Drama Coach, Actress. The first wife of Clark Gable. The daughter of prominent attorney Henry Clay Dillon, she was born in Denver and raised in Long Beach, California. After graduating from Stanford University in 1908, she pursued an unremarkable stage career and then set up an acting studio in Portland, Oregon, in 1923. There she took a personal interest in one of her students, William Clark Gable, who was 17 years her junior. They married in 1924 and moved to Hollywood, though their relationship appears to have been strictly professional (both claimed it was never consummated). Dillon gave Gable rigorous acting and vocal lessons, provided financial and moral support, and helped him land bit parts in a few silent films; she may also have suggested he drop his first name. Gable left her after scoring his first success in the Broadway play "Machinal" (1928), and they divorced in 1930. Dillon came to resent being known only as "the first Mrs. Clark Gable", though she continued to advertise him as her "star pupil" and at one point tried to use the connection to get a job at MGM. She made one screen appearance, in the horror film "The Lady and the Monster" (1944). At her death she left an unfinished roman a clef about her years with the Hollywood legend. The manuscript remains unpublished, but it has provided valuable information for Gable's biographers.
Drama Coach, Actress. The first wife of Clark Gable. The daughter of prominent attorney Henry Clay Dillon, she was born in Denver and raised in Long Beach, California. After graduating from Stanford University in 1908, she pursued an unremarkable stage career and then set up an acting studio in Portland, Oregon, in 1923. There she took a personal interest in one of her students, William Clark Gable, who was 17 years her junior. They married in 1924 and moved to Hollywood, though their relationship appears to have been strictly professional (both claimed it was never consummated). Dillon gave Gable rigorous acting and vocal lessons, provided financial and moral support, and helped him land bit parts in a few silent films; she may also have suggested he drop his first name. Gable left her after scoring his first success in the Broadway play "Machinal" (1928), and they divorced in 1930. Dillon came to resent being known only as "the first Mrs. Clark Gable", though she continued to advertise him as her "star pupil" and at one point tried to use the connection to get a job at MGM. She made one screen appearance, in the horror film "The Lady and the Monster" (1944). At her death she left an unfinished roman a clef about her years with the Hollywood legend. The manuscript remains unpublished, but it has provided valuable information for Gable's biographers.
Bio by: Bobb Edwards
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