Source: True Story 8-1933
What chance has a famous lover of the screen to achieve a normal happy married life?Beset by a legions of idolatrous feminine fans, and brought by his work into daily intimate contact with the worlds’ most beautiful and desirable women, his romantic temptations are unique and tremendous. So True Story Magazine offers to its readers this biography of Clark Gable, written by one who knows both Hollywood and the screen’s greatest lover equally well, as a profound and thrilling study in human emotions
There can be no question that the great romantic temptation of Clark Gable’s life was Joan Crawford. The real fade-out of Joan’s marriage to young Douglas Fairbanks came when Joan surrendered to the charm that was to make Clark Gable the greatest matinee idol of his generation, though the actual separation did not come until much later, and by that time the frame which threatened to consume them both had died to ashes.
To a young man adored by millions of women who see him only on the screen, and admired by many of Hollywood’s most experienced beauties, temptations are inevitable.Of the siren voices that assailed Clark Gable’s ears, many were as alluring gas those which beguiled the great Ulysses on his homeward voyage. But Joan’s was the one that almost brought shipwreck.
For there was Clark Gable's wife. And he loved her.
ON March 15th, 1932, Mrs. Clark Gable staying in a fashionable NY hotel, denied that she had come east, as many believed, to arrange a divorce from her actor husband. But the rumor persisted and it had, in fact, some foundation.
On March 17th, 1933, Joan Crawford announced her separation from Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and she said, " We have discussed doing this for a year." And on March 21st, 1933, young Doug said in public print, "Joan and I have been planning our separation for nearly a year."
The dates thus mentioned are not coincidental.
But today Clark and Ria Gable are living together in happiness and contentment, and Joan is the center of a group of suitors which includes her ex-husband and the favored Franchot Tone, but does not include Clark Gable.
How that came about is the true story of a great love, a great temptation, and a man's final choice. Because in the end it was the man who chose between the exotic and gorgeous screen star, and the devoted, loving wife.
And it is part of life's weird drama that Clark Gable's love life repeated itself, for when he was first married to Josephine Dillion, his greatest temptation was Pauline Frederick, whom Joan Crawford so startlingly resembles. Joan Crawford came into Clark Gable's life when the avenue of sensational success was just opening before him. She was Hollywood, with its glitter and its glamour. She was the new and thrilling world which was being offered him after years of struggle, hard work and failure. She was young, vibrant and modern, with its enormous appeal to a man still very young, who had been twice married, to women much older than himself. And it was a time when Joan herself, Joan with that great love of life and love which vibrates on the screen, had begun to grow heavy with disappointment in her marriage to a youth who was not her match in passion, strength or ability, had grown desperately weary of trying to fit her enormous, vitality and realism into the minor role of Mrs. Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.
Into the life of every matinee's idol comes the temptation of one grand passion amid the many passing temptations that beset him. At least, so it seems. Valentino, who was never really besieged by the sirens of Hollywood, loved but one woman in all his life, Natacha Rambova. Even after she left him, it was his purpose to be true to what had been a great love. He fell before the temptation of Pola Negri, Wally Reid, deeply devoted to his wife, Dorothy, almost sacrificed his real happiness to the lure of a great opera star who flamed across his young Horizon.
The average man can have no conception of the temptations thrown in the way of a man who becomes a matinee idol, whether he wants them or not.
To Clark Gable, it all came as something new, something incredible and actually unwelcome. But he was human, and the time came when he found himself almost ready to go overboard in the country of the sirens.
To understand him, to understand Joan Crawford, to understand his wife and the triangle that, for almost a year, kept the inner circle of Hollywood breathless with excitement and the newspapers on the verge of headlines, and studio executives worried out of their senses, it is necessary to go back through the love life of this young man who alone in picture history has approximated the position held by Rudolph Valentino.
MORE TO COME