Loretta was blessed with her mother’s beauty….
large, luminous blue-gray eyes, a perfectly oval face and
flawless complexion. She was educated in a convent school
and wore her faith like a banner. But she was married and
divorced before she was out of her teens, fell in love with
a man who could not marry her and had a child out of wedlock
she could never acknowledge. She constantly gave of her
time and money to those in need and her friends lovingly
called her “St. Loretta”. But her critics called
her “Attila the Nun”. Who was the real Loretta
Young?
 |
She was born Gretchen Michaela Young in Salt
Lake City, Utah, the third of three lovely sisters and
21 months before her only brother. When she was only
3, her father John Earle Young, left home and didn’t
come back so Gladys Royal Young packed up her brood
and headed for Los Angeles. A loan from the local Catholic
bishop gave Mama Young the money to open a boarding
house and the family moved in. Later, Uncle Ernest Traxler
would send them prospective boarders from the Famous
Lasky-Players film studio where he worked. He also got
the girls jobs at the studio as “kid extras”.
The “flickers” as they were called then,
had become the fifth biggest industry in the U.S. Gretchen
Michaela Young was in front of the cameras at the tender
age of 4! |
By 1926 things had changed a great deal at home.
Gladys had divorced John, married boarder George Belzer
and had another daughter. She also enrolled in art school
and took up interior design. The older girls were out of
school and had acting jobs. Betty Jane was now Sally Blane,
a promising young starlet at Paramount. Polly Ann was working
at First National (soon to be Warner Brothers) and Gretchen
was just home from boarding school. One day, when a call
came for Polly Ann from the studio, Gretchen was the only
one home to answer it and decided to go herself. She was
14 years old! At the studio, Gretchen’s age was very
apparent to director Mervyn LeRoy but he admired her pluck
and gave her a younger bit part. Lead actress Colleen Moore
also admired the child and set her up for a screen test
after cajoling the studio honchos to get braces for her
teeth and a new name. Gretchen became officially Loretta
Young.
It was the twilight of the silent era and the dawning
of sound. Loretta’s star was ascending. In silent
films she photographed older and her young voice could not
give her away. Padding supplied the curves nature had not
yet delivered and she could wear clothes to perfection.
But sound was rushing in and many silent stars fell beneath
its pounding feet. Loretta took her sound test with trepidation
but by then her voice had matured enough to give it the
resonance required. She was on her way. “The Squall”
was Loretta’s first “talking” picture
and also the first of six pictures she would make in 1929.
| She was still a naïve teenager
of 16 when she was cast opposite Grant Withers in “The
Second Floor Mystery”. Grant was a handsome devil-may-care
charmer who had been married before he was 20, had a
young son and was divorced at 25. Loretta, ready for
her first crush, was a pushover. The love scenes in
the film carried over off the set when the director
yelled “Cut!”. Against the opposition of
family, friends and parish priest, Loretta and Grant
eloped to Yuma, Arizona ten days after her 17th birthday.
The marriage lasted just over a year. |
 |
The divorce from Grant had one major effect….Loretta
Young became a woman in the eyes of both fans and studio.
On a loan out to Darryl Zanuck at Fox studio, Loretta was
cast in the first “A” movie actually built around
her character. It was “Zoo in Budapest” and
her name appeared first above the title. Based on its projected
success (it was a box office hit), Loretta set her sights
on another Fox project, “Berkeley Square” but
the part was given to British actress Heather Angel and
Loretta was instead loaned out for an MGM film. She was
hurt and bitter. It seemed that again she would be cast
in endless programmers but her contract at Warner Brothers
was coming to an end and she decided to cast her lot with
Zanuck and the new merged 20th Century Fox. In the meantime,
she was wanted for Columbia’s “A Man’s
Castle” with Spencer Tracy. It would create a definite
twist in Loretta’s ordered and proper life.
 |
Spencer Tracy was a brilliant actor but recently
separated from his wife and hitting the bottle regularly.
Close friends say the romance began because Loretta
felt Tracy needed her help. Whatever her reasons, it
was evident on the set that the two stars were madly
in love and the romance burned brightly for over a year.
But Tracy, a Catholic, would not divorce his wife and
the affair finally ended leaving both of them heartbroken.
When Loretta went on location for “Call
of the Wild” she was still distraught over the
break-up. |
Rumors became circulating almost immediately that
even in the brutally cold temperatures, Gable and Young
were steaming up the lodge at Mount Shukshan in Washington
State. But when the film was in the can, the stars were
off to other projects with no signs of torrid romance. Gable
went on location to do “Mutiny on the Bounty”
and Loretta was off to do DeMille’s epic “The
Crusades” and the gossips began to look elsewhere.
But this time Loretta got more than a broken heart. She
was pregnant and the father-to-be was married and not looking
for a long-term commitment. As a practicing Catholic, abortion
was out of the question and exposure meant the end of her
career.
| When she finished both “The Crusades”
and her next picture “Shanghai” (with Charles
Boyer) Loretta was suddenly off on a European tour with
her mother. But the press followed her. She returned
in August, supposedly suffering from exhaustion and
an undefined illness and wasn’t seen again in
public for months. Three of her films were released
that summer so the public wasn’t missing her too
much. Then, on November 6th, 1935 Clark Gable received
this cryptic telegram: “Beautiful blue-eyed blonde
baby girl born 8:15 this morning”. He flushed
it down the commode. On November 30th, Loretta again
appeared on the Hollywood scene with news headlines
reporting “Loretta Recovers!”. |
 |
Then, in June, 1937, Louella Parsons announced
in her column that Loretta Young was adopting two little
girls. Later, it was also announced one of the girls was
given back to her mother leaving Loretta with only little
Judy, aged twenty-three months. But Hollywood wasn’t
a town that could be fooled for long. Eventually the only
one who didn’t suspect the truth was Judy herself.
Loretta’s name was linked with one eligible
bachelor after another. One serious romance was dashed when
William Buckner was arrested for mail fraud just before
their engagement was announced. On July 31st, 1940 Loretta
married radio executive Tom Lewis in an elegant church ceremony
after a six month courtship. They would have two sons of
their own but contrary to publicity releases, Tom Lewis
never really accepted or adopted little Judy.
 |
In the spring of 1946 Loretta got word that
Dore Scary and David O. Selznick wanted her for a
little film called “Katie For Congress”.
Loretta accepted the role, bleached her hair blonde
(something she had never done before) and was tutored
in a Swedish accent. That little movie, renamed “The
Farmer’s Daughter”, won the Academy Award
for Loretta against a formidable competition. She
immediately called home and woke up her mother. “Mama,
I won” she cried. “That’s nice,
Gretchen” her mother answered. “What did
you win, dear?
|
By late 1952, plans for Loretta’s trek into
television began to jell. Tom and Loretta formed Lewislor
, a corporation to produce the series. There would be 39
episodes per television season the equivalent of 13 full-length
movies. Loretta was now forty years old and about to begin
a whole new career. When she walked through that double
doorway, stunning in designer gowns ( but always simple
enough to be copied by creative housewives) Loretta walked
into millions of homes. The series lasted for 8 years. Guest
stars filled in during Loretta’s grave illness in
1955 (peritonitis from a tubular pregnancy) but no one ever
walked through that door except Loretta herself.
| In March, 1958 Tom Lewis shocked Hollywood
by suing his wife and Lewislor for “dishonesty,
mismanagement and unfairness”. The dream marriage
had been coming apart for at least three years and now
everyone knew it. But the divorce wouldn’t happen
for another 11 years. On June 24th,
1958 Judy Lewis married Joseph Tinney in the same
church where her mother was married. A month before
her wedding, her husband-to-be finally told Judy what
everyone else in Hollywood knew…Clark Gable
was her father. She had already surmised that Loretta
was her real mother. On November 6th, 1960, Judy’s
26th birthday, Gable had a heart attack and died ten
days later...still a stranger to his daughter.
|
 |
In May of 1988, Tom Lewis died and the marriage,
according to Loretta’s religious tenets, was now irrevocably
over. It was the same year Judy started her book “Uncommon
Knowledge” and an estrangement from her mother that
lasted over 10 years.
Loretta was still working on television with guest
appearances and made-for-tv movies. On August 10th, 1993,
she married designer Jean Louis, the husband of her late
friend, Maggie Louis. The bride was 80 and the groom 85.
Jean died in April, 1997. Both sisters Polly and Sally died
that year, followed shortly after by brother Jack leaving
Georgiana the only family member of Loretta’s generation.
Loretta Young died on August 12th, 2000 at 87 of
ovarian cancer. As usual, she did it her way refusing chemotherapy.
She made her peace with Judy but gave Joan Wester Anderson
the authority to tell her story the way she wanted it told.
Anderson published her biography “Forever Young”
after Loretta’s death.
Loretta Young’s faith shone brightly to the
end. She gave bountifully of herself to those who needed
her all of her life. While I am not sure there is a big
double door in heaven, I imagine she swept elegantly through
that Golden Gate.
For more on Loretta Young on screen and off see
Arabella’s Notes. For
a list of my sources please e-mail me at
mamalion27@aol.com
Filmography
The Primrose Path
(1917)
Sirens of the Sea (1917)
The Only Way (1919)
White and Unmarried (1921)
Naughty But Nice (1927)
Her Wild Oat (1927)
The Whip Woman (1928)
Laugh, Clown, Laugh (1928)
The Magnificent Flirt (1928)
The Head Man (1928)
Scarlet Seas (1928)
Seven Footprints to Satan (1929)
The Squall (1929)
The Girl in the Glass Cage (1929)
Fast Life (1929)
The Careless Age (1929)
The Forward Pass (1929)
The Show of Shows (1929)
Loose Ankles (1930)
The Man from Blankley (1930)
The Second Floor Mystery (1930)
Road to Paradise (1930)
Kismet (1930)
The Truth about Youth (1930)
The Devil To Pay (1930)
Beau Ideal (1931)
The Right of Way (1931)
Three Girls Lost (1931)
Too Young to Marry (1931)
Big Business Girl (1931)
I Like Your Nerve (1931) |
The Ruling Voice (1931)
Platinum Blonde (1931)
Taxi! (1932)
The Hatchet Man (1932)
Play-Girl (1932)
The Weekend Marriage (1932)
Life Begins (1932)
They Call It Sin (1932)
Employees Entrance (1933)
Grand Slam (1933)
Zoo in Budapest (1933)
The Life of Jimmy Dolan (1933)
Heroes for Sale (1933)
Midnight Mary (1933)
She Had To Say Yes (1933)
The Devil’s in Love (1933)
A Man’s Castle (1933)
The House of Rothschild (1934)
Born to Be Bad (1934)
Caravan (1934)
The White Parade (1934)
Clive of India (1935)
The Call of the Wild (1935)
The Crusades (1935)
Shanghai (1935)
The Unguarded Hour (1936)
Private Number (1936)
Ramona (1936)
Ladies in Love (1937)
Café Metropole (1937)
|
Love Under Fire (1937)
Wife, Doctor and Nurse (1937)
Second Honeymoon (1937)
Four Men and a Prayer (1938)
Three Blind Mice (1938)
Suez (1938)
Kentucky (1938)
Wife, Husband and Friend (1939)
The Story of Alexander Graham Bell (1939)
Eternally Yours (1939)
The Doctor Takes a Wife (1940)
He Stayed For Breakfast (1940)
The Lady from Cheyenne (1941)
The Men in Her Life (1941)
Bedtime Story (1941)
A Night To Remember (1943)
China (1943)
Ladies Courageous (1944)
And Now Tomorrow (1944)
Along Came Jones (1945)
The Stranger (1946)
The Perfect Marriage (1947)
The Farmer’s Daughter (1947)
The Bishop’s Wife (1947)
Rachel and the Stranger (1948)
The Accused (1949)
Mother Was a Freshman (1949)
Come to The Stable (1949)
Key to the City (1950)
Half Angel (1951)
Because of You (1952)
It Happens Every Thursday (1953) |
