By the mid-1930s, Clark Gable (born William Clark Gable in 1901) had become a Hollywood star, attracting national attention and large paychecks. His success also attracted criminals and emotionally unstable people who targeted the dashing actor.

The criminal attention of these people is captured in six files, linked below in four sections, including five extortion cases and a "nuisance communications" investigation.

Each of the six files is quite short. In them you will see how FBI agents worked to track down the letter writers and how FBI Laboratory experts employed handwriting analysis to show that suspects were indeed guilty of threatening Mr. Gable and to determine if he truly faced a threat to his life.

The first case (9-3178) began because of a letter dated November 2, 1937. Clark Gable was the victim of an extortion letter from Cleveland, Ohio, from a lady seeking a job.

Another case (9-3482) began with a letter dated February 21, 1938, that Gable received from Fonda, Iowa; it demanded that he send $1,000. Our investigation revealed that the letter had been written by an Iowa farmhand, not the woman whose name was signed to the note. The farmhand had sent the note after the woman spurned him.

The third case (9-4005) developed from a letter sent on August 18, 1938, by a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, man who demanded $5,000 from Gable and MGM Studio. He advised that if he didn't receive all the money, he would do bodily harm to Gable. The twist in this case was that Gable never received the letter nor was it found at the post office. The man had volunteered the information when he had been arrested on vagrancy charges by a local police department. Because extortion is a federal crime, the FBI was brought in on the case.

The fourth investigation (9-6434) was based on July 6, 1940 letter opened by an attorney at the MGM Studios. Addressed to Gable, the letter demanded that he deposit a generous amount of money in the American Trust, Jefferson Street Branch, in San Francisco.

The final extortion investigation (9-7006) sought the author of a December 3, 1940 note warning Gable and his wife, Carol Lombard, that a third party threatened to kidnap them and hold them for ransom.

Also in the files is an investigation into a "nuisance communication" (95-2996). This investigation began when Gable received a letter addressed to him dated May 12, 1939. The letter, postmarked Columbus, Ohio, stated: "Just who do you think you are that you can hook me and keep my human respect and marry another woman. Prophesy or no—anyone that is small enough to live with another wife when he is hooked, I don't wish to ever see. I demand my freedom and I'll get it or I'll know the reason why." Efforts to locate the person who wrote the letter were not successful.