Customer Reviews

Clark Gable: Tormented Star

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

The first reviewer accurately described this book as trash. I couldn't agree more for exactly the same reasons. If the people who were discussed in this book were alive today, the author David Brett and his publisher would be put out of business after all the lawsuits were settled against them. Nothing in this book is factual AND new. What is new is so highly inflamatory and questionable that it amazes me that it ever appeared in print as non-fiction.
Having read Brett's last two books on Joan Crawford and Valentino, I honestly expected exactly what I got. Fortunately, for the price of a cup of coffee I read this at my local bookstore and didn't waste my money. Brett is incapable of throwing a book together without relying heavily on movie magazine articles and other people's research and/or previously published pieces. That is where his 'facts' begin and end. Then he conjures up some good stories which involve people who have long been dead and cannot sue him for slander. Unfortunately, Brett can't even get his dates right and has a serious problem with places, too. He refers to Gable attending an event at the 'Bilton'. Guess he meant to say the 'Biltmore'. As for Gable's ranch in Encino, it becomes 'Encinal'. Brett also points out that Franchot Tone and Joan Crawford were originally going to be included in an article about Hollywood's Unmarried Couples except he failed to realize that they had already been married for quite some time. Brett also states that Clark Gable rests between Carole Lombard and Kay Gable at Forest Lawn Memorial Park's Great Mausoleum. Totally false as Kay Gable was interred a few tiers away from Clark.
The lowest blow comes in the last chapter when Brett questions Gable's son's paternity and the morals of Kay Gable.
Please don't buy this book. I'd hate to see anyone make money off of this trash.

David Bret's biography of Clark Gable was unworthy of its subject. What could have been a juicy, but interesting biography is instead a complete waste of time. Gable, one of Hollywood's most enduring stars, is missing from this book. After reading the book I seem to have learned absolutely nothing about Gable. Bret offers little if any insight into what Gable was like as a person. He instead spends countless pages describing his movies and when he does get around to any insights they are brief and rushed descriptions.
The worst aspect of this book is the writing. Often I found myself having to reread entire sections because of the illogical sequencing---within a paragraph! Bret would often reference someone or something that he forgot to clarify beforehand. It was maddening.
The book also seems to have not been edited; there were many basic spelling and grammar errors that an elementary student would have caught.

A well-known definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over, yet all the while expecting a different result. Well, David Bret, British chronicler of such celebrity lives as Valentino, Morrissey, Elvis, Errol Flynn, Joan Crawford, and Edith Piaf, has done it again. As in Camus' famous essay on the myth of Sisyphus, he's pushed the rock all the way to the summit of the mountain, only to have it stop, teeter, and then roll back down to the bottom, crushing him along the way. Once again, despite all his attempts to win some sort of respectability, he has provided the world with yet another model of how not to go about writing a biography. He seems to think that by continually assailing the book stalls with questionable attempts at recreating past lives, he may yet acquire, by sheer attrition, a favourable reputation.

He is sadly deluded. His whole enterprise banks on the fact that when dealing with the dead, there are no laws of criminal libel. The dead have no rights or recourse of redress to their reputations. However, there should, and must be, a law against criminal ineptitude. Libeling the dead aside, Bret's books characteristically exhibit the equally serious offences of terrible writing, frequent misprints, misspellings,
misstatements of fact, bad taste, and - worst of all - an almost supernatural lack of acquaintance with correct research methods. All of which means that if you are a serious-minded person who wants to discover something about a major film star of the past, buy CLARK GABLE: TORMENTED STARS at your own peril. You will learn almost nothing about William Clark Gable, figure of Hollywood history, but everything about David Bret, frustrated celebrity hanger-on and would-be literary mover and
shaker. In this case there will be some moving and shaking, but it will be the moving and shaking of the reader's head in disgust, followed by its removal to the nearest toilet for vomiting.

Despite the claims of his misguided publisher, this is not a biography. Like his other books, it is a diary of his own homoerotic imaginings projected onto a dead celebrity. The dust jacket of the book claims: "Bret draws on a wealth of unpublished material to examine every aspect of Clark Gable's career and personal life, telling story as it has never been told before . . . ." Okay, at least the second part is true. Nobody has yet - for good reason - had the audacity to claim that Hollywood man's man Clark Gable, at the beginning of his film career, was a male prostitute, and that he had numerous prolonged affairs with men. The first part, however, is patently misleading. CLARK GABLE: TORMENTED STARS is a tired rehash of material from other books and fan magazines, mangled by Mr. Bret's personal proclivities, and peppered with his trademark salacious tidbits of sexual shock-talk. And if the book draws upon any material that's "unpublished," it's only unpublished because Mr. Bret has just recently thought it up.

Why a publishing house that cared a fig about its reputation would touch anything with David Bret's name on it continues to be one of the unsolved mysteries of our day. With a little digging perhaps the mystery might be solved, but then the question becomes: Who cares? Why bother?

My sympathies go out to John Clark Gable and to any others who might be hurt by this vile, bungling, utterly contemptible piece of trash.

I've always loved Gable, and have read several bios on him (the best being "Long Live the King"), but this one should have come in comic book format. David Bret is a fantasy writer, not a biographer by any means. He projects his own wishful thinking onto his subject, or victim, by insisting with no proof whatsoever, that he was anything but straight. According to Bret's writing, everyone in Hollywood and their kid brother was or is gay. [...] No matter what Gable did to get ahead in Hollywood, his preference was women.
The only redeeming quality about this piece of junk is to turn it into a parlor game entitled "How many mistakes can you find per page?" Waste of time, money, and eyestrain. I would'nt even give this book away; it would be too embarrassing.

I am so glad that I read through this book at the book store instead of spending good money for it. If anyone wants to read a biography of Clark Gable, this is NOT the book to read. It is full of inaccuracies and provides no sources for the outrageous claims it makes. Examples of some of the inaccuracies include: the entire cast of Mutiny of the Bounty was gay, the Bilton hotel (instead of the Biltmore or maybe he meant the Hilton), Gable took off his shirt to show no undershirt in It Happened One Night not Red Dust, Paul Muni won a supporting actor Oscar for Black Fury (no way), it is Gene Raymond not Gary Raymond, etc. He provides no sources whatsoever for his outrageous claims against Gable. He also seems to feel that every unmarried woman is a lesbian. I recall an interview with Robert Wagner where he said once a celebrity dies - anyone can say anything about them they want and the family has no recourse. Well, this author certainly did his best to smear Gable but those wanting the facts, will do their research (unlike the author) and read the books that present sources for their information including Lyn Tornabene's Long Live the King. Another reviewer was right in saying one star is one too many for this book.

I had a tough time finishing it (and skipped over very long details of dialogue from movies) - don't waste your money. It is absolutely the worst book I've read, and I'm a big reader. First, there is a lack of new information - he actually copies much from better bios. Second and worst yet, the "new" info is seriously questionable. I really want the name of the person who stood by and watched Mr. Gable wash himself (on a private area) so hard that he bled. No, not kidding. That's just an example. And although this "writer" accepts Loretta Young as truthful, he actually questions Kay Gable when it comes to who fathered named children. What have Kayley Gable and her brother ever done to David Bret? Gave it one point for use as firewood. I'm a bit ashamed of Amazon for charging me so much for it, and now the price is reduced, again! Still too much!

You've got to be kidding me with this "biography"! (I gave it one star only because the review option makes me choose one; otherwise it would have none!) Everything you read in the other reviews is correct about the poor spelling and grammar, and innaccurate facts and general bad aura this book puts out, so I won't repeat all of that here. What I will point out is the glaring error that occurs when this [...] author can't even get it right regarding Gone With the Wind. One of the most famous scenes in the book is when Scarlett stands on Tara's land after the Yankees have come through, and vows never to be hungry again. Remember that one? On page 148, David Bret states that Scarlett's line from the movie is "lie, cheadle, cheat or kill." Huh? Cheadle? Yeah, I threaten to 'cheadle' everyday...whatever. If he can't even quote a movie line correctly, then how can a reader feel confident that the other research is accurate? You can't! Take a pass on this one - I'm sorry I bought it for my public library.

Not worth the trees that were destroyed to create the paper for its publication. Mr. Bret seems to have facts and information privy to no one else but himself. and is driven by some strange force to make it public. He seems to have "inside" information most of which is of no great value.

I made the mistake of buying this book. I honestly believe that if Gable or the other stars mentioned in this book were alive today, the author would be sued. It is ripe with innuendo and make believe more appropriate for fiction than a biography.
There are better biographies out there...find one. Put this one back and walk away. I wish I had.

Go ahead and buy this book if you like shoddily researched biographies or you can be like me and go to the public library and save yourself twelve bucks. The "author" wrote an answer to the negative reviews posted here on Amazon.com and basically said he didn't care what we thought because "he was laughing all the way to the bank". I'm glad he is because now he can go and buy himself a college education. I have never read such a poorly researched and poorly edited book such as Mr. Bret's book on Clark Gable. He claims that we Americans are anti-gay which is why he got such negative reviews. I, for one, am not anti-gay and it doesn't matter to me that Gable was bi-sexual to or not. What matters to me is when the town of Encino (here in CA) is called "Elcino" throughout the whole book! Mr. Bret claims that after Irving Thalberg died, Norma Shearer "out of respect for Irving Thalberg, never married again." As an amateur film historian I almost lost it when I read that piece of "information" -the "author" has obviously never really done any serious research for this this book because Norma did indeed marry again...and remained married to her second husband for over 30 years! I never finished the book after reading that because if he didn't care enough to recheck his facts then I really didn't care to finish the book. All I can say is that there is hope for ANYONE to become a writer...because if certain writers can write junk and get away with it then I'm next--let's see...maybe I should write a book about Jimmy Stewart and come up with some morbid scandal...