Clark Gable: A Biography

There really was a Hollywood, a place of fashionable men and gorgeous women and the all-powerful studio system that allowed them to defy the conventions that governed the rest of the country. Clark Gable arrived there after a rough-and-tumble youth, and his breezy, big-boned, everyman persona quickly made him the town’s “King.” He was a gambler among gamblers, a heavy drinker in the days when everyone drank seemingly all the time, and a lover to legions of the most attractive women in the most glamorous business in the world.

In this well-researched and revealing biography, Warren G. Harris gives us an exceptionally acute portrait of one of the most memorable actors in the history of motion pictures, as well as a sure sense of the milieu and the times of mid-century Hollywood. More than anything else, one is struck by the romance of the era—the glamour and the excess, the playfulness and the lust. The people who were Gable’s intimates are legends in their own right: Loretta Young, Marion Davies, David O. Selznick, Jean Harlow, Judy Garland, Lana Turner, Spencer Tracy, Grace Kelly, and the list goes on and on.

Clark Gable reveals newly uncovered information about Gable’s illegitimate daughter, his relationship with Joan Crawford, and his great love for Carole Lombard, his third wife.

WARREN G. HARRIS has written critically acclaimed biographies of Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn, and Sophia Loren, among others. He lives in New York City.