The Mammoth Book of Hollywood Scandals (23 page)

When Norton appeared in court on 26 January 1937, she went back and forth between saying she had never tried to get money from Gable and then quite happily asking if he could give financial help with thirteen-year-old Gwendolyn. Quite bizarrely, Norton also asked if he would consider buying four romantic stories that she had previously written, which just ended up making her look even more unhinged. Things became even more fraught when she claimed that an investigator for her attorney, Hiram McTavish, had tried to adopt daughter Gwendolyn against her will. McTavish retorted by denying all knowledge of being her current attorney and claimed his investigator had only taken Mrs Norton and Gwendolyn into her home because she felt sorry for their impoverished circumstances.

Coming to Gable’s defence in the bizarre case was his first wife, Josephine Dillon, who released a statement saying that she had known the star in 1923 when he attended her acting classes in Portland, Oregon. “To my knowledge he has never been in England,” she said. “The entire story is silly and fantastic.” Meanwhile employee records were released from the Silver Falls Timber Company to coincide with the pay cheques he had previously supplied, which thankfully showed Gable as having worked there in the winter of 1922–3.

However, even when she was presented with this evidence, it still didn’t stop Norton from insisting her story was true. From jail she told reporters, “He looks like the Frank Billings I knew in 1923. I’d like to see him in person.” Of course, practically every woman in America at that time would have loved to meet Gable in person, and he had absolutely no interest in coming face to face with the woman who had been bombarding him with disturbing letters for months on end.

Unfortunately for him, he was dragged even deeper into the scandal when the London
Daily Express
reported that factory inspector H. Newton had come forward to say that he too had known Frank Billings when he ran a poultry farm in Essex, England. According to Newton, Gable was “either Frank Billings or his double”, and went on to describe how his brows, nose, temples and “twisted, cynical half-smile” were all the same as those of Gable.

Then out of the blue, in February 1937, the real Frank Billings actually came forward to declare that he was the father of Gwendolyn, and joyously bragged that he was also “a perfect double for Clark Gable”. By now it was pretty clear to everyone that Violet Norton was either lying or just a very mixed-up woman, and that Clark Gable was an innocent bystander in the bizarre episode. However, even this was not enough to prevent him from being called to testify during her trial in April 1937, much to his dismay.

On 20 April Gable fought his way through hundreds of adoring women to take his place in the courtroom holding the trial of Violet Norton. In front of everyone, including Norton herself, he denied ever being in England, confirmed he had never met the woman in his life, and laughed off the very idea of being the father of her daughter.

Violet, meanwhile, stared intently at Gable throughout his testimony. One can only ponder exactly what was going through her mind at that moment. “That’s him, I’d know him anywhere,” she later told her attorney, who amusingly then made it clear to everyone that he did not believe a word his client was saying. “She acted in complete good faith,” he told waiting reporters. “We expect to prove that Clark Gable closely resembled the Frank Billings she knew in England.”

Nobody could take the proceedings seriously, especially when Norton tried to explain why Frank Billings decided to change his name to Clark Gable. According to her, he called himself after their local butcher, Clark, who owned an estate called “The Gables”. “Hence Clark Gables,” declared Norton, to the amused crowd.

The trial went on for three days, during which time Gable was called to the stand on several occasions, including on one occasion when Norton requested to view him close up. Approaching the moustached actor, she was the envy of thousands of fans as she pored over his looks intently. After the examination, everyone listened closely to what Norton had to say. “Yes, he looks like Frank Billings,” she said. “And I still feel convinced that Clark Gable and Frank Billings are one and the same man!”

On 23 April, after dozens of witnesses including Clark Gable’s father, his ex-girlfriend and Gwendolyn Norton herself had taken to the stand, Violet Norton was convicted of misusing the mail system, but not guilty of conspiracy. Mrs Norton dramatically almost fainted in the courtroom, before being led away to face her distraught daughter, after which she was sentenced to one year in the Orange County Jail, where she still insisted that Clark Gable was her baby’s father.

Gable, meanwhile described the entire episode as “Unfortunate . . . particularly because of her children,” before adding, “My conscious is clear.” Unfortunately for him, that was not entirely true, as at that very moment in time, he was embroiled in a baby scandal of a very different nature. And this time he really was the daddy . . .

In 1935, two years before Violet Norton untruthfully declared that Clark Gable was the father of her child, the actor was working on
The Call of the Wild
with film star Loretta Young. Young was single; Gable was not. Although estranged, he was most certainly still with his second wife, Ria Gable, though many believe it was always a marriage of convenience for the actor and he was never truly in love.

During the making of the film, Young and Gable enjoyed a secret and short-lived affair, which ended with the actress discovering she was pregnant. Distraught and ashamed, she immediately went into hiding for the majority of her pregnancy, travelling first to England and then back to California in order to deter uncomfortable questions from friends, colleagues and most of all, reporters.

Restricted by the studio’s moral codes and terrified that the scandal would be enough to shatter her career and reputation as a good Catholic girl, Young was determined to protect both herself and Gable. With this in mind, when people started to wonder where she was towards the end of her pregnancy, Young showed considerable chutzpah by holding a press conference from the comfort of her bedroom, hiding her stomach under mountains of blankets and comforters.

Finally the child – Judy – was born at home on 6 November 1935. Rumour has it that Gable paid one visit to the child and gave the mother some money to buy a crib, before she was unceremoniously placed in an orphanage, while Young returned to work.

Finally in June 1937, just two months after Gable had appeared in court to deny all knowledge of being a father to Violet Norton’s daughter, Loretta Young announced her intention to adopt two children: Judy and James. She had spotted the two, she told reporters, while visiting the orphanage in December 1936. “I have always wanted children,” she said. “And when I saw these two I just had to have them.”

What she failed to declare, however, was that Judy was actually her own child whom she had placed in the orphanage well over a year before. As for James, nobody knows if he really did exist, but Young certainly did not adopt him. She later announced that there had been problems taking the child and that she had instead opted for adopting only Judy instead.

It was a well-known story around Hollywood that Judy Lewis (she took the name of Young’s second husband, Tom Lewis) was the illegitimate child of Loretta Young and Clark Gable. But for the rest of the world, Young was seen as a hero: an angel who adopted a poor child and took her to live with her in the palatial hills of Hollywood.

Unfortunately for Loretta, however, Judy not only inherited Clark Gable’s huge ears, but facially she was the exact image of her mother, a fact Young explained away as being because they lived together and had developed the same mannerisms. Loretta worried about the ear situation, however, and for years insisted that her daughter wear bonnets in public until finally it was decided to pin them back. When the child became a teenager, she endured gossip on a regular basis that she was not adopted at all – that she was really the child of Loretta Young and Clark Gable. These stories continued throughout her teenage years though Judy tried to ignore them and get on with her life.

Finally, however, Judy could ignore the stories no more when she became engaged and her fiancé, Joseph Tinney, took it upon himself to tell his future bride that everybody knew who she really was. She was stunned but it wasn’t until she had become a mother herself that Judy finally had the nerve to demand the truth from her mother. In true dramatic style, Young promptly threw up, admitted that she was indeed her natural mother, and then called her daughter “a walking mortal sin”. She also demanded that Judy keep the information from her own children – Young’s grandchildren – which was something she rightly refused to do.

Sadly, the only father-daughter time Gable and Judy ever shared was one day when, as a teenager, Judy came home from school to find Gable sitting in her living room. Not knowing that he was her father at the time, she sat with him for a while, answered his polite questions about her life, then bade him farewell while accepting a kiss on her head as he left the house. By the time Judy found out her true parentage, Gable had long since passed away. Sadly it was never possible for her to get to know her true father.

By the time actors Aleta Freel and Ross Alexander married in 1934, she was a success on the New York stage, while he had carved out a career for himself on both stage and screen. However, it was the tragic manner of their deaths, not careers, that would live on in the public’s imagination for many years to come.

Born on 27 July 1907, Alexander Ross Smith was a New York actor who was not only considered charming, but good-looking and capable of an incredible stage presence too. His film career had been rather haphazard, however, until he signed with Warner Brothers, for whom he made several successful movies, such as
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
and
Captain Blood
under the name of Ross Alexander.

Aleta Freel was just over a month older than Alexander, and by the time the two met, she had played various leading roles on stage, such as performances in
Strange Interlude
and
Both Your Houses
. The couple were married in 1934 and set up home together in Hollywood, where Freel went under the name of Aleta Alexander, and hoped to make a great career for herself as a screen actress.

Having been such a successful and popular actress on the New York stage, it came as a surprise when Aleta’s Hollywood dreams did not come true. She spent much time travelling to and from auditions for minor roles on screen, but as casting directors were not impressed by her past stage career, she quickly became disenchanted with the entire industry.

The actress’s distress and depression over her failing career caused cracks in the marriage, especially when rumours began to circulate that her husband had been unfaithful. As a result, the couple argued constantly over their life in Hollywood and the downhearted Aleta threatened on numerous occasions to leave the marriage and return home to her parents in Jersey City. Ross found it extremely hard to believe she would actually go through with it, however, and quickly brushed her comments aside.

Regardless of what her husband believed, things came to a head on the evening of Friday, 6 December 1935, when the two got into a huge argument at their home, 7357 Woodrow Wilson Drive. They fought bitterly and it was not long before Aleta and Ross told each other a few home truths about the state of the marriage and their unhappiness within it.

Freel was furious at her husband’s comments and threatened once again to go back to her parents’ house, causing Ross to lose his temper once and for all. Having heard the same threat over the course of the past months, he swung round in anger and shouted, “Well, for God’s sake go on back and quit nagging me about it.” The shocked actress then rushed out of the room, leaving her husband behind, to wait – as he had done before – for her to come back.

Unfortunately, she never did return. Several minutes later Ross Alexander was mortified to hear two loud shots coming from the garden. In shock, he ran to the dining room and called out to William Bolden, his butler, to turn on the yard lights. Then with the servant following closely behind, he dashed out of the house and stumbled across his wife’s body, stretched out on the ground with a rifle lying beside her.

In a fit of rage and frustration, Aleta had turned the gun on herself but amazingly she was still alive – albeit barely. An ambulance was called and Ross stayed with his wife while waiting for it to arrive, speaking to her about the future and promising things would be better if only she would pull through. Once the paramedics had arrived at the home, they carefully lifted her into the vehicle and rushed her to Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, though sadly it was too late to save her life. The actress struggled on through the night but died the very next morning, much to the distress of her shocked husband.

Wracked with guilt and refusing to believe that their fight could have any bearing on his wife’s decision to end her life, Ross Alexander downplayed the argument as “of minor consequence” and insisted to police that his wife had instead been depressed over her career. However, this statement did not sit well with Aleta’s father, Dr William Freel, who left his home in Jersey City immediately, demanding that an inquest take place to look into the entire episode.

The inquest was called and halted any plans Alexander had to bury his wife; instead, he found himself sitting in the same courtroom as Aleta’s father, waiting for a decision about what the court thought had happened to his dead wife. When asked about the circumstances of his wife’s last moments, Ross Alexander took to the stand and explained, “She was discouraged because screen tests she had taken here on several occasions were not successful and she was unable to get into pictures.”

However, when it was time for Aleta’s father to speak, he shocked those present by announcing that when the death happened, Alexander did not bother to telephone him personally; instead, he left it to his business manager, Vernon D.Wood, to break the news. This decision had understandably left the grieving father absolutely furious over the insensitivity shown by his son-in-law and, as a result, he refused to believe that Alexander could be anything but guilty for allowing his daughter to die. Comments and insults flew from both sides, though in the end the coroner felt that in spite of everything, the death of Aleta Alexander was a suicide and the case was closed.