Hollywood Memorial

Considered the most handsome leading man of all time, Gable enjoyed a career spanning three decades with appearances in 92 movies including ‘Gone With the Wind.’ Gable won an Academy Award in 1934 for his role in ‘It Happened One Night.’ His third marriage to actress Carole Lombard ended with her tragic death at 33 in a plane crash in 1942 while participating in a bond drive. Distraught, he withdrew from his career and though well over the draft age, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps becoming an aerial gunner during World War II, flying in five bombing missions over Germany and received the Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Medal. Discharged with the rank of Major, he returned to Hollywood and resumed filmmaking. Two weeks after completing his last movie, ‘The Misfits’ he suffered a heart attack and died soon afterward. ‘The Misfits,’ directed by John Huston co-starred Marilyn Monroe, also in her last film. She idolized Gable, but his frustration with her being late to the set and not ready to film, combined with the desert heat, was always thought to be a contributing factor to the heart attack that killed him. Monroe was widely blamed, and her feeling of guilt started her battle with prescription drugs that ultimately ended in her death a short time later. Clark Gable was buried in a closed casket. An Episcopal service was led by an Air Force chaplain, accompanied by an honor guard at the Church of the Recessional at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, CA. His fifth wife Kay had arranged for him to be interred next to his third wife, Carole Lombard. A few weeks later she delivered his only son at the same hospital where he died.