Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), based on the popular namesake novel by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall, and starring Charles Laughton and Clark Gable as Bligh and Christian, respectively. The film's story was presented, says Dening, as "the classic conflict between tyranny and a just cause"; Laughton's portrayal became in the public mind the definitive Bligh, "a byword for sadistic tyranny". The two subsequent major films, "Mutiny on the Bounty" (1962) with Trevor Howard and Marlon Brando, and "The Bounty" (1984) with Anthony Hopkins and Mel Gibson, largely perpetuated this image of Bligh and that of Christian as tragic hero. The latter film
Clark Gable to attempt a film career. In 1924, with Dillon's financing, they went to Hollywood, where she became Gable's manager and first wife. He changed his stage name from W. C. Gable to Clark Gable. He found work as an extra in such silent films as Erich von Stroheim's "The Merry Widow" (1925), "The Plastic Age" (1925), which starred Clara Bow, "Forbidden Paradise" (1924), starring Pola Negri, plus a series of two-reel comedies called "The Pacemakers". He appeared as an extra in Fox's "The Johnstown Flood" (1926). Seventeen-year-old Carole Lombard, later his third wife, appeared as an extra in that film