LGBT Book & Video Blog

David Bret’s angle on Clark Gable is this: Gable was “gay for pay” and “rough trade,” and he enjoyed having sex “for bucks.” In addition, he “would sometimes scrub his penis until it bled” and used a device to prolong erections. If these tidbits from the book’s first few pages aren’t too much information for you, you’re in luck. This breathtakingly trashy biography does not skimp on sordid anecdotes.

How does Bret, the author of numerous celebrity biographies, know so much about Hollywood stars’ sex lives? Judging by this new book’s convoluted wording, he really doesn’t. “Clark Gable: Tormented Star” hedges its bets with lines like “Indeed, unlikely as this seems, the two may even have been lovers,” and “It was alleged that a threesome took place.” The effect is “Hollywood Babylon” lite.

For all its smut, the book is painfully unsexy. Bret accuses Gable of having had halitosis, hepatitis, rotting teeth and “shovel-like” hands. With clear disgust, he also calls Gable a hypocrite for maintaining a macho sex-symbol image and for engaging in “homophobic rantings,” even though he’d slept with men.

 CLARK GABLE Tormented Star.
New York Times, United States