Trivia

Was left standing at the altar in 1927, after Greta Garbo got cold feet about marrying him.

Almost immediately upon hearing of John Gilbert's status as an all-but-forgotten matinee idol now drinking himself to death, new-to-Hollywood screen siren Marlene Dietrich devoted herself to the project of "rehabilitating" Gilbert. When she failed to save his life and he succumbed to a heart attack a few years later, Dietrich became a lifelong "guardian angel" to Gilbert's young daughter, always remembering the child on her birthday and Christmas every year until Dietrich died.

Although she famously jilted him at the altar, Greta Garbo still cared enough about Gilbert to insist that he, and not the studio's choice of Laurence Olivier, be cast as her co-star in 1933's Queen Christina. A gallant gesture meant to revive Gilbert's fading career, it proved too little too late, and Gilbert's appeal continued to flounder. Within three years, Gilbert would die, an almost forgotten has-been.

He was played by his grandson John Fountain in Sunset (1988).

Gilbert famously did not get along with Louis B. Mayer, the two men often engaged in loud arguments. There are rumors that Mayer himself, and/or his chief sound engineer, manipulated the knobs of Gilbert's first talking films so that a perfectly adequate speaking voice came out on the big screen as ridiculously high pitched. However, this is shown to be false as Gilbert's voice in his early talkies is quite serviceable. Rather, Gilbert had difficulty with the corny dialogue he was forced to recite. While his early talkies made profits, the box office returns of his films began to decline steeply. This proved to be the beginning of the end for the decade's highest paid matinée idol ($250,000 per film).

John Gilbert's paternal grandfather was German-born and actually had the last name of Priegel, which was anglicized to Pringle when he settled in the U.S. Gilbert, who had always used his stepfather's last name, did not know that his birth name was Pringle until his father introduced himself to Gilbert at the set of "The Merry Widow".

John Gilbert is the subject of a min-documentary film called "Rediscovering John Gilbert" (2010) featuring an on-camera interview with John Gilbert's daughter and biographer, Leatrice Gilbert Fountain. The short film, directed and produced by Jeffrey Vance along with producing partner Tony Maietta, has aired on the Turner Classic Movies cable channel and is also available on home video.

Some sources, notably his daughter Leatrice Joy Gilbert's 1984 biography of her father, give Gilbert's birth year as 1899, but according to various official documents, including the 1900, 1920 and 1930 US census results, and his World War Draft card from 1917, Gilbert was born in 1897. His daughter admitted in a 2005 interview that she now agreed 1897 was correct, having been swayed by the census results.

Suffered a heart attack in December 1935.

A one-man play on the life of John Gilbert, entitled Silenced Idol, was announced in August 2006. The two-act theatrical work is by Tony Maietta (who also portrays Gilbert) and Jeffrey Vance.

Pictured on one of ten 29¢ US commemorative postage stamps celebrating stars of the silent screen, issued 27 April 1994. Designed by caricaturist Al Hirschfeld, this set of stamps also honored Rudolph Valentino, Clara Bow, Charles Chaplin, Lon Chaney, Zasu Pitts, Harold Lloyd, Theda Bara, Buster Keaton, and the Keystone Kops.

He served as the inspiration for the character Jack Conrad in the feature film "Babylon" (2022).

Interred at Forest Lawn, Glendale, CA., in the Whispering Pines section near the top of the hill.

Father of Leatrice Joy Gilbert.

Is portrayed by Barry Bostwick in The Silent Lovers (1980)

Son of John Pringle.