Research in progress: April 16, 2023–826
Gable as Actor
In his stage career, he was a clumsy actor; he was an amateur. His voice was too highly pitched.
In the 1930s, Gabe continued to say that he was not an actor; that he was a personality and that therefore he would not last long. But he did last long!
Approach to Acting:
Gable, like his male peers, found acting pointless and demeaning after being at real war.
Some say Gable’s passion for acting was gone when he resumed work in 1945.
Gable was highly aware that he reached his height in GWTW; and there was nowhere to go but down from that point on.
Background: Poverty
His perpetual insecurity derived from his recollection of past poverty.
In 1931, when he signed the MGM contract for 2 years at $350 a week, it was the first time in his life that he could count on steady and regular salary.
He continued to have self-doubts about acting and his career, partly because he had never really believed that he could become a successful actor, and once he became one, he did not believe he could stay in being successful
Screen Image:
Gable was made into a product. The studio created his image, unlike Wayne, who created his own image.
He was a good-looking man whose looks implied commonplace and naturalness.
His movies were simple, simplistic, simple-minded in their philosophy with strong emphasis on tough masculinity, and masculine toughness.
He was a man’s man, a macho star. On screen, he played gamblers, racing motorists, oilers, entrepreneurs, all kinds of adventurers.
He was advertised as the macho guy, with publicity pictures with him on a horse, half buried in fishing equipment, leaning against a fireplace cleaning guns, sport clothing.
Gable liked his image and fit into it. He was willing to be molded; he did what he was told to do, because he wanted to be a successful star.
Gable was a model of cooperation, he was on time for photo sessions; charming to journalists; patient with the wardrobe people, buddy with the grips.
Gable was the right man for each of the three decades of his career:
He was glamorous in the depressed 1930s;
he was the bereaved hero in the War years of 1940s;
he was the Established American in the Eisenhower era of the 1950s.
Masculinity
NY Times, editorial, Nov 18, 1960, wrote:
“Perhaps he was not the most skillful and subtle in the way of technique. But what Gable had in a measure that no other star quite matched–or projected as ferociously as he did–was a true masculine personality.
Gable was as certain as the sun. He was consistently and stubbornly all-man.”
Output-Studios–By Decade
Gable made 12 films (one sixth) of his entire output in one year, 1931, the most significant in his career.
Screen time was Hollywood’s practice of making promising beginners into screen personalities, finding type by trial and error, market-testing and then, when effective, patenting the result.
After 1935, Gable never exceeded 3 films per year.
In the first 5 years of his career, he made a total of 30 films (almost half of his output)
The peak years, 1935 to 1940.
Gable made 67 films in a career that spanned 30 years; he had appeared in at least 6 silents
Gable made 39 films in his first decade, the 1930s; 11 in the 1940s (he was drafted); no pictures in 1943 and 1945, and only 1 in 1945.
15 in the 1950s
2 in the 1960s
His last two pictures: It Happened in Naples (1960), a mediocre comedy, and The Misfits (61), one of his very best.
His most important work in the 1930s
No less than 12 of his pictures were release in 1931
Unlike John Wayne or Cary Grant or Bogart, Gable was a star that made it from the very start of his career.
Luck
Attributing his success to luck, Gable has hung his dressing room with mementos of the days when he was only a struggling actor. Across the mementos, he has written: “Just to remind you, Gable.”
In the spotlight since 1931, Gable has enjoyed unbroken popularity with audiences, especially wide box-office appeal to women.
From 1934 to 1941, during a seven year stretch. he was one of MGM’s top stars, appearing in over 20 pictures.
Best Artistic Pictures:
Red Dust, 1932
It Happened One Night, 1934
Mutiny on the Bounty, 1935
San Francisco, 1936
Test Pilot, 1938
Gone with the Wind, 1939
Mogambo, 1954
The Misfits, 1961
Most Commercial Pictures:
San Francisco
Saratoga (Harlow’s last film)
Test Pilot
GWTW
Boom Town
They Met in Bombay
Range:
Perhaps he was not the most skillful and subtle in the way of technique.
Gable was always Gable, unlike Spencer Tracy (also major MGM actor), he could not play effectively lead character roles.
Gable and Tracy made 3 films together. Gable admired Tracy, and also envied him. He wanted to gain Tracy’s respectability and recognition as an actor’s actor, without losing his charisma as a movie star!
Tracy, for his part, admired Gable; he also wanted, but never admitted publicly, that he wished to be loved and be worshipped by multitude of fans.
In the 1930s, Gable envied Wallace Beery for his salary, and Walter Huston and Tracy for their versatility as actors.
Public
Gable was aware of his limitations: He rarely gave interviews in his lifetime; he was was shy and not very interesting.
Genre
Gable War Films:
Command Decision, 1948
Betrayed, 1954
Run Silent, Run Deep, 1958