Synopsis
Recounts the life and career of a larger-than-life Hollywood legend, including his ruthless ambition and his affairs with stars such as Joan Crawford and Carole Lombard. By the author of Marilyn's Men.
Reviews
In her 10th book about cinema celebrities, Wayne ( Marilyn's Men ) makes judgmental and often unverified statements apparently intended to refute Joan Crawford and other interviewees who praise the actor's professionalism and remember him with devotion. Dubbed "King of Hollywood" 23 years before his death in 1960 at age 59, Gable, who was raised in a small town in Ohio, landed in the movie capital during the 1920s. A big, rough, unhandsome youth who seemed an unlikely prospect for stardom, he had a magnetism that soon made him an unrivalled favorite of both male and female film fans. Whether performing in It Happened One Night , Mutiny on the Bounty , Gone with the Wind or less epic fare, the star drew SRO crowds. To the author, however, Gable was a drunken lecher whose recklessness cost the lives of Americans who served with him in the Air Force during WW II after his wife, Carole Lombard, was killed in a plane crash. This accusation is as unsupported as most of the gossip served up in this biography-by-indictment, which gives small credit to the hardworking actor mourned by many when his life ended almost simultaneously with the completion of The Misfits.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The King of Tragedy is discovered behind the King of Hollywood--by the Queen of Trash Bios. In her tenth Hollywood bio, Wayne (Gable's Women, 1987; Crawford's Men, 1988; Ava's Men, 1990; Grace Kelly's Men, 1991, etc.) goes beyond paste-up to embark on self-plagiary. She makes no mention of Gable's Women and simply jumps into rewriting herself, adding clips from familiar scenes about Gable from her bios of his lovers Crawford, Gardner, and Kelly. Is this a new book? Well, maybe, but no page smells fresh. Once more we get the famous fights, the seethings and soothings, dramatized in Wayne's own dialogue, as between Gable and Crawford: ``I'm sick and tired of this Rhett business.'' ``Not if I play Scarlett. We're dynamite together.'' ``Yeah.'' ``You'll insist?'' ``Carole [Lombard] wants the part, too.'' ``Scarlett's not a blonde, for Christ's sake!'' ``I wouldn't know because I haven't read the goddamn book!'' Wayne's Gable is ``an alcoholic, a bland love, a scoundrel, an egotist, and an opportunist who hit the casting couch for a homosexual encounter with a well-known leading man to get into films.'' And he has a tragic mother-complex. The gay encounter, with a friend of gay director George Cukor, later resulted in Gable having Cukor replaced on Gone with the Wind when Gable didn't want his past dug up. But we've read this story in Gable's Women, just as we've read and reread about the star's affairs with Ava, Joan, and Grace, and about his run-in with Marilyn (in Marilyn's Men, 1992). Even Lombard's knitting of a special little sleeve for Gable lacks zip. Wayneland recycled. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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