here are but a handful of actors as well known today as they were at the dawn of Hollywood cinema. Clark Gable is one of those men. The star of some of the greatest, most revered films ever made, he is as sartorially savvy as they get and has managed to grace the screen with a confident style that is virtually unmatched. It’s for this reason that he can be considered a Gentleman of Style.
Born in Cadiz, Ohio to an oil worker named William and a woman named Adeline, William Clark Gable graced the world with his presence at the birth of the century, on February 1, 1901.
Mistakenly listed as female on his birth certificate, Gable came from a Dutch and Bavarian heritage. Called Clark almost from birth, Gable was raised baptized Catholic by his mother but not raised as one by his father once she perished from a brain tumor when he was just ten months old. This sudden change in how the young Gable was raised caused significant criticism from his mother’s side of the family, until his father agreed to allow Clark to spend time with an uncle and his wife on their farm where he was reintroduced to the Catholic church. At the age of two, Gable’s father remarried to a woman named Jennie Dunlap who was instrumental in raising the young Clark. Teaching him piano and then brass, she encouraged Gable to dress well and to always be impeccably groomed. Many historians believe that Clark Gable’s style can be attributed to his stepmothers advice and passion for clothing. From a young age, Gable stood out from the other kids with his exemplary sense of style but shy personality. Gable spent his free time working on automobiles with his father rather than with friends. Musically inclined, he joined the town’s band and despite his father’s insistence that he engage in masculine activities like hunting, Gable allowed his interests in literature and languages to guide him. He was well known for reciting the sonnets of Shakespeare when company visited, and despite his father’s desire for Clark to be a manly-man, he was supportive of his son, even investing in a library of literature for his son to amuse himself with. Late in Clark’s high school career, his father had some serious financial struggles and decided to move the family to a farm in Ravenna. Despite William’s insistence that Clark work on the new family farm, Clark refused and left to work at the B.F. Goodrich factory in neighboring Akron.
