Gable was one of the most consistent box-office performers in the history of Hollywood, appearing on Quigley Publishing's annual Top Ten Money Making Stars Poll sixteen times.

[13] Gable was inspired to become an actor after seeing the play The Bird of Paradise at age 17, but he was unable to make a start in acting until he turned 21 and received his $300 inheritance (equivalent to $5,461 in 2023[14]) from a Hershelman trust.

[6]: 36 [20] During the 1927–28 theater season, he acted with the Laskin Brothers Stock Company in Houston, Texas; while there, he played many roles, gained considerable experience, and became a local matinee idol.

In 1930, after his impressive appearance as the seething and desperate character Killer Mears in the Los Angeles stage production of The Last Mile, Gable was offered a contract with Pathé Pictures.

"[6]: 80 Gable co-starred in Susan Lenox (Her Fall and Rise) (1931) with Greta Garbo, and in Possessed (1931), a film about an illicit romantic affair, with Joan Crawford (who was then married to Douglas Fairbanks Jr.).

Gable and Harlow were then teamed in Hold Your Man (1933), China Seas (1935), in which the pair were billed above Wallace Beery, and Wife vs. Secretary (1936) with Myrna Loy costarring and supported by newcomer James Stewart.

[46] After Boom Town no more Gable-Tracy partnerships were possible; Tracy's success led to a new contract and both stars had conflicting stipulations requiring top billing in MGM movie credits and on promotional posters.

[64] Film historian David Thomson wrote the quality of his movies after Gone With the Wind "hardly befitted a national idol" and began a career decline for Gable.

Commanding General of the U.S. Army Air Forces Henry H. "Hap" Arnold offered Gable a "special assignment" with the First Motion Picture Unit following basic training.

Gable and McIntyre were immediately sent to Flexible Gunnery School at Tyndall Field, Florida,[71] followed by a photography course at Fort George Wright, Washington State and promoted to first lieutenants upon its completion.

[70] On January 27, 1943, Gable reported to Biggs Army Airfield, Texas to train with and accompany the 351st Bomb Group to England as head of a six-man motion picture unit.

[70] Because his motion picture production schedule made it impossible for him to fulfill reserve officer duties, he resigned his commission on September 26, 1947, a week after the Air Force became an independent service branch.

The film was popular with audiences, placing 11th at the box office,[80] but both Variety and The New York Times reviewed it as a sanitized version of the novel with script issues, that was heavy on Gable screentime, who struggled in the role.

[81][82] Gable followed this up with Homecoming (1948), where he played a married doctor enlisting in World War II and meeting Lana Turner's army surgical nurse character with a romance unfolding in flashbacks.

[87] Gable did a series of films with female co-stars: Any Number Can Play (1950) with Alexis Smith, Key to the City (1950) with Loretta Young, and To Please a Lady (1950) with Barbara Stanwyck.

[89] Mogambo (1953), directed by John Ford, was a somewhat sanitized and more action-oriented remake of Gable's hit pre-Code film Red Dust, with Jean Harlow and Mary Astor.

[94][95] Despite the positive critical and public response to Mogambo, Gable became increasingly unhappy with what he considered mediocre roles offered by MGM, while the studio regarded his salary as excessive.

Studio head Louis B. Mayer was fired in 1951, amid slumping revenue and increased Hollywood production costs, due in large part to the rising popularity of television.

Critic Paul Mavis wrote, "Gable and Turner just don't click the way they should here...poor plots and lines never stopped these two pros from turning in good performances in other films.

[101] His next two films were made for 20th Century Fox: Soldier of Fortune, an adventure story in Hong Kong with Susan Hayward, and The Tall Men (1955), a Western with Jane Russell and Robert Ryan.

A former fashion model and actress, she had previously been married three times: first to Charles Capps (1937–39), then to Argentinian cattle tycoon Martín de Alzaga (1942–43), and to sugar-refining heir Adolph B. Spreckels Jr. (1945–52).

[116] Portraitist Al Hirschfeld created a drawing, and then a lithograph, portraying the film's stars Clift, Monroe, and Gable with screenwriter Miller, in what is suggested as a typical "on-the-set" scene during the troubled production.

[117] In a 2002 documentary Eli Wallach recalled the mustang wrangling scenes Gable insisted on performing himself, "You have to pass a physical to film that" and "He was a professional going home at 5 p.m. to a pregnant wife".

[120] Gable was one of the most consistent box-office performers in the history of Hollywood, appearing on Quigley Publishing's annual Top Ten Money Making Stars Poll sixteen times.

She had just finished her 57th movie, To Be or Not to Be, and was on her way home from a successful war bond selling tour when the flight's Douglas DC-3 airliner crashed into Potosi Mountain near Las Vegas, Nevada, killing all 22 passengers aboard, including 15 servicemen en route to training in California.

Lombard was declared to be the first war-related American female casualty of World War II, and Gable received a personal note of condolence from President Roosevelt.

In 1944, Gable became an early member of the conservative Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, a group explicitly created to help root out Communists from the film industry.

In addition to Gable, its members included such industry heavyweights as Walt Disney, Ayn Rand, Ronald Reagan, and John Wayne; they helped create and enforce the Hollywood blacklist, often by testifying under oath before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Beach, noted changes should be made among the crew to get a Hollywood audience and where a subsequent battle sequence was altered when he should have had script approval, feeling his book was bought by United Artists for its title.

Actors who have played the role include: Phillip Waldron in It Happened in Hollywood (1937), James Brolin in Gable and Lombard (1976),[167] Larry Pennell in Marilyn: The Untold Story (1980),[168] Edward Winter in Moviola: The Scarlett O'Hara War (1980),[169] Boyd Holister in Grace Kelly (1983),[170] Gary Wayne in Malice in Wonderland (1985), Gene Daily in The Rocketeer (1991), Bobby Valentino in RKO 281 (1999), Bruce Hughes and Shayne Greenman in Blonde (2001), and Charles Unwin in Lucy (2003).