“When a guy boozes with a friend, he usually lets you know something about what’s going on inside his noggin.”
The number-one leading man of his generation, Clark Gable is best remembered for his roles in Gone with the Wind (1939), Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), and It Happened One Night (1934). All three garnered Best Actor Oscar nods, but he won for It Happened One Night. Considered the epitome of virility and masculinity by women and men alike, this was somewhat ironic, given that Gable was mistakenly labeled a girl on his birth certificate. As a young man, he worked in oil fields and as a lumberjack. Later, he stumbled into acting and struck gold with his rugged good looks and alpha-dog personality. A notorious philanderer, he was married five times. He briefly gave up acting to join the Army Air Force during World War II. Mission: creating propaganda films that would encourage enlistment. (Upon discovering this, Adolf Hitler—a fan—offered a reward to anyone who could capture and deliver Gable to him unscathed.) Gable returned to Hollywood in 1945, and despite his diminishing star-status as the studio system gradually eroded, he went on to make another twenty-two features. Gable’s final performance in The Misfits (1961)—also Marilyn Monroe’s final picture—is still considered among his finest.
“SIBERIA” WAS WHAT MGM boss Louis B. Mayer called Columbia Pictures. A rinky-dink studio with no stars of its own. And yet Mayer had agreed to loan them Clark Gable for a movie with “Bus” in the title. Night Bus. A crappy title based on a crappy story Columbia had bought from a woman’s magazine for just $5,000. Now this was a real slap-in-the-face. Gable needed a drink.
It was clear that the Columbia deal was Gable’s comeuppance for the attitude he had copped on his last picture, Dancing Lady. Gable had been absent for six weeks of production. Depending on who you talked to, some of this time was for medical reasons (getting his teeth replaced with dentures), and some was for personal reasons (his romance with Joan Crawford—this in the days before his affairs with Carole Lombard, Grace Kelly, and Marilyn Monroe). Regardless, the loss of time cost the studio an additional $150,000, and Mayer was not happy. On top of that, after finally wrapping, Gable had laid into the studio boss: he was tired of playing “gigolos,” and from now on, he’d only take parts that he liked.
It is worth noting that Mayer was not a nice guy. Reportedly, Mayer covered up murders and rapes. He ruined people’s lives to save money or to just to make a point. He did perverse and unforgivable things like not telling his biggest box-office draw (Marie Dressler) that she had cancer until after her movie had wrapped. But if nothing else, Mayer was consistent in one regard: He did not cave to actors’ demands. Especially an actor whose affair with Joan Crawford had been “the affair that nearly burned Hollywood down” (as described by Adela Rogers St. Johns). And thus, Mayer’s revenge: the Columbia deal. He’d loan Gable out for a flop and that, in turn, would provide his excuse for dropping Gable from MGM entirely. So it was that Gable found himself heading to Columbia to star in Night Bus.
Once at the hospital, the staff would be forced to confiscate Gable’s clothes to prevent him from leaving for a nightcap. It was four in the morning.
Before the first script meeting, he would surely have to down some liquid courage. Booze and work had long been intertwined in Gable’s life—since way before anyone had even cared to hire him. Back when he was a struggling actor in New York, he ran with a crew of such heroic imbibers as Humphrey Bogart and Spencer Tracy—both unknowns at the time, too. They’d talk shop and knock back a few rounds. This was during Prohibition, but thirty-five cents at the right speakeasy could buy a shot of the “good stuff.”
When Gable had made it to the big time, his daily consumption had risen proportionally. Once, after a party celebrating the victory at Iwo Jima, he got so bombed that he demolished his car in a one-car accident on Sunset Boulevard. Apparently, he tried to drive through a roundabout, Bristol Circle, but the trees prevented it. Tossed on a lawn with a massive gash on his head, MGM’S security fixer Howard Strickling managed to get Gable to Cedars of Lebanon Hospital before the police arrived. Once at the hospital, the staff would be forced to confiscate Gable’s clothes to prevent him from leaving for a nightcap. It was four in the morning.
So yes, the liquid did provide courage for his arrival at Columbia. Perhaps too much. In the first discussion with his new director, Frank Capra, the sloshed star remarked that he had always wanted to go to Siberia, “but why does it smell so bad?” Capra, having seen it all before, asked Gable if he wanted to go over the script. “Buddy, I don’t give a shit what you do with it.” Okay then.
Gable’s costar, Claudette Colbert, was even less pleasant; she argued ceaselessly and, after the production wrapped, said she had “just finished the worst picture in the world.” But Capra knew otherwise. They just had to change the crappy title, Night Bus, to something slightly more evocative. It Happened One Night.
After the film swept all five major Oscar categories, Gable would return to MGM a superstar. Mayer’s plot had backfired, spectacularly.