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The King and Four Queens was the first (and last) project from Clark Gable's own production company, GABCO. Gable stars as Western fugitive Dan Kehoe, who hides out in a small ghost town. Here he whiles away his time with the town's only inhabitants: Ma MacDade (Jo Van Fleet), matriarch of the outlaw McDade family, and the four wives (Eleanor Parker, Jean Willes, Barbara Nichols, and Sara Shane) of Mrs. McDade's gunslinging sons. Three of the four McDade boys are dead; the fourth is expected to return at any minute with the loot from a recent stagecoach robbery. Since no one knows which of the McDades is dead, all four wives make a play for the bemused Kehoe; he in turn responds to their advances, hoping to get a share of the gold. The fur really begins to fly when it turns out that one of the wives is a phony who intends to double-cross the other three and ride off into the sunset with Kehoe. When The King and Four Queens proved a box-office disappointment, Clark Gable gave up the notion of producing his own films and returned to freelancing at the major studios.

By the mid-1950s, Eleanor Parker had costarred with many of Hollywood's most famous leading men, including Errol Flynn, Humphrey Bogart, Kirk Douglas, Robert Taylor, William Holden and Frank Sinatra. She would recall, however, being especially excited at the prospect of acting in The King and Four Queens (1956) opposite Clark Gable: "I was a real fan."

In this lighthearted United Artists Western directed by Raoul Walsh, Gable plays a dashing desperado who wanders into a ghost town called Wagon Mound, where a crusty, rifle-toting matriarch (Jo Van Fleet) watches over her four man-hungry daughters-in-law. It seems that, two years earlier, three of the old woman's sons had died in a fire (although no one knows which three) after stealing and hiding a fortune in gold. Sizing up the situation, Gable uses his manly charms to wheedle information from the ladies about the whereabouts of the treasure.

Parker plays the most cynical and shrewd of the daughters-in-law, a fiery redhead described by Gable as "tougher than Wang leather, smarter than spit and colder than January." Jean Willes is a sultry Mexican, Barbara Nichols a dumb-blonde dancer, and Sara Shane a prim young thing. The chemistry Parker shares with Gable makes it easy enough to predict that she's the one who will share his final ride into the sunset.

Gary Tooze

May 19th, 2016