First of all, in case you were unaware, Clark Gable was one of the most famous actors from the 1930s through the 1950s. He's best known for roles in films like "Mutiny on the Bounty" and "It Happened One Night," but his most famous role at this point is undoubtedly Rhett Butler in "Gone with the Wind". In fact, if you factor in inflation, "Gone With the Wind" has the highest box office gross of all time, at $3.73 billion all told.
So here's the natural question — why is Gable's signature on a one-dollar bill? Here's a hint: it's not just the first thing a random fan had available for Gable to sign. This is no ordinary bill, it's a World War II-era short snorter. A short snorter is a bit of local paper currency that is signed by people traveling on an aircraft together. The tradition was started by Alaskan bush flyers back in the 1920s, but, relevant to Gable's signature, signing bills become common practice during World War II for people on bombers after a successful mission.
Not entirely unlike Elvis Presley famously did later, Gable also enlisted — and he did it relatively late in life. Gable had already been traveling with his wife Carole Lombard after the attack on Pearl Harbor to help incentivize people to buy bonds to help in the war effort. But in early 1942, tragedy struck and Lombard died in a DC-3 airliner crash that was returning her from a war bonds tour.
In the wake of his grief, Gable decided he needed to do more to help his country and, despite an insistence from then-president Franklin Delano Roosevelt to "STAY WHERE YOU ARE," Gable volunteered to join the Army Air Forces. And by all accounts, Gable flew in no less than five combat missions — not too shabby for a 40-something actor. It was somewhere around this time that Gable signed the short snorter being offered on "Pawn Stars," and, yes, it is genuine. But is it worth $5,000?
