By Frank Worth

Clark Gable with his wife at 27th Academy Awards.

William Clark Gable (1901-1960) was an Academy Award-winning American film actor. His most famous role was in the 1939 film Gone with the Wind, in which he starred with Vivien Leigh. Throughout most of the 1930s and 1940s, he was arguably the world's biggest movie star.?

Enormously popular both on-screen and off-screen, Clark Gable and Jean Harlow made six films together; Red Dust, Hold Your Man, China Seas, Wife vs Secretary and Saratoga – the most notable being Red Dust in 1932 and Saratoga in 1937.

Gable won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his 1934 preformance in It Happened One Night. He was also nominated for an Academy Award for his portrayal of Fletcher Christian in Mutiny on the Bounty in 1935.

Despite his reluctance to play the role, Clark Gable is best known for his performance as Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind in 1939 which earned him another Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.

Other notable films were Mogambo with Grace Kelly and The Misfits with Marilyn Monroe and Montgomery Clift.

In 1999, the American Film Institute named Gable among the Greatest Male Stars of All Time, ranking at No 7. Throughout the Hollywood industry Clark Gable was called ‘The King of Hollywood’.