American “Royal” Arms

Or at least the arms of the man once called "The King of Hollywood", Clark Gable.
Born William Clark Gable on February 1, 1901, in Cadiz, Ohio, to William H. and Adeline (Hershelman) Gable. Died November 16, 1960 at age 59 in Los Angeles, California, shortly after finishing filming of The Misfits with Marilyn Monroe. Some have blamed his physically demanding role in that film, along with the numerous retakes required by Monroe’s flubs, for his death. On the other hand, he had been on a crash diet before filming began, and was down to 195 pounds (88kg) from 230 pounds (104.3kg). That, coupled with thirty years of a three-pack-a-day cigarette habit (not counting cigars and at least two pipes a day) and, until the late 1950s, heavy whiskey drinking, probably contributed as much or more to his death. He married five times (was divorced three), and it is generally acknowledged that his happiest marriage (until her death in a plane crash in 1942) was to Carole Lombard (shown above in the photo with Gable).
The "King of Hollywood" apparently used a coat of arms, if his bookplates are any evidence. The two shown here, one with his last wife Kathleen ("Kay") Williams Spreckles and the other with just his name, appear to be the arms assigned in Burke’s General Armory to: "Gabell (Winchester). Or, ten billets sa. [sable] four, three, two, and one. Crest–A boar’s head couped or."* (For those of you not that familiar with blazon, the specialized language of heraldry, it's a shield with a gold/yellow background, on which are ten black upright rectangles. The boar's head is also gold/yellow.)

Did he inherit these arms? I have found no evidence that he did, and suspect that he might very well have gotten them from one of the many (even then) "bucket-shop" heralds who pulled the arms of Gabell out of Burke and drew them up for Mr. Gable. (The lack of any motto on the motto ribbon beneath the shield also leads me to suspect bucket-shop heraldry.)

Still and all, bucket-shop or no, it’s nice to see people attempting to actually use heraldry in some way, and especially something as classic as on a bookplate.

* As noted in the post below about Ernst Stavro Blofeld, boar’s heads are couped differently in England than they are in Scotland. The crest on the Gable bookplates is couped in "Scottish fashion."