Clark Gable

by David Bret

  Neither was there any question of Clark romancing his leading lady. Kay and her children had accompanied him to Europe, ostensibly for a three-month vacation that had taken in London, Amsterdam and Salzburg, where they celebrated their fourth wedding anniversary. Now the children and their nanny were ensconced at a rented villa near Anzio, on the outskirts of Rome. Kay, however, as if suspecting he could never be trusted, never left Clark’s side for a moment. Sophia Loren, too, was happily married. In 1957 she had wed her Svengali producer Carlo Ponti, 24 years her senior. It was he who persuaded her to learn to speak English as a result of which she had been cast alongside Cary Grant and Frank Sinatra in The Pride And The Passion and, in 1958, opposite Grant once more in Houseboat.

  Shot in the autumn of 1959, It Happened In Naples is said to have inspired Michel Simon’s later Le Vieux Homme et l’Enfant, the story of the anti-Semitic farmer who befriends a Jewish boy in Occupied France. Simon’s gruff voice and weather-beaten face complimented every role he played in an illustrious career, and the same may be said for Clark here. The portly appearance and undisguised facial lines perfectly suit the avuncular duties he feels he has to perform as Mike Hamilton, the war veteran. Hamilton returns to Naples to reclaim Fernando (Marietto), the illegitimate son of his recently deceased brother and his common-law wife, and takes him back with him to Philadelphia, where Mike believes he will have a better life and education than in a Neapolitan slum.

  It is a pretty noisy affair, but the locations are sublime, more so when the scenario shifts to Capri, where Fernando lives with his Aunt Lucia (Loren). The boy is a little horror, who smokes, drinks wine and fleeces the tourists, while Lucia performs in a local café-concert. Throughout the film we get to see the Gable of old, who menaced but excited Crawford, Shearer et al., save that to his disadvantage he also comes across as yet another know-it-all American tourist - growling at waiters, complaining loudly about the food and transport, and flashing his money around as if this will solve every problem known to man.

  Naturally Mike falls in love with Lucia, but this time the tables are turned when she seduces him. They skinny-dip (or rather their silhouetted stand-ins do) in the Blue Grotto, but it all turns out to be a front on her part, in the hope that the subsequent court hearing will allow her to keep the boy - and it does. Feeling guilty, however, she hands him over to Mike - who changes his mind at the railway station in Naples, realising (at the same time as Lucia realises she really does love Mike) that Fernando belongs with his own people, rich or poor. As such the ending is unsatisfactory because we never learn if the lovers have been reunited.

  Making the film was a nightmare for Sophia Loren, who with Carlo Ponti had been served a writ by the Italian authorities, who claimed their Mexican marriage was illegal. Though Ponti had divorced his first wife, Giuliana Fiastri, several years earlier, as divorce was not recognised by the Vatican, he was facing a bigamy charge and Loren was branded in some circles as a scarlet woman when she was nothing of the kind. Eventually, the Ponti-Loren marriage would be annulled: in 1965 he became a French citizen, acquired a divorce from Fiastri from there and ‘re-married’ Loren. In the meantime, with the couple living in exile on the French Riviera to evade arrest, Loren had been secreted into Italy to make the film. And when Clark learned that she would be spending her 25th birthday alone, he worked behind the scenes - paying to have Ponti flown into Naples, under an alias, then ferried across to Capri, where a surprise party had been arranged at Gracie Fields’ complex. The evening ended with Gracie serenading the gathering with ‘Summertime In Venice’, which she was to have sung in the film.

  Clark, Kay and the children stayed on at the Anzio villa until the end of November. He told reporters that all he wanted to do for the foreseeable future was play golf and relax with his family as far away as possible from the pressures of Hollywood. Then he changed his mind and for several weeks pored over scripts sent out to him, including one which would sadly turn out to be his swan song: Arthur Miller’s The Misfits.

  The original story had been published in Esquire under the title, The Mustangs, but changed at the screenplay stage: ‘misfit’ was rodeo slang for a horse too small or too weak for riding or farm work. In Miller’s case it also applied to the actors he had in mind for the film version’s protagonists - Clark Gable, Montgomery Clift, Eli Wallach and Marilyn Monroe. Additionally, the story was based on fact. While in Nevada establishing legal residency to divorce his first wife and marry Monroe, Miller had bumped into a trio of washed-up cowboys reduced to earning their crust roping wild horses and selling them for pet food. Miller, whose debut screenplay this was, had given Clark an alter-ego: tough, hard-drinking, over-the-hill redneck Gay Langland, who has been through the mill and whose life takes on a new meaning when he meets a beautiful, but unstable, much-younger woman. Obviously there were comparisons to be made with Clark’s own life: the trauma of Carole Lombard’s death and the feeling of emptiness this had left in its wake, the living disaster that had been Sylvia, the slump in his career and its subsequent resurrection, his happy marriage to Kay.

  Such a scenario, today, would not have seen the light of day, with its references to the senseless slaughter of wild animals. Neither would a man as paranoid about his sexuality as Clark have played a character named Gay. Back in 1960, however, when society was less finicky about animal cruelty and the word ‘gay’ had a totally different meaning, his only concern while deliberating over whether to accept the role was the physical and mental condition of his co-stars. Indeed, as soon as details of the film were announced, journalists began to lay bets on which of the three main stars would crack up - or die - first.

  Thirty-nine-year-old Monty Clift had never completely recovered from the car crash, four years earlier, which had almost cost him his life. En route from a party at Elizabeth Taylor’s Benedict Canyon home, he had driven into a telegraph pole, smashing his face against the dashboard. Elizabeth had saved his life by shoving her fingers down his throat to remove two dislodged front teeth and surgeons had almost totally reconstructed one side of his face. Life for Monty, even before the accident, had been a saga of drink and prescription drugs - his way of facing up to the demons brought about not just by his homosexuality, but astonishingly for one of the most handsome actors of his generation, a pathological loathing of his own body - particularly his overtly hirsute upper half. He was also suffering from cataracts and in danger of losing his sight, a point exploited by arch-sadist Arthur Miller, who, adding Method to the proceedings by getting Clark to pronounce, when Monty kept bumping into the scenery all the time, ‘You got good eyes, old boy!’

  Marilyn Monroe, in what would be her last completed film, was an absolute wreck, clinging to her marriage and her sanity by the slenderest of threads. Even Clark, according to biographer Warren G. Harris, denounced her as ‘a self-indulgent twat’, though he would soon revise this opinion once he began working with her. Shooting should have begun on this guaranteed recipe for disaster on 3 March 1960 ahead of the mercilessly hot Nevada summer. The first delay occurred when director John Huston, one of the most uncompromising in the business, took an instant dislike to Miller’s screenplay and ordered a rewrite. Miller complied, but worked on it page by page while the film was shooting, adding to the chaos because the actors never saw their lines until they turned up on the set.

  Clark’s agent, George Chasin, had drawn up a list of contractual demands with United Artists: a record fee of $750,000, along with 10 per cent of the gross, which Huston could not have cared less about. What irked him and everyone else involved with the production was Gable’s insistence on working on a nine-to-five basis and not one minute either way unless the studio paid him overtime at the rate of $48,000 a week, which of course would be obligatory for night scenes. Overtime would also be paid, his contract demanded, in the event of shooting running over the proposed 16-week schedule.

  Once the studio agreed to his terms, Clark was sent for a medical to placate their insurers - which he failed
. The doctors told him to give up smoking and drinking, which he did for a little while, and further suggested a crash diet to bring his weight down to its usual 195 pounds. In Italy it had soared to 230 pounds, he claimed, because Sophia Loren encouraged him to eat too much pasta. Two weeks later he was examined again and given the all clear. In the interim period he and George Chasin held discussions with Howard Hawks, a close friend of Monty Clift, who in 1948 had directed Monty and John Wayne in Red River. Hawks wanted Clark and Wayne to do Hatari!, a Mogambo-style travelogue-drama centred around another pair of misfits who trap wild animals in Africa and sell them on to zoos and circuses. Wayne would eventually make the film, but not with Gable.

  The next major delay involved Marilyn Monroe, who on account of an Actors Guild strike was unable to finish Let’s Make Love on time. To be more precise, when the strike ended, she walked off the set because Arthur Miller refused to include a part in The Misfits for her co-star and lover, Franco-Italian crooner Yves Montand. If Montand could not appear in the new film, she declared, then she had no intention of completing the other one. Eventually she capitulated, but it took her until early July to finish Let’s Make Love - only to have Montand dump her and return to his forgiving wife, Simone Signoret.

  United Artists announced that The Misfits would not begin shooting on 18 July - Clark threatened to tear up his contract on account of the delay, then shrugged his shoulders and headed with Kay for Minden, where they had married on 11 July. They celebrated their fifth anniversary there. They travelled on to the location house provided by the studio on the outskirts of Reno where they were joined by her children.

  Surprisingly, Clark bonded with Montgomery Clift, in spite of his dislike of Method actors and having been made aware how Monty had mocked him in the past - not his physical appearance, but over what he saw as Gable’s ‘distinct lack of real acting ability’. In his opinion, Clark Gable had played the same role - himself - for the past 30 years. So too was Clark concerned about working with a homosexual who, like Nick Adams, knew about every gay secret in Hollywood. This, however, was not the cause of their first on-set row, but Monty’s tendency to fluff his lines. When he did this once too often during rehearsals and Clark called him a ‘sleazy little runt’ and cruelly threatened to smash the other side of his face, Monty barked back, ‘Why don’t you take out your dentures and kiss my ass?’ Clark saw the funny side. Their friendship was further cemented when Monty asked a thirsty Gable if he would like a drink from the hip flask he always carried around in his shoulder-bag: this contained a concoction of orange juice, vodka and barbiturates. Marlon Brando had taken a swig from this while they had been making The Young Lions and almost passed out. Clark did so and was completely unaffected.

  While shooting The Misfits he acted as a surrogate father figure towards Monty and protected him from John Huston’s bullying. There would be no homophobic attacks or nasty asides, even when Monty’s French boyfriend visited the set. The first time Clark called Monty ‘fag’, and Monty responded that ‘it took one to know one’, Clark saw the funny side of this too. Age had seemingly taught him tolerance.

  Clark met Monty and most of the cast for the first time at the home of producer Frank Taylor. Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe were conspicuous by their absence. According to the legend that one finds hard to believe, Clark installed himself in the biggest armchair in Taylor’s living room while John Huston, Thelma Ritter, Kevin McCarthy, Eli Wallach and photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson sat cross-legged at his feet - in other words, paying homage to the King.

  It may well have been Montgomery Clift who informed Clark of how Marilyn Monroe had for years kept a signed photograph of him in her bedroom, telling friends that Clark Gable was her real father. Monty also confided in him that they had both made the biggest mistake of their careers in agreeing to work with her, albeit that Marilyn had been a non-negotiable part of the Miller package. She was so nervous about shooting her first scene with Clark that on the evening before this took place, she swallowed a fistful of Nembutals and very nearly overdosed - it took her entourage several hours to revive her the next morning. She spent so long being ill in the ‘honey wagon’ that when she finally emerged, green and shaking, Clark was just about ready to sign off for the day. Then, once he had fought past her entourage (hairdresser, make-up artists, stunt-double, masseur, wardrobe girl, voice-coach, body cosmetician and, most important of all, her black-clad acting coach, Paula Strasberg!) to give her a big hug and tell her not to worry, Marilyn had had an attack of the vapours. That same evening she bleated to reporters who hung around the set day and night, waiting for some exclusive on her crumbling marriage, ‘Mr Gable’s in love with me!’ The ones who had repeated her fabricated claim to be Clark’s daughter were prohibited from referring to this snippet in their columns, for fear of ‘Daddy Gable’ being accused of having incestuous thoughts!

  In fact, Clark was not in the least amorously interested in Marilyn. Inasmuch as he had a fetish for cleanliness, she could not have been less fastidious regarding personal hygiene. Like Jean Harlow, she bleached her pubic hair and never wore panties, even during her menstrual cycle. She suffered from what today would be described as a form of irritable bowel syndrome, persistently belching and breaking wind. She rarely bathed, slept in the nude and ate a lot in bed - shoving what was left on her plate under the sheets before going to sleep. Tallulah Bankhead stood next to her at a party in London and later claimed the odour had reminded her of the offal bins at Billingsgate! Neither would Marilyn succeed in her attempts to seduce Monty Clift, though as with Clark the friendship that developed between them proved far more important than it would have done, had sex been involved. All three stars would come to appreciate the fact that they could lean on each other whenever things got to be too much for them, which with this film would be pretty much most of the time.

  Throughout shooting, Marilyn would prove never less than an almighty pain in the backside. When she was not several hours late for a scene, she would not turn up at all. If John Huston bawled her out, she would rush to the honey wagon to throw up. She could not remember her lines and most of the time relied on cue cards. In the past, she had become confused shooting scenes out of sequence, therefore Arthur Miller insisted the entire production be filmed in strict chronological order. This would prove particularly arduous for Clark and Monty, whose most physically exerting scenes would have to be shot, with little or no rest between them, towards the end of the schedule when the unit transferred to the hottest part of the Nevada desert.

  On 27 August, Marilyn collapsed. The press were told that she was suffering from acute exhaustion - she had actually swallowed a bottle of barbiturates because she had not wanted to wake up after her latest fight with Arthur Miller. The two had argued incessantly about the film since day one. Marilyn had wanted it to be in Technicolor, while Miller sensibly opted for monochrome: the reduced lighting would eradicate some of the stress lines on the actors’ faces. She had also wanted a bigger cut of the budget: she and Miller would be sharing $500,000 plus a percentage of the box-office, which she declared was not nearly enough. Marilyn did not care what the studio was paying her husband - she wanted the same as Clark. Miller informed her, in the heat of the moment, that this would never happen because if she lived to be 100 she would never be as good as Gable, hence the suicide bid. Rushed back to Los Angeles’ Westside Hospital, she was out of action until 6 September.

  The Misfits is a strange film, a scenario which as it unravels becomes increasingly dark and depressing, with far too many autobiographical references for all concerned - a swan song for Clark and Marilyn, which might have been better not seeing the light of day. He certainly deserved better than this - though of course no one had any idea that this would be his last film - playing himself this time as a man genuinely washed-up and worn out, trying to prove himself when there was nothing to prove. For three decades, Gable had served the fans faithfully: retrospectively, the world would have been more content to witnes
s his jovial, wisecracking adieu in It Started In Naples. Montgomery Clift, though equally reduced to a shadow of his former self, would see his dignity far better preserved: between now and his death, at 45 in July 1966, he would triumph in Stanley Kramer’s Judgement At Nuremberg, then in John Huston’s Freud, before bowing out with The Defector. Only Marilyn truly exonerates herself here, but like Clark the cost to her wellbeing would be astronomical.

  The action begins in Reno, where former dance teacher Roslyn Taber (Marilyn) has arrived to divorce her husband - Monty’s closest friend, Kevin McCarthy, taking up but a few seconds of screen time. We first see her before a mirror trying to memorise the lines she will pronounce before the judge - Arthur Miller’s cruel way of reminding his wife that she could not remember hers. Throughout the film she will be the same as she is remembered now - fragile, edgy, possessed of a childlike innocence, yet never for less than a moment spellbinding to watch. World War II pilot-reduced-to-mechanic Guido (Eli Wallach), a real Job’s comforter, turns up at Roslyn’s lodgings to buy her car and ends up driving Roslyn and landlady Isabel (the magnificent Thelma Ritter) to the courthouse. Later, while celebrating her new-found freedom, she bumps into Guido again: he is with his cowboy buddy, Gay (short for Gaylord), who has already decided he has had enough of this place. Like Clark, Gay soon gets impatient hanging around too many people, and needs to get out into the country, his true home, for some air. Guido suggests that all four of them drive out to his place on the outskirts of town - the house he was in the middle of renovating when his wife died.

  The ensuing storyline - of a young woman who heads off with a group of men in search of excitement, initially with no ulterior sexual motive (and therefore less likely to offend moralist audiences) had been covered before. First, with Johnny Mack Brown, Richard Barthelmess and Helen Chandler in The Last Flight (1930) and more recently in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises with Errol Flynn, Tyrone Power and Ava Gardner. Roslyn is the city girl that has never smelled the country, save from a perfume bottle, therefore she sees no problem moving into Guido’s house when he and Gay ask her to stay. She and Guido dance to the car radio and, referring to his wife she hardly cheers him up by telling him, ‘We’re all dying, aren’t we? All the husbands and wives . . . even me. And we’re not telling each other what we know, are we?’ When he tries to kiss her, however, she shrugs him off. She is far more interested in Gay because he has treated her with respect and not tried to seduce her. ‘You just shine in my eyes,’ he says, adding that she is the saddest girl he has ever met. Therefore she decides to stay here with him when Guido and Isabel return to Reno, and they bond by way of their intense loneliness.