The reason why Clark Gable didn’t want to make ‘Gone With The Wind’
He may have been a sought-after movie hunk in his own day, but I have a suspicion Clark Gable wouldn’t be such a hit with the ladies today. Not only was he rumoured to have had truly terrible breath, but he also seems to have prided himself on a certain blue-collar machismo. So much so, in fact, that he nearly refused to make a film that might compromise it.
The only son of an itinerant oil-field worker, Gable had a pretty tough upbringing, having lost his mother when he was just ten months old. After dropping out of school at 16, he started acting in his early 20s. Boasting rugged good looks and a rather fetching pencil moustache (very much the chiselled pecs of the 1910s), he became the protégé of celebrated actress Josephine Dillon, who became his acting coach, elocution mistress and orthodontic benefactor, paying for his dental surgery.
Gable married Dillon (then 17 years his senior) in 1924 and began landing roles in small silent films. Having cemented his reputation as a macho heartthrob with ’30s MGM films like Red Dust, Strange Interlude, Dancing Lady, Hold Your Man, Manhattan Melodrama and Men In White, Gable soon found himself Hollywood’s most beloved-leading man. He won yet more public adoration by giving his 1934 ‘Best Actor’ Oscar (for his performance in It Happened One Night) to a child who had commented on its prettiness.
Hoping to build on his popularity as a romantic leading man, MGM came to Clark with a new film titled Gone With The Wind, a sweeping romantic epic set against the backdrop of the American Civil War. In Clark Gable: A Biography, Warren G. Harris claims that future Mr and Mrs Smith actor Carole Lombard was the first person to suggest Gable for the role of Rhett Butler. Hoping that she might be cast as co-lead Scarlett O’Hara, Lombard is said to have gifted Clarke a copy of Margaret Mitchell’s original novel, which he refused to read. Nice going, Clark.
Apparently, Gable was very much opposed to the idea of starring in what he regarded as “a woman’s picture”. Indeed, he was pretty resistant to the idea of playing a character like Rhett at all, though later gave in to public opinion and accepted the part. Even then, he refused to play the role too romantically, rejecting the idea of putting on a faux-Southern accent. In the end, Gone With The Wind became Gable’s most famous film, earning him cultural immortality with the line, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”
You can revisit that moment below.
