That happened one night: Clark Gable’s monstrous secret.

Trigger warning: this article contains references to sexual assault. If this is not your thing, skip this one.

On one of the last nights before our move of residence—which was a huge and emotionally draining project, and why I haven’t written much in a week—my husband and I watched the classic 1934 comedy film It Happened One Night, directed by Frank Capra. I’d seen it before but it had been a while, and in the intervening time I forgot just how a delightful a film it was. One of the original road trip movies, the film stars Claudette Colbert as a rich heiress going cross-country on a bus to flee a marriage she dreads, and Clark Gable as an enterprising reporter who chases her—and, of course, falls in love with her. As fresh and funny as this 90-year-old movie is, and as much as I recommend it, this article is not about it. It’s instead about a dark and utterly terrible secret in the life of one of its stars, Clark Gable. In 1935, while enjoying the stardom that It Happened One Night brought him, Gable raped his co-star on another movie, Loretta Young, an act that clouded both of the rest of their lives.

While I won’t say he’s one of my all time favorite classic era stars, I certainly like Gable and most of the movies of his I’ve seen. He was definitely a man of his time, appealing to the sense of rugged masculinity that was popular in the 1930s, the heyday of his stardom. Physically he resembled my maternal grandfather, especially with the pencil mustache. Even beyond this I feel a slight personal connection to Gable. One of the early stops on Gable’s acting career was Astoria, Oregon—a place I often go on vacation—where he played in a summer stock theater company in 1922. Much of the city burned down just months after that summer ended. A historical plaque commemorates Gable’s time there. Gable also worked at the Meier & Frank department store chain, the same company I would briefly work for some 70 years later.