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Clark Gable: Portrait of a Misfit

Clark Gable: Portrait of a Misfit

List Price: $59.00
Your Price: $59.00
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Not the most interesting
Review: I didn't really like the book and the author seems to reiterate information from her different books into others. I had just borrowed the book from the library as well as the book on Grace Kelly and neither this or the book on Grace had any pictures to speak of and any author who cannot be resourceful enough to get pictures to include in the biography is lazy or did not try hard enough...others have been able to so why can't she? So you definitely can't say I am her biggest fan.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: A detailed movie star bio
Review: Started reading this book after the death of Katharine Hepburn. Gable is another one of those great stars I know and love only from GWTW and black and white movies on TCM. I knew little of his personal life, except for his storybook marriage to Carole Lombard. This book filled me in on his background. I had no idea he worked so hard on the craft he made look so effortless. Nor did I know how complicated he was. Knowing this will make me appreciate his work that much more. Does it bother me that the biographer writes as if she was in the room for some of the conversations? Not really. This is, after all, a movie star biography, not a history book. If Gable had been a politician or statesman, it might concern me more.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Flighty bio written for the vicarious
Review: This biography is saddled with many flaws. It often reads like one of those silly romance novels one sees at the literature sections of such famous bookshops as Walmart, K-Mart, Walgreens and B.Daltons. It is filled with irrelevant gossip, much of it more suitable for a luncheon of late-middle aged hens rather than a serious biography. The author's interviews with Joan Crawford(one of Gable's many lovers) dominate too many sections of the bio; much of what Miss Crawford says is taken at face value with little to counter-balance her assertions. Most undefensible is the author's portrayal of intimate conversations as if she were there with a microphone and tape recorder. Many of the precise "conversations" alleged by the author were between two people long since dead. How would Jane Ellen Wayne know precise conversations between Louis B. Mayer and Clark Gable? Both have been dead for over thirty years. Did the author interview either man from beyond the grave? This technique of the author is most dishonest. However, this biography has some very good points. Gable's early life and rise are covered in great detail. The author's desriptions of the big studio milleu of pre-TV Hollywood are interesting. The author paints a thorough personality portrait of Gable- his calculated decisions, his high sex drive, his alcoholism, his love of the outdoors, his tight wallet. Gable's marriage to Carole Lombard is handled rather well. Oddly, the Gable-Lombard marriage reminds one of the marriage of the current First Couple in the White House, only Carole Lombard is better looking and much, much better humoured than Hillary R. Clinton and Clark Gable is much more manly than Bill Clinton. Clark Gable is worthy of a fine biography; Jane Ellen Wayne's is not it, however.


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