less popularity. Despite his prominent ears and a thin mus- tache, Gable was adored by women. And males liked him because he was not a softy who would let women push him around. But MGM loved him the most, because he brought more money to the famed studio than any other actor in their vast stable of stars. He had the astonishing record of having made 39 films in the 1930s with only one box-office dud (Parnell, 1937).
Born William Gable in Cadiz, Ohio, the future movie star entered the theater working as a backstage handyman for a series of touring stock companies. Occasionally, he would fill in for an ailing actor, but that was the extent of his early acting experience.
Gable would have five wives, but his first wife, a drama coach by the name of Josephine Dillon, helped him get a start in the movie business in the mid-1920s. He appeared in a handful of silent films (including The Merry Widow, 1925) but in miniscule parts. He gave up on Hollywood and went back to the theater.
His reputation as an actor started to grow in the latter 1920s, but he was by no means a big Broadway star. Thanks to his friendship with another theater actor, Lionel Barrymore, he was given a screen test at MGM. For no apparent reason, Gable was dressed like a South Seas native, complete with a flower behind his ear for the test. MGM didn’t want him. Nei- ther did WARNER BROS., which gave him their own screen test
when they considered him for the role of Rico in Little Caesar (1930). But with the sound film revolution, Hollywood was hungry for Broadway actors with good voices. Gable just barely grabbed hold of the brass ring, winning the role of the villain in a minor western, The Painted Desert (1931).
IRVING THALBERG at MGM had a change of heart.
Perhaps seeing Gable in western garb helped, but whatever
the reason, Hollywood’s premier studio signed Gable to a two-year contract for $350 per week. They got their money’s worth.
After supporting roles just four films, Gable was the talk of the industry—and not just for his acting. His highly pub- licized romance with JOAN CRAWFORD (who was already a
major star) galvanized fan interest in Gable. The lovers were paired in a number of films such as Dance Fools Dance (1931),
Laughing Sinners (1931), and Possessed (1931). MGM rushed
him from one film to the next to take advantage of his sud- den popularity. It was in A Free Soul (1931) that his rough- hewn masculinity came to the fore as he pushed his leading lady, NORMA SHEARER, around on the screen (much like
JAMES CAGNEYhad done to Mae Clarke in Public Enemy ear-
lier that same year).
Though he hardly seemed the type, Gable was called the second Valentino in the early 1930s. His sexy image was enhanced by his risqué movies with JEAN HARLOW, Red Dust
(1932) and Hold Your Man (1933).
Meanwhile, Gable was becoming annoyed with the way MGM was casting him. He felt he was being run into the ground by repeatedly playing the same kind of role. He refused to act in his next movie for MGM, and the studio retaliated (they thought) by loaning him out to Columbia Pictures, a small, poverty row studio, for FRANK CAPRA’s film
It Happened One Night (1934). The movie was the biggest hit
of the year, winning Gable a Best Actor Oscar. The impact of his performance can best be gauged by the fact that T-shirt sales plummetted when he took off his shirt in the film revealing a bare torso.
Gable was bigger than ever, and even without his mus- tache in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), he had women swoon- ing in the aisles. Among his many projects, several excellent movies followed, including Too Hot to Handle (1938) and
Idiot’s Delight (1939).
Gable was not DAVID O. SELZNICK’s first choice to play
Rhett Butler in the film version of Margaret Mitchell’s best- seller GONE WITH THE WIND(1939), but Gable was the pub-
lic’s first choice. Wisely, Selznick listened to the fan magazine polls and changed his mind. Ironically, Gable didn’t want the part. MGM owned his contract and insisted that he play Rhett. Gable would never regret his forced hand. According to author David Shipman, in The Great Movie Stars, “Clark Gable once said to David O. Selznick: ‘The only thing that kept me a big star has been revivals of Gone With the Wind. Every time that picture is re-released a whole new crop of young movie-goers gets interested in me.’”
Also in 1939, Gable married the popular and talented movie star CAROLE LOMBARD. It was his third marriage, and this one seemed like a perfect match—even his fans approved. Her tragic death in a plane crash in 1942 was a ter- rible blow to Gable, and it came just as he left Hollywood to go to war.
After he returned in 1945 he had two hit films, Adventure (1945) and The Hucksters (1947), but after 1947 he was no longer the sure box-office bet he had been during the 1930s. A number of duds led MGM to drop Gable after his contract ran out in 1953. But Gable’s Mogambo (1953), which was a
lesser remake of his 1932 hit Red Dust, was a surprise money- maker. MGM decided they wanted Gable back after all. The actor, however, would have none of it. Bitter over the treat- ment he had received at the hands of the studio, he decided to freelance.
Gable’s films in the mid- to late 1950s, such as The Tall
Men (1955) and Run Silent, Run Deep (1958), were well
received by critics and fans. Though the star was aging, he still had the magic in his voice, his eyes, and in that wonder- ful smirk.
His last film, The Misfits (1961), was also MARILYN MONROE’s last. Gable had been paid $750,000 with a guar-
antee of $58,000 per week in overtime. It was by far his high- est salary for a film (excluding percentage arrangements), and he was the perfect lover/father figure for Monroe. But Gable insisted on doing his own stunts for the film, and the strain apparently brought on a heart attack that killed him just a few weeks after shooting was completed.
gaffer
The head electrician on the set of a movie. Not to be confused with a “gofer” (an errand boy or girl who “goes for” things), the gaffer is a highly respected member of the crew, who is responsible for making sure that the cinematog- rapher, to whom he or she reports, has all the lighting he will need for each individual scene. The gaffer, therefore, inspects locations ahead of time to gauge what specific lighting equip- ment (and how much of it) will be needed. On each day of a shoot, the gaffer will direct an often substantial staff—whom he or she hires—in the setting up of the lamps, cables, and other electrical equipment.The gaffer, his best boy (assistant), and the rest of his or her crew are principally charged with either finding or cre- ating a source of electrical power to make sure that the lights will function—not an easy task when working on location. Power sources are often at a considerable distance from where a scene is being shot, and it is necessary in these cases for the gaffer to instruct the crew in the most efficient, least disruptive way to run their cable between the power source and the lighting equipment. When there is no power source nearby, the gaffer is responsible for setting up inde- pendent generators.
The derivations of some of the technical crew’s titles (such as best boy) are lost to history, but one theory as to the origin of the title of gaffer goes back to the early silent era when the main lighting source was the sun. Studios were fit- ted with canvas roofs, and to control the amount of light, the canvas would be moved back and forth with gaffing hooks (normally used to snag fish). Apparently, the person using the gaffing hooks became known as a gaffer and the name stuck.
See alsoBEST BOY.
gangster movies
Violent action films, usually with con- temporary urban settings, that tend to focus on society’s out- siders and their perverse pursuit of the American dream, the gangster movie is often a dark tragedy with flawed but sym- pathetic heroes who break the law and ultimately pay forGAFFER
Clark Gable was “The King of Hollywood,” and he is seen here surveying his domain from the set of Gone With the
Wind (1939), the film with which he has been most closely
their transgressions. The genre has been enduring and prof- itable because it can be easily adapted to today’s headlines. It has also, at times, been controversial because it tends to glo- rify hoodlums and the brutality they often employ in their rise to power. Though by no means a perfect definition, a character in The Petrified Forest (1936) described the differ- ence between a gangster and a desperado by saying that a desperado was an American and a gangster was a foreigner. For the most part, that rough distinction has held true—at least in gangster movies—with tragic heroes of ethnic descent, usually either Italian or Irish.
The gangster movie’s antecedents can be found in D.W. GRIFFITH’s The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912), a film that por- trayed the criminal life. America, however, saw itself as essen- tially a rural nation in the early 20th century and showed little interest in the trials of the urban dispossessed until 1927 when the first real gangster film, Underworld, was made. The film established the fundamental elements of the gangster movie: a hoodlum hero; ominous, night-shrouded city streets; floozies; and a blazing finale in which the cops cut down the protagonist.
Other seminal gangster films followed, such as Thunder-
bolt (1929), Doorway to Hell (1930), and WARNER BROS.’ Little
Caesar (1930), starring EDWARD G. ROBINSONas Rico Ban-
dello. The film was a smash hit and not only made Robinson a star; it also spawned the Warner cycle of gangster movies throughout the early 1930s.
Little Caesar, together with Public Enemy (1931), with
JAMES CAGNEY, and Scarface (1932), with PAUL MUNI, were hugely violent pre–HAYS CODEgangster films that galvanized
public interest in a new sort of hero. The box-office success of these three films set off a storm of imitations (most of them by Warners) as well as a storm of protest. Civic leaders were outraged that people such as Al Capone—the obvious inspiration for Scarface—were being cheered in movie the- aters all across the nation. By the same token, moviemakers knew that the elements of the gangster film—the blasting tommy guns, car chases, molls, and clever slang of the mob- sters—made for a potent box-office mix.
So the studios adapted. Warner produced G-Man (1935), in which the hero became the law-enforcement official and the gangster became the villain. But the same tommy guns and car chases were much in evidence. America’s fascination with gangsters, however, could not be denied forever. By the end of the 1930s, the genre began to evolve in several differ- ent directions. Sociological gangster films, such as Dead End (1937) and Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), attempted to blame criminal behavior on societal factors; nostalgic gangster movies harked back to the Prohibition era with films such as
The Roaring Twenties (1939); and gangster elegies such as High Sierra (1941) portrayed the modern-day gangster as the
last of a dying breed.
The gangster film went into eclipse during World War II only to return in the bleak form of film noir in the postwar years. The dark, moody gangster films of that era, such as The
Killers (1946), were pessimistic and cynical far beyond their
1930s counterparts. In movies such as Key Largo (1948), the gangster, as played by EDWARD G. ROBINSONin his role as
Rocco, became a symbol of everything evil that America fought against in the war but had somehow failed to eradicate. Other postwar gangster movies began to depict criminal behavior expressed by large, faceless, organized forces rather than by individuals. Movies such as The Enforcer (1951) gave the impression that the mob was everywhere and that one could not hide from them for long. In The Big Heat (1953), a police officer (GLENN FORD) had to work from outside the
constraints of government to defeat the corruption brought on by organized crime.
Scientific methods of crime detection were coming to the fore in the late 1940s and early 1950s, but the same attention to science that brought the world the atom bomb also brought the apocalyptic end of crazed gangster Cody Jarrett (James Cagney) in White Heat (1949).
Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, the predominant theme of gangster films involved a powerful organized crim- inal elite, as in movies such as Underworld U.S.A. (1961), though there were the occasional low-budget recreations of old-time gangster movies such as Baby Face Nelson (1957) and
Machine Gun Kelly (1958).
The gangster film faded into relative obscurity during most of the 1960s, replaced by spy films. Bonnie and Clyde (1967), however, harked back to the theme of criminals as mis- understood outsiders and tragic heroes and was a great success. The real high point of the gangster film came with the release of The Godfather (1972) and its sequel, The Godfather, Part II (1974). The gangster as tragic outsider and the faceless yet all- powerful organization were beautifully melded in Francis Coppola’s Oscar-winning masterpieces. Just as Hollywood copied the success of Little Caesar, 40 years later filmmakers copied Coppola’s new hit gangster formula, resulting in a spate of movies such as The Valachi Papers (1972).
Gangster films have always been adaptable to contempo- rary situations, so it came as no surprise to see Scarface remade in 1983 with illicit cocaine instead of prohibition alcohol at the core of the film’s plot. Ever mindful of its roots in the Chicago underworld, the Hollywood gangster film lived on in works such as The Untouchables (1987), the hit movie version of the TV series.
Gangster and crime movies remained a powerful genre throughout the 1990s and into the 21st century. Goodfellas (1990), one of MARTIN SCORSESE’s hard-hitting mob movies, peeled the veneer off the mystique of The Godfather to show Mafiosi as they really are—violent, greedy, and untrustwor- thy. Warren Beatty portrayed the roguish founder of the Flamingo Club, which launched the Las Vegas gambling industry in Bugsy (1991) and Scorsese told a tale of crime against a modern Vegas backdrop in Casino (1995). Both movies were hits, as were The Grifters (1990), the COEN BROTHERS’ Miller’s Crossing (1990), Brian De Palma’s Carl-
ito’s Way (1993) starring AL PACINO, and The Getaway (1994). SYLVESTER STALLONE poked fun at his tough-guy image, playing a nervous gangster in Oscar (1991). The same year
New Jack City ushered in a new brand of gangster movie con-
cerned with violent, inner-city drug gangs.
A pivotal moment for gangster movies came with
QUENTIN TARANTINO’s Reservoir Dogs (1992), a tightly