Free Bette and Joan The Divine Feud by Shaun Considine Page B

Josephine Dillon—his first wife, and seventeen years his senior—Gable at twenty-four was hired to tour with the Louis MacLoon Repertory Company, which featured Pauline Frederick, age forty-four, who bought him "silk shirts and underwear, and paid to have his teeth fixed." In New York he met Ria Langham, a rich Texas woman, also forty-four, who bought him his first smoking jacket and silk pajamas. Sued by his first wife for desertion, Gable married Langham, and the two returned to Hollywood, where he opened in
The Last Mile
at the Belasco Theater on June 3, 1930. The good reviews brought him an agent, Minna Wallis. He auditioned at Warner Bros. for the second lead in
Little Caesar,
lost the role to Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., but was signed shortly thereafter to a one-year contract at M-G-M.
     
    Playing a minor role in
Dance Fools Dance,
Gable made an immediate impact on the star of the film, Joan Crawford. She would forever recall the tingle of the moment when he grabbed her by the shoulders and threatened to kill her brother. "I felt such a sensation. My knees buckled. He was holding me by the shoulders and I said to myself, 'If he lets me go, I'll fall down.'"
     
    They did not become lovers on that picture, Crawford claimed: she was a star and he wasn't. It would take Norma Shearer to balance the boards for Gable. In his next picture,
A Free Soul,
Norma played a rich, bossy New York socialite looking for cheap thrills. Enter Gable, as a dangerous young gangster. ''A new man, a new world," she murmured in a come-on to the handsome hood, who proceeded to smack her around and push her into a chair when she mocked his lower-class origins. "You take it and like it," he snarled in the scene that made women swoon and men applaud. ''A new trend in movie heroes was born," said writer Bill Davidson, "a breed of rough-hewn gents who assault their women with grapefruits, knuckles and brawn."
     
    A Free Soul
brought Gable a new contract and the women of Metro, including Greta Garbo and Marion Davies, lined up begging to sample some of his onscreen "tough kind of loving." Offscreen, his affection, it was said, belonged to his respected wife, while the rest of him belonged to Joan Crawford.
     
    In 1931 Joan and Clark made two pictures together,
Laughing Sinners
and
Possessed.
In a
Photoplay
article we learn of the vulnerable state of Joan's heart at this time. "Already disillusioned with Douglas Fairbanks, because her dream life had failed, she was still fond of Dodo, she was still the loyal wife, but her heart was empty. And to Joan, an empty heart meant she must seek a new tenant."
     
    Clark also had a "For Rent" sign hanging out, and not always over his heart. Publicist Billie Ferguson stated: "He was a horny son of a gun. He seldom let a good-looking girl get by his dressing-room door without trying to make a pass at her." Sitting in a car, Gable once tried to fondle Myrna Loy. "With his wife sitting on the other side," said Miss Loy.
     
    But it was in Joan Crawford that he found his match. "Never in his young life had he known such a thrilling and wonderful passion," said
Photoplay.
"Joan was aggressive," said Adela Rogers St. Johns. "She never played flirty games with men. If she wanted a guy, she let him know it straight out. And Clark was the same way. He didn't believe in poetry or small talk. It was always straight to business."
     
    The initial phase of their lusty affair was conducted discreetly, in a cottage Joan had rented at Malibu. "We clung to each other, commiserating on how we were being abused and typecast by the studio," she said. At the studio they met in the mobile deluxe dressing room that Doug had given her as an anniversary gift. "In the morning, as soon as Joan arrived on the lot, Clark would go to her trailer," said Bill Ferguson. "You could hear them laughing and exchanging banter, followed by shouts and yelps of passion. You had to be a fool not to guess what was going on." Once Ferguson was escorting a