When Clark Gable was insulted by a studio executive: “He looks like an ape”
Hollywood is a harsh and ruthless industry—and it’s also an incredibly shallow one.
While the people in charge are looking for talented actors who can command a room, one of the most important factors that executives often consider when searching for people to sign to their studios and cast in films is beauty. Those with good looks are much more likely to be considered for roles, and in an effort to keep up with the industry’s unsustainable standards, many actors resort to cosmetic procedures to keep them looking good.
It’s one of the only industries where looks are often the most important aspect of the job, and for some actors, the audition process has led to outright insults from producers. Take Meryl Streep, for example, who was once deemed “too ugly” to appear in King Kong. Since then, she’s become the most Oscar-nominated actor in history, widely admired for her elegance and poise—on top of her incredible acting skills.
She’s not the only one; Emma Thompson was told she wasn’t pretty enough to do nude scenes, and then there’s Andrew Garfield, who lost a leading role in The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian because he wasn’t considered good-looking enough. Of course, he then went on to become Spider-Man.
This isn’t something new, either. In the golden era of Hollywood, an actor who would become one of the biggest screen icons of all time was insulted about his looks while starting out his career.
After seeking a contract with Warner Bros, the studio executive Darryl F Zanuck described Clark Gable with the sentence (via Leading Men: The 50 Most Unforgettable Actors of the Studio Era), “His ears are too big and he looks like an ape.” A rather brutal comment to make about someone’s appearance, Zanuck certainly did not hold back. Gable’s ears might have been on the larger side, but he didn’t let that stop him from fulfilling his dreams of being a Hollywood star.
Instead, he was taken on by MGM, and after a string of small parts as an extra in the 1920s, he found his first supporting role in 1931’s The Painted Desert. His star power rose swiftly, and he eventually found the biggest success of his career with Gone With the Wind.
However, before Gable played Rhett Butler—or any other character from his long filmography—the actor worked various menial jobs while dreaming of acting. He was inspired to become an actor as a teenager after watching a play, but he couldn’t just drop everything to make it in the industry, which was still in its early silent days.
He began performing with a travelling theatre company in his 20s, but it wasn’t until he began studying the craft of acting that he started to find more confidence in his abilities and subsequently auditioned for Hollywood roles. Interestingly, in his bid to become a star, he did alter a few physical aspects of his appearance, including his teeth. According to Zanuck, it seemed as though he should have done something about his ears, too, but he decided to embrace them instead, and evidently, they didn’t get in the way of him becoming a screen icon.
