Lawrence Kimpton’s surprising encounter with Clark Gable

“Is that Clark Gable I see in that photograph?”

This is not a question often asked in the Special Collections Research Center, where the photographic prints encountered in its archival collections are more likely to feature former administrators, faculty members, and students, than film stars. Yet one photograph features Clark Gable in a tuxedo, seated at a table with a group which includes Marcia Kimpton and her husband, Lawrence, the future president of the University of Chicago.

More surprisingly, this is not the only image of Mr. Gable discovered in the Archival Photographic Files in the course of current work to digitize these photographs. A second photograph, catalogued under President Kimpton’s name, shows the tuxedo-clad Mr. Gable standing between a wedding cake and a woman whose hand he is holding. A gentleman in ship-captain’s dress is also pictured. Returning to the first photograph, one sees the Kimptons on Mr. Gable’s right, and the unidentified woman and the captain on his left.

The only legible word inscribed on the reverse of one print is “Honolulu.” A bit of detective work was done by Molly Sober, a fourth-year in the College who works in the Special Collections digitization unit. She consulted other sources, including online images, which helped answer questions concerning the event recorded, its date and location, and the identity of the most prominent participants. A number of web biographies of Clark Gable show pictures of the unnamed woman, who was Lady Sylvia Ashley, his fourth wife. The image with the wedding cake appears to have been taken after the couple’s marriage on 20 December 1949,when on their way to their honeymoon in Hawaii. Indeed, the presence of a ship’s captain indicated a cruise, and knowing that the S.S. Lurline was the most popular Hawaiian cruise ship sailing out of California ports in the first half of the 20th century helped move the discovery process along. Images of a few of the ship’s rooms found online confirmed that the two photographs were taken in its Waikiki Dining Room. And, an additional piece of the puzzle was discovered in a book titled, To Honolulu in Five Days: Cruising aboard Matson’s S.S. Lurline (2002), which contains a picture and story about Frank Johnson, who served as captain from 1946 to 1953.

Why Marcia and Lawrence Kimpton were on a cruise to Hawaii in 1949, however, remains a mystery.