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1930–1935: Early success

In 1930, after his impressive appearance as the seething and desperate character Killer Mears in the Los Angeles stage production of The Last Mile, Gable was offered a contract with Pathe Pictures. His only film for them and first role in a sound picture was as the unshaven villain in their low-budget William Boyd Western, The Painted Desert (1931). The studio experienced financial problems after the film's delayed release, so Gable left for work at Warner Bros.

The same year in Night Nurse, Gable played a villainous chauffeur who knocked Barbara Stanwyck 's character unconscious for trying to save two children whom he was methodically starving to death. The supporting role was originally slated for James Cagney until the release of The Public Enemy catapulted him to star status. "His ears are too big and he looks like an ape", said Warner Bros. executive Darryl F. Zanuck about Gable, after testing him for the second male lead in the studio's gangster drama Little Caesar (1931). After his failed screen test for Zanuck, Gable was signed in 1930 by MGM's Irving Thalberg for $650 per week (equivalent to approximately $ 13,023 in 2023). He hired the well-connected Minna Wallis, a sister of producer Hal Wallis, as his agent, whose clients included actresses Claudette Colbert, Myrna Loy and Norma Shearer.

Gable's arrival in Hollywood occurred when MGM was looking to expand its stable of male stars, and he fit the bill. He made two pictures in 1931 with Wallace Beery. In the first, he had a seventh-billed support role in The Secret Six, although his role was much larger than the billing would indicate, then he achieved second billing in a part almost as large as the film's star Beery in the naval aviation film Hell Divers. MGM's publicity manager Howard Strickling started developing Gable's studio image with Screenland magazine playing up his "lumberjack-in-evening-clothes" persona.

To increasing popularity, MGM frequently paired him with well-established female stars. Joan Crawford asked for him to appear with her in Dance, Fools, Dance (1931). The electricity of the pair was recognized by studio executive Louis B. Mayer, who would not only put them in seven more films but also began reshooting Complete Surrender, replacing John Mack Brown as Crawford's leading man and retitling the film Laughing Sinners (1931). His fame and public visibility after A Free Soul (1931), in which he played a gangster who shoved the character played by Norma Shearer, ensured that Gable never played a supporting role again. He received extensive fan mail as a result of his performance; the studio took notice. The Hollywood Reporter wrote "A star in the making has been made, one that, to our reckoning, will outdraw every other star... Never have we seen audiences work themselves into such enthusiasm as when Clark Gable walks on the screen."

Gable co-starred in Susan Lenox (Her Fall and Rise) (1931) with Greta Garbo, and in Possessed (1931), a film about an illicit romantic affair, with Joan Crawford (who was then married to Douglas Fairbanks Jr.). Adela Rogers St. Johns later dubbed Gable and Crawford's real-life relationship as "the affair that nearly burned Hollywood down". Louis B. Mayer threatened to terminate both their contracts, and for a while, they kept apart when Gable shifted his attentions to Marion Davies as he costarred with her in Polly of the Circus (1932). Gable was considered for the role of Tarzan in Tarzan the Ape Man, but lost out to Johnny Weissmuller 's more imposing physique and superior swimming prowess. Gable then starred as the romantic lead in Strange Interlude (1932), again teaming with Shearer, the second of three films they would make together for MGM.

Next, Gable starred with Jean Harlow in the romantic comedy-drama Red Dust (1932) set on a rubber plantation in Indochina. Gable portrayed a plantation manager involved with Harlow's wisecracking prostitute; however, upon her arrival, Gable's character started to pursue Mary Astor's prim, classy newlywed. While some critics thought Harlow stole the show, many agreed that Gable was a natural screen partner.

Gable's "unshaven love-making" with braless Jean Harlow in Red Dust made him MGM's most important romantic leading man. With Gable established as a star, MGM positioned him in the same manner as Harlow for Myrna Loy, a previously lesser billed actor in Night Flight, moving Loy to a costar role in Men in White, a movie filmed in 1933, though delayed in release due to pre-Code Legion of Decency cuts until 1934. The relationship of a doctor (Gable) and nurse (Elizabeth Allan) implied intimacy with a resulting complication of pregnancy, a sensitive issue and new image for Gable.

Gable and Harlow were then teamed in Hold Your Man (1933), China Seas (1935), in which the pair were billed above Wallace Beery, and Wife vs. Secretary (1936) with Myrna Loy costarring and supported by newcomer James Stewart. A popular combination on-screen and off, Gable and Harlow made six films together in five years. Their final film together was Saratoga (1937), a bigger hit than their previous collaborations. Harlow died during its production. The film was ninety percent completed, and the remaining scenes were filmed with long shots or the use of doubles like Mary Dees; Gable said he felt as if he were "in the arms of a ghost".

When MGM head Louis B. Mayer decided that Gable was getting difficult and ungrateful, he loaned Gable out to the lower-rank Columbia studio, for one film It Happened One Night, to teach Gable a lesson, but Columbia wanted him and had paid handsomely for it. The result was that Gable won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his 1934 performance in the film. "Critics praised the fast-paced farce that would enter in a whole new romantic genre: the screwball comedy." Gable's career was revitalized by his whimsical, good-natured performance and to the director Frank Capra, Gable's character in the film closely resembled his real personality. Gable returned to MGM a bigger star than ever. From 1934 until 1942, when World War II interrupted his movie career, he was near the top of the box office money-makers lists.

Gable's first movie role back at MGM was to portray reluctant leader of mutineers Fletcher Christian, an "Englishman in knickers and a three-cornered hat", one he had to be talked into by friend and producer Irving Thalberg, and of which Gable said "I stink in it" after filming. Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) was a critical and commercial success, receiving eight Academy Award nominations. There were three Best Actor nominations for stars Gable, Charles Laughton and Franchot Tone, and the film won Best Picture, the second of three films in which Gable played a leading role to do so. The film cost $2 million and grossed $4.5 million, making it one of the top moneymakers that decade. It used life-size replicas of the Bounty and Pandora, and was partly filmed in Catalina and French Polynesia.