place
Speaker 1: at the right time, and I had a lot of
Speaker 1: smart guys helping me. That's all. It's true. Gable had
Speaker 1: a lot of guys to help him, and even more women.
Speaker 1: He slept with virtually every woman acrossed paths with Marna
Speaker 1: Lloyd later said that he was the least selective man
Speaker 1: in the hemisphere. Had screw anything. It didn't even have
Speaker 1: to be pretty or clean. Gable was legendary around MGM
Speaker 1: for his womanizing. One day, Gable was in a studio
Speaker 1: executive's office and his desk was covered with hundreds of
Speaker 1: studio stills of the contract actresses at MGM and Gabel
Speaker 1: looked at them and said, I've had every single one
Speaker 1: of them. It didn't stop with the contract actresses. He
Speaker 1: had affairs with virtually every famous MGM star, John Crawford,
Speaker 1: Marilena Dietrich, Marian Davies. It's hard to actually find one
Speaker 1: that he did not have a fair but at least
Speaker 1: one of those alleged conquests had broader consequences. It was
Speaker 1: Gable's relationship with a twenty two year old rising film
Speaker 1: star named Loretta Young. Loretta Young was kind of like
Speaker 1: the Jennifer Anison of the nineteen thirties, just you know,
Speaker 1: a very very steady and lovable star that wasn't necessarily
Speaker 1: an incredible actress, but was widely beloved. Loretta Young signed
Speaker 1: on to make a film with Clark Gable, Call of
Speaker 1: the Wild, about gold prospectors in the Klondike. And she
Speaker 1: goes with Clark Gable to shoot Call of the Wild,
Speaker 1: which is based on the Jack London novel. And they're
Speaker 1: in the wilderness in you know, the forest outside of
Speaker 1: Seattle and on location, which was somewhat rare at the time.
Speaker 1: Despite the frigid weather, Sparks flew between Young and the
Speaker 1: married Gable and not just on screen. So you have
Speaker 1: this long shoot in the winter, in the middle of nowhere,
Speaker 1: and you have a beautiful star and Laretta Young, and
Speaker 1: then another very handsome and flirtation a star in Clark Gable,
Speaker 1: and you know there's home movies of them being flirtatious
Speaker 1: with one another, and people on the set said that
Speaker 1: they were flirting. Young, Gable and the rest of the
Speaker 1: casting crew boarded an overnight train back to Hollywood when
Speaker 1: filming came to an end. The stars were given individual
Speaker 1: compartments for the journey. Loretta Young was in her compartment
Speaker 1: in the overnight train and Clark Gable knocked on the
Speaker 1: compartment door, and, as she told her biographer and also
Speaker 1: her son and daughter in law, he knocked on the
Speaker 1: door and she didn't know how to say no. Young
Speaker 1: later said that she thought Gable just wanted to visit
Speaker 1: her compartment, but according to Young, he had other ideas
Speaker 1: in mind. She said quote, he wasn't rough, but I
Speaker 1: kept saying no, and he wouldn't take no for an answer.
Speaker 1: Clark Gable returned home to his wife, Real Langham after
Speaker 1: shooting finished on Call of the Wild. His first words were,
Speaker 1: I want my freedom. He didn't get it, at least
Speaker 1: not then. Not long after, Gable received some news Loretta
Speaker 1: Young was pregnant. He ignored it. Young was devastated. She
Speaker 1: was freaked out. I mean, the thing to be an
Speaker 1: unwed mother at that time in Hollywood, you know, it
Speaker 1: would be the end of her career and she would
Speaker 1: be a fallen woman. I mean, when that happened with
Speaker 1: Hollywood starlet's usually the course of action and was to
Speaker 1: get an abortion, but Loretta refused. Instead, she orchestrated one
Speaker 1: of the greatest cover ups in Hollywood history. Young told
Speaker 1: the studio she needed a vacation and left for Europe
Speaker 1: with her mother. She remained there for months, explaining that
Speaker 1: she was ill. Young then secretly returned to her mom's
Speaker 1: house in California for her final trimester. She would go
Speaker 1: out at night only and walk around the neighborhood to
Speaker 1: get a little bit of exercise because she was still crazy.
Speaker 1: But there were rumors that she was pregnant. Young invited
Speaker 1: one prominent gossip columnists to her mom's house to dispel
Speaker 1: the rumors. She greeted the calumnists from her bed and
Speaker 1: they piled pillows all over her and they said, she's
Speaker 1: just sick. She can't get out of bed, and they
Speaker 1: essentially convinced the world that she was not pregnant by
Speaker 1: putting pillows on top of her bed. One evening, about
Speaker 1: nine months after Call of the Wild ceased filming on location,
Speaker 1: Clark Gable attended the New York premiere of his next film. Afterwards,
Speaker 1: Gable received an unsigned telegram in his hotel room. It read, beautiful,
Speaker 1: blue eyed, blonde baby girl for an eight fifteen. This morning,
Speaker 1: Gabel walked into the bathroom, tore up the telegram, and
Speaker 1: flushed it down the toilet. It took decades for Young
Speaker 1: to come to terms with what she claimed happened to
Speaker 1: her that night in the train compartment, says Anne Helen Peterson.
Speaker 1: In the nineties, Loretta Young was watching a program that
Speaker 1: described day rape or you know, acquaintance rape, and the
Speaker 1: dynamics of how that worked. That's someone that you know
Speaker 1: that you know it's not a violent thing, but that
Speaker 1: it is unwanted sex. And she saw that program and
Speaker 1: heard that definition, and she said, that's what happened between
Speaker 1: me and Clerk Gable. Loretta Young devised even more elaborate
Speaker 1: plans after giving birth. She placed her baby in an
Speaker 1: orphanage for the time being, and went back to work
Speaker 1: on her next movie. Over a year later, she told
Speaker 1: the press she decided to adopt two babies. What eventually
Speaker 1: happened is those two children turned into one child, and
Speaker 1: that one child that she adopted turned out to be
Speaker 1: her own child. Thanks to Young's efforts, the story would
Speaker 1: remain just a Hollywood r She was so smart, she
Speaker 1: was so savvy. She pulled it off with no help.
Speaker 1: She didn't have like a publicist who was coaching her
Speaker 1: on us. Was like her her mom and her sisters,
Speaker 1: who figured out how to game the entire publicity apparatus
Speaker 1: so that she could keep her daughter like that's amazing.
Speaker 1: Loretta Young did not get a lot of help from
Speaker 1: the studio and navigating the rocky shoals of Hollywood morality
Speaker 1: and scandal. She was unmarried, female, pregnant, and unwilling to
Speaker 1: get an abortion. But her male co star, Clark Gable,
Speaker 1: had plenty of help with his career threatening scandals up
Speaker 1: next the men they called the Hollywood Fixers, an elite
Speaker 1: special forces unit for scandal management. Clark Gable may never
Speaker 1: have become Marilyn Monroe's hero or the King of Hollywood
Speaker 1: without the help of some powerful allies within the studio system.
Speaker 1: The fixers at MGM saved gable skin more than once,
Speaker 1: and they were also responsible for his ill fated marriage
Speaker 1: to relaying them. Historians call the nineteen thirties the golden
Speaker 1: Age of Hollywood, and more than anything, that golden age
Speaker 1: was defined by stars. The studios realized right away that
Speaker 1: the fans reacted to the stars as much as they
Speaker 1: did to the movie This is e. J. Fleming again.
Speaker 1: And the studios also realized that the individual stars translated
Speaker 1: to money, so it was imperative that they had an
Speaker 1: organized system in place to take care of any problems
Speaker 1: that came up. There was one studio in particular that
Speaker 1: stood out as a star making machine, Anne Helen Peterson
Speaker 1: MGM was the King, so they had one of their
Speaker 1: slogans was more stars in the heavens. They were like
Speaker 1: the HBO of nineteen thirties Hollywood. MGM stable of stars
Speaker 1: included Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, Fred Astaire, Gene Harlow, and
Speaker 1: Judy Garland. MGM and other studios took the personal behavior
Speaker 1: of their stars very seriously. Any hint of scandal could
Speaker 1: sink a star, and more importantly, the studio's large investment
Speaker 1: in them. So MGM, like all of the other major
Speaker 1: studios at the time, had what we're called fixers, and
Speaker 1: those are people who collaborated with the publicity department to
Speaker 1: make sure that no negative stories or stories that didn't
Speaker 1: match the public image of the star would be released.
Speaker 1: Clark Gable encountered MGMs fixers early on in his career
Speaker 1: at the studio. In fact, that's how he came to
Speaker 1: be married to Real Langham in the first place. Gable's
Speaker 1: first major films were coming out in nine At the time,
Speaker 1: he was living with Langham, a wealthy woman seventeen years
Speaker 1: his senior. One day, Langham came to see MGM boss
Speaker 1: Louis B. Mayer. Mayor had an experienced secretary who was
Speaker 1: used to handling disgruntled wives and girlfriends. Her name was
Speaker 1: Ida Koverman. Remember that name. We will get back to
Speaker 1: Ida in the next episode. Ida Cooverman quickly redirected the
Speaker 1: distraught Real Langham to a studio executive named Howard Strickling.
Speaker 1: Howard Strickling was the publicity director and m JAM. He
Speaker 1: was the guy that had to develop the stories, designed
Speaker 1: the spin and sell then narratives. Langham broke down in
Speaker 1: Strickling's office. She told him how she was living with
Speaker 1: Gable for years with the understanding they would marry. She
Speaker 1: threatened to raise a stink in the press if he
Speaker 1: didn't propose. Studio executive summoned Gable and waived his contract
Speaker 1: in front of him. The entire contract could be avoided
Speaker 1: if the actor engaged in sexual or criminal misconduct. To
Speaker 1: save his career, Clark Gable agreed to marry Real Langham.
Speaker 1: MGM did much more than force its young stars to
Speaker 1: marry live in lovers. They made sure no rough edges
Speaker 1: came into public views, says Anne Helen Peterson. So anything
Speaker 1: that they did, whether it was drunken mischief, punching a
Speaker 1: waiter at a bar, um, abusing a wife or a partner,
Speaker 1: those things were covered up in collaboration with the press
Speaker 1: and the police department. MGM controlled every police force within
Speaker 1: fifty miles. It had an army of doctors, psychiatrists, pharmacists,
Speaker 1: lawyers and reporters that it could enlist at any time
Speaker 1: to fix a problem. And MGM's chief fixer was a
Speaker 1: man named Eddie Mannix. Mannix was a former amusement park
Speaker 1: bouncer from New Jersey. One of the jobs Mannix was
Speaker 1: tasked with was to keep an eye on Clark Gable.
Speaker 1: Both men were inveterate gamblers, drinkers, and womanizers. They quickly
Speaker 1: became close friends, and whenever Gable had a problem, Mannix,
Speaker 1: along with Howard Strickling, was there to solve it. Yes,
Speaker 1: Gable felt the blade of the studio's almighty sword when
Speaker 1: he was forced to marry Realangum. But as Gable star rose,
Speaker 1: he saw that same sword go to work for him.
Speaker 1: He was driving drunk in Hollywood and he hit a
Speaker 1: woman in a crosswalk and drove away. Clark Gable had
Speaker 1: a lot of car accidents in his life, according to E. J. Fleming,
Speaker 1: This one in three was the worst. He immediately called
Speaker 1: Strickling and said he thought he hit somebody with his car.
Speaker 1: Strickling called the Hollywood police and they confirmed that yes,
Speaker 1: there was a dead woman on a crosswalk and people
Speaker 1: identified gables car. MGMs fixers went to work, says Fleming.
Speaker 1: MGM reportedly paid off the victim's family and paid another
Speaker 1: employee to take the rap for the accident. Twelve years later,
Speaker 1: Gable was driving home drunk again when he lost control
Speaker 1: of his car on Sunset Boulevard and plowed into a tree.
Speaker 1: Gable was taken to a nearby hospital. News of the
Speaker 1: accident leaked to the press. MGM's publicity team, never cowed
Speaker 1: by irony, told reporters that Gable was sideswiped by a
Speaker 1: drunk driver. Like so many other royals in history, Clark
Speaker 1: Gable got away with just about everything. But even before
Speaker 1: he became a star, Gable was an unflinching opportunist, one
Speaker 1: who would do almost anything and sleep with anyone that
Speaker 1: might advance his career. Real langenm was just one of
Speaker 1: several women who served his rungs in the ladder that
Speaker 1: Gable used to climb to the top of Hollywood. Clark
Speaker 1: Gable's route to Hollywood was an orthodox, to say the least.
Speaker 1: He was from Cadiz, Ohio, a small river town in
Speaker 1: the middle of nowhere. The young man, then known as
Speaker 1: Billy Gable, quit school and went to work in Akron
Speaker 1: doing odd jobs and Helen Peterson. Again. Like many classic
Speaker 1: Hollywood stars, he had a pretty poor and rough and
Speaker 1: tumble childhood, His parents were in and out of pictures.
Speaker 1: His mom died when he was young um, and he
Speaker 1: made his way to start um kind of by fits
Speaker 1: and starts. Eventually Gable found his way to Portland, Oregon.
Speaker 1: There he met the first of a series of older
Speaker 1: women that would change his life. E. J. Fleming explains
Speaker 1: Gable used women his entire life. He was with a
Speaker 1: traveling stage crew in Oregon early in his career, and
Speaker 1: he hooked up with the lead actress, a woman named
Speaker 1: Franz door Fler. She actually got him his first job acting,
Speaker 1: and he promised to marry her, uh so she would
Speaker 1: keep giving him jobs. Gable broke that promise. He left
Speaker 1: door Floer a year later when he met Josephine Dillon.
Speaker 1: Josephine was a kind of a homely acting coach. He
Speaker 1: was twenty years older than than Gable, but she took
Speaker 1: a liking to him all women did. She renamed him Clark.
Speaker 1: Dylan soon became the first Mrs Clark Gable. The newly
Speaker 1: weds moved into a Hollywood bungalow. Gable worked as a
Speaker 1: garage mechanic and struggled as a studio extra. He was
Speaker 1: tall and handsome, but he had enormous ears and unattractive teeth.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that Josephine Dillon for how
Speaker 1: did for him was basically instruct him on how he
Speaker 1: could make it as a Hollywood star and not just
Speaker 1: as a you know, sort of handsome guy from Ohio.
Speaker 1: And what she did was paid for him to get
Speaker 1: new teeth. His teeth were crooked and bad. She also
Speaker 1: taught him how to speak in a way that it
Speaker 1: was less high pitched and feminine. Gable rewarded Dylan's efforts
Speaker 1: on his behalf by abandoning her. He took up with
Speaker 1: yet another older woman, actress Pauline Frederick. She had this
Speaker 1: huge mansion on since at Bovard. He moved in with her.
Speaker 1: He never told Dylan he was even in town, and
Speaker 1: he was basically a kept man. He didn't do any acting.
Speaker 1: She just kept giving him sports cars and jewelry. Gable
Speaker 1: was indeed it kept man, even if no single woman
Speaker 1: kept him for all that long. Finally he met a
Speaker 1: wealthy forty four year old divorce and socialite from Texas
Speaker 1: named Real Langham, and it was kind of a full marriage.
Speaker 1: They pretended they were married. They introduced themselves as Mr
Speaker 1: and Miss as Gable. With Langham bank rolling him, Gable
Speaker 1: pursued a career on Broadway and then back in Hollywood.
Speaker 1: The Ohio Ruffian blossomed into a suave or be night.
Speaker 1: He wore Brooks Brothers suits. Sometimes he carried a cane.
Speaker 1: I think that you could safely call Clark Gable a
Speaker 1: gold digger. He saw opportunity in a way to rise
Speaker 1: through their ranks in Hollywood, and that was given to
Speaker 1: him by the rank and money and success of his
Speaker 1: respective wives. You'll recall that Marilyn Monroe had no desire
Speaker 1: to be a kept woman, despite no shortage of opportunities.
Speaker 1: As a result, she often lent paycheck to paycheck. Gable
Speaker 1: took a very different tack. One of the interesting things
Speaker 1: about Gable is that during his early career as a
Speaker 1: stage actor was that he never had to worry about
Speaker 1: the types of things that most struggling actors had to
Speaker 1: worry about. He never had to worry about money, He
Speaker 1: never had to worry about a place to stay, he
Speaker 1: never had to worry about food. He didn't have to
Speaker 1: worry about anything because door flour Dylan Paulian, Frederick real
Speaker 1: laying him had him on the payroll. Gable was more
Speaker 1: than a boy toy. He was a Pygmalion like project.
Speaker 1: His female keepers could play Henry Higgins to his Eliza Doolittle.
Speaker 1: After Gable signed with MGM, the starmakers at the studio
Speaker 1: continued the transformation. Gable was a complete studio creation. The
Speaker 1: Clark Gable that everybody remembers and saw in all the
Speaker 1: movies was the antithesis of the real Clark Gable. He
Speaker 1: was almost laughably hypochondriac. He had to be taught the
Speaker 1: basic manners because he was basically kind of an uncouth
Speaker 1: Ohio bumpkin. MGM sent Gable for new dentures. They restyled
Speaker 1: his hair, plucked his eyebrows, and sent him to the gym.
Speaker 1: They even tried pinning his ears back with tape. It
Speaker 1: didn't work, so studio cameramen were instructed to film him
Speaker 1: from the side as much as possible. The end result,
Speaker 1: MGM cast him in a series of increasingly big roles.
Speaker 1: In ninety one, the same year the studio forced him
Speaker 1: to marry Real Agum. Movie goers had never seen anyone
Speaker 1: like him. One magazine dubbed him the Great God Gable.
Speaker 1: Here he is with Carol Lombard in the nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: two film No Man of her Own. Sure go so FATCHO?
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be and I was sure of you. Men
Speaker 1: all over America started to imitate his brash, macho style.
Speaker 1: It was not uncommon to overhear a woman responding to
Speaker 1: those men by saying, who do you think you are?
Speaker 1: Clark Gable. Clark Gable was in the right place at
Speaker 1: the right time in Hollywood. MGM was loaded with female
Speaker 1: stars but short of romantic leading men. By the end
Speaker 1: of the decade, and after his stint as Rhett Butler,
Speaker 1: Clark Gable was the biggest star on the planet. Gable's
Speaker 1: massive fame also helped fire up the divorce courts of
Speaker 1: Las Vegas, and aren't a chain of events that shaped
Speaker 1: the lives of Marilyn Monroe, Hugh Hefner, and Gloria Steinem
Speaker 1: Next week, in our final episode of the season, we
Speaker 1: find out what launched Clark Gable. Even with all the
Speaker 1: help from his various wives and female patrons, the young
Speaker 1: Gable might not have succeeded in Hollywood without a little
Speaker 1: good fortune, including a single test audience that was stacked
Speaker 1: in his favor. We also retrace our steps and learn
Speaker 1: more about the casting couches of early Hollywood and how
Speaker 1: they connect to Gloria Steinham and the women's movement today.
Speaker 1: Womanizing Daddio, he had got the swagger of a champion.
Speaker 1: So bad for you. You just can't find the right company,
Speaker 1: And I guess when you have one makes it hard.
Speaker 1: It could be easy who you are. That's just who
Speaker 1: you are. Baby. The Threat is produced by Libby Coleman
Speaker 1: and me Sean Braswell. Chris Hoff engineered our show special
Speaker 1: thanks to Cindy Carpian, Tracy Moran, and James Watkins. This
Speaker 1: episode features a cover of the song Womanizer by Britney
Speaker 1: Spears that was recorded at the New Foundry Studios by
Speaker 1: Sophie Goldby. To learn more about the Thread, visit ausi
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Speaker 1: sure to subscribe to the Threat on Apple Podcasts. Check
Speaker 1: us out at ausi dot com or on Twitter and Facebook.
Speaker 1: If you love surprising, engaging stories from history, look no
Speaker 1: further than the flashback section of ausy dot com. That's
Speaker 1: o z y dot com. Or you don't trying to
Speaker 1: run no, just just what you up by. You don't
Speaker 1: trying to fright. No, just just do what you are,
Speaker 1: Sam crazy. I've got your crazy, nothing but the woman. No,
Speaker 1: you're a woman now