Loretta Young and Clark Gable -- on the set
of Key to the City, in 1950
In fact, Judy was the daughter of actor Clark Gable, with whom her mother starred in the 1935 film version of Jack London's novel The Call of the Wild. Gable was 34, and married to the 2nd of his 4 wives, Texas socialite Maria Langham. Young was 22, and divorced. She later told her children that, once she learned what "date rape" was, that's what Gable had done to her.
At that time, the year after the Hays Code got serious about things like "immorality," having a child out of wedlock would have destroyed Young's career. But she was too devout a Catholic to have an abortion. (Just not too devout a Catholic to get a divorce from her ex, actor Grant Withers.) So she went on a "vacation" to England. In those days, the term "exhaustion" was used to cover for actors and actresses who went to alcohol or drug rehab, and for actresses who were pregnant or getting an abortion.
So Young kept up the appearance of propriety, and adopted her own daughter. But it was the worst-kept secret in Hollywood. Along with his mustache, Gable was known for his ears that stuck out. Judy -- whom Loretta named for St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes -- inherited those ears. In 1940, Loretta married film producer Tom Lewis, and her daughter was renamed Judy Lewis. Two years later, at age 7, Judy underwent surgery to pin her ears back.
Young and Gable only appeared together in 1 more movie, in 1950: Key to the City. On the set, Judy met Gable for the only time in her life. In 1958, 2 weeks before she was going to marry Joe Tinney, she panicked, and told him she couldn't marry him, saying, "I don't know who I am." He told her, ""Judy, don't worry about it. I know everything about you. You're Clark Gable's daughter." She was astounded. She married him anyway, had a daughter, Maria, and divorced him in 1972.
Loretta became a big star, winning the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in the 1947 film The Farmer's Daughter. She won 3 Emmy Awards for her dramatic anthology series on NBC, The Loretta Young Show, which ran from 1953 to 1961.
She was also a prominent Republican, publicly supporting Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, taking up the conservative movement's moral crusade, including, from the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision onward, opposition to abortion.
With Tom Lewis, she had sons Christopher and Peter. She divorced Lewis in 1969. In 1993, she married Jean Louis, who had designed the costumes for The Loretta Young Show. Both were old and lonely, as Louis had recently been widowed. Louis died in 1997. Loretta died in 2000, a beloved figure in Hollywood, but with the truth about her relationship with Gable known.
Gable died in 1960. In 1966, at the age of 31, while appearing on the CBS soap opera The Secret Storm, Judy finally confronted her mother, and told her to tell the truth about her father. She did.
Judy left acting to become a psychotherapist, and lived until 2011. Christopher Lewis became a TV writer and producer, and lived until 2021. Peter Lewis became a rock musician, the rhythm guitarist for the psychedelic rock band Moby Grape. Sadly, he spent years battling mental illness and homelessness. Bandmate Skip Spence went on record saying that the Young/Lewis family wasn't interested in helping him: "All they were interested in was keeping him out of McDonald's with a machine gun." Skip found Peter some help, and he was able to resume his life. As of November 6, 2022, he is still alive.
*
November 6, 1935 was a Wednesday. Baseball was out of season. Football was in midweek. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. And the NHL season began the next night. So there were no scores on this historic day.
No comments:
Post a Comment