Clark Gable was voted King of Hollywood in 1937 or 1938 (depending on which source you read), in a poll conducted by Ed Sullivan through his column in the New York Daily News. Apparently Myrna Loy was voted Queen of Hollywood in the same poll, but the nickname doesn't seem to have stuck to her in the same way that the male version did to Gable.
Clark Gable appeared in over 60 major films, his most famous role arguably being that of Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind (1939). For this he received the last of his three Oscar nominations; he won the award in 1935 for It Happened One Night, and he was also nominated in 1936 for the role of Fletcher Christian in Mutiny on the Bounty – opposite Charles Laughton as Captain Bligh.
He died in 1960, of a heart attack. His final film, The Misfits, was released eleven weeks later, on what would have been his 60th birthday (1 February 1961). It also proved to be the last film release for his co–star, Marilyn Monroe, who died in August 1962.
(Two months before her death, Marilyn Monroe was fired from the set of Something's Got to Give, production of which had been dogged from the start by her 'personal troubles'. It was never released.)
© Haydn Thompson 2020