Remembering an Artifact of My Star-Power Awakening.

"What she needs is a guy that'd take a sock at her once a day, whether it's coming to her or not. If you had half the brains you're supposed to have, you'd done it yourself, long ago."

Said with an intense clench, almost and always ready to give way to that famous grin that screams: “I know what you look like naked!”, we owe what we consider manhood (for good or bad) to the only man in the world that can look sexy in a thin moustache.

November 16, 2005 marks the 45th anniversary of the death of mega-star Clark Gable (1901-1960), at the age of 59 of a heart attack (most likely brought on by heavy drinking in his post-MGM years). In some ways, therefore, despite the fact that Cary Grant lived on until the eighties, it marks the 45th anniversary of the final break with Old Hollywood.

To me, Clark Gable will always remain one of my first and best examples of what a “Star” really is.

At his peak, Gable was an institution of aggressive sexuality and charisma, and a juggernaut of influence. Lest we forget that Gable was able to bump George Cukor as director of Gone With the Wind (1939), despite the fact that Cukor had already shot 33 minutes of the film. It seems that Gable preferred Victor Fleming (according to reasons put forward by Kenneth Anger or not), and as a result the film now bears that director’s name. (When we attempt to reconcile star power with auteurism, Gable provides a really sticky wicket, and begs us to explore further the option of actor as auteur rather than director in some cases.)

Gable also remains one of those rare sex symbols from yesteryear who retain their ability to cause a swoon or two. While Valentino seems as outdated as he is, Bogart seems far too short (though this doesn't stop me), and John Wayne reminds us all too much of our dads to cause a frenzy (*shudder*), men like Gable, Gary Cooper, and Cary Grant seem as fresh and sexy today as they did then. Easily, they can stand in a photo line up with their modern successors such as Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe and Liam Neeson - modern images of masculinity stressing internal honour (although sometimes unconventional), and health, over wan and non-threatening asexuality. (All too few and far between amongst the androgynous ranks of the Orlando Bloom clones of today.)

He reminds us of an era in which masculine attractiveness came more from maturity mixed with a balanced dose of mischievous sexuality, as opposed to today’s standards of guilt-imposed and castrated male “prettiness.”

And underlying this rugged masculinity was a core of romantic self-disregard transformed into grief that forced Gable out of movies and into the army when his beloved wife, Carole Lombard, died in 1942. He made no movies for three years after her death. After his own death, nearly twenty years (and a couple new wives) later, he was interred beside her.

Furthermore, Gable’s example is one of a “good” American who doesn’t necessarily have to toe the company line, as a man who was once denounced before the McCarthy trials as an “unwitting tool of Communist infiltration” due to his anti-fascist political beliefs, which, unlike most leftist views in Hollywood, failed to disappear once Nazism was defeated. However, Gable was never an overtly political figure, and is best remembered for his screen persona and magnetism, which goes far beyond Rhett Butler.

I started this little reminder with a line from It Happened One Night (1934), rather than one from GWTW. The latter film sets up a possibly damaging American myth of the romantic South (as well as a disturbing trope of female aggressiveness leading to destruction). More importantly, however, I believe the former film to have been Gable’s definitive star image, not Butler.

It was also the film in which I first awakened to the fact that screen persona and character were blurred in the case of true stars, and the one in which I, in my nascent understanding of film language, first observed that a knowledge of who Gable was told me half of what I needed to know and carried part of the burden for the script. It also serves as an example of Gable’s sway with the American public: When he appeared sans undershirt in that film, sales in the hitherto necessary (and “polite”) undergarment plummeted.

Not the least of all, it is also one of the most iconic foundational works in the canon of romantic comedies. Establishing the trope of rich-spoiled-woman/honest-working-class-man, this film is about as dashing and attractive as any I have seen, so I urge you to track it down. With it you can see and recognize the recent rom-com pap for what it is: an affront to the aesthetic and idealistic sensibilities of the movie-going public. Ben Stiller should shrink out of shame in the light of Gable.

It is also one of the only comedies, period, which has held its own in the Academy Award race, the result of which was Gable's only Oscar.

Go and see this film, in remembrance of Gable, and enjoy.