Clark Gable is known as the King of Hollywood, and as the persona goes, there are several urban legends and hidden stories associated with his name. Read on to know more about Gable, who became immortal with his role of ‘Rhett Butler’ in ‘Gone with the Wind’.
Gable was Dyslexic.
One of the main reasons why Clark didn’t let anyone photograph him reading on the sets was his dyslexia. He didn’t want anyone to see him struggling to read, and he thought this could ruin his image of a manly lead. So, he kept this fact from the world for a long time.
At birth, Clark Gable was mistakenly registered as a female.
This is one of the most bizarre facts; either all the nurses or doctors had poor eyesight, or something else was wrong. This seems to be a pretty big omission, but this goes on record that he was listed as a female at birth!
He almost lost all his teeth.
In 1933 when he was merely 32, he had a bad gum infection. Due to this, he had to extract almost all his teeth and put dentures instead. On the sets of Gone with the Wind, Vivien Leigh complained about how bad the odour was, which explains the gravity of the disease.
He gave away his Oscar to a fan.
On the day when he won his first Academy Award in the Best Actor category for the movie, It Happened One Night (1934), a child approached him and said the trophy was pretty. Clark Gable handed the kid his Oscar statue stating what matters in the recognition, not the Statue!
Gable didn’t want to do ‘Gone with the Wind’.
Clark was never a fan of the movie for which he is remembered the most. He felt that Gone with the Wind didn’t go along with his admired macho on-screen image and instead was a ‘woman’s picture’. He was resistant to play Rhett Butler and even refused to do the Southern accent.
He transformed the Men’s Undershirt Industry.
The 1930s was a time when men always wore undershirts. Then, Clark Gable takes off his shirt in the movie ‘It Happened One Night’, and he is not wearing any undershirt; this craze swept the nation as men stopped buying undershirts. While this remains a tale of legends, it is surely known that men at that time were highly influenced by the legend.
Such was Clark Gable’s impact that he aggressively tried to integrate the then deeply segregated Hollywood. He is a true King of Hollywood.
