Clark Gable showed erotic menace in his villainous role in A Free Soul, a film that helped catapult him to major stardom.
Unlike John Wayne, Gable rarely did have male mates or male friends of the Hawks or Ford type; his friends or collaborators (often beginning as adversaries or counterparts) were women.
Gable gave the public what the studio thought the public wanted. He did not rebel; he helped propagate the myth of “macho charming” Gable himself.
Gable told Adela Rogers St. Johns what he thought the public wanted: “They see me broke, in trouble, scared of things that go bumb in the night but coming out fighting.. They see life with a high price tag on it, but they get an idea that no price is too high if it’s life…
I’m not going to make any motion pictures that don’t keep right on telling them that about a man. Lets get that understood. The thing a man has to have are hope and confidence in himself, against odds, and sometimes he needs somebody, his pal or his mother or his wife or God, to give him that confidence.
He’s got to have some inner standard worth fighting for, or there won’t be any way to being him into conflict. And he must be ready to choose death before dishonor without making too much song and dance about it (Lynn).
Movie Stars: Gable, Clark–Self-Image
Clark Gable showed erotic menace in his villainous role in A Free Soul, a film that helped catapult him to major stardom.
Unlike John Wayne, Gable rarely did have male mates or male friends of the Hawks or Ford type; his friends or collaborators (often beginning as adversaries or counterparts) were women.
Gable gave the public what the studio thought the public wanted. He did not rebel; he helped propagate the myth of “macho charming” Gable himself.
Gable told Adela Rogers St. Johns what he thought the public wanted: “They see me broke, in trouble, scared of things that go bumb in the night but coming out fighting.. They see life with a high price tag on it, but they get an idea that no price is too high if it’s life…
I’m not going to make any motion pictures that don’t keep right on telling them that about a man. Lets get that understood. The thing a man has to have are hope and confidence in himself, against odds, and sometimes he needs somebody, his pal or his mother or his wife or God, to give him that confidence.
He’s got to have some inner standard worth fighting for, or there won’t be any way to being him into conflict. And he must be ready to choose death before dishonor without making too much song and dance about it (Lynn).