Family:Clark Gable and Loretta Young (1)

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Facts and Events
Other[1][2][3][4] 1935 Brief affair
Children
BirthDeath
1.

Relationship Notes

Clark Gable and Loretta Young fell in love while filming "Call of the Wild"

Loretta Young explains in her authorized biography that it was a one night occurrence (but that's all you need).

Here is the story explained by Judy Lewis (her daughter).

"In Loretta's defense, she could have had an abortion like most Hollywood actresses had during that time (Myrna Loy and Lana Turner have admitted to having them). It would have been a scandal in all the papers and she may have been fired had she went public with it and she may have ruined Clark Gable's career too. She probably could have done it a different way, but at least she didn't give her up for adoption. She decided to raise her own child and deal with the responsibility. Loretta should have told Judy about her father at a young age and just publicly deny it. Clark should have been a bigger part of her life, but what's done is done. I needed to state her case because many of the comments have been really negative towards her."

Video Tribute


The Story of Clark Gable and
Loretta Young's Daughter

Loretta Young/Clark Gable:
Interview with Edward Funk

The Call of the Wild (1935)
Clark Gable, Loretta Young
References
  1. Lewis, Judy. "Uncommon Knowledge", Pocket Books, New York, 1994, pages 51-59.
  2. Interview with Edward Funk, in Behind The Door: The Real Story of Loretta Young by Edward J. Funk
    1 Mar 2016.

    Loretta Young: Luminous Beauty. Movie Star. She went from '20s late silents, to early '30s Warner Brothers Depression heroine, to late '30s Twentieth Century Fox's leading glamour-star. Her peak movie stardom came in the late '40s. Then in the '50s, she waltzed though a door wearing a glamorous gown to introduce that week's episode of "The Loretta Young Show". Today, her name is connected to a "secret baby" fathered by Clark Gable. And, wasn't there something about Spencer Tracy and Tyrone Power? This book investigates all the above but so much more. This is the personal story of a woman. who happened to be a movie star, the major focus being on her relationships with the most important people in her life.

  3. Loretta Young Revealed Gable Love Child, in ABC News Entertainment
    20 Nov 2000.

    Before she died in August of ovarian cancer, Oscar-winning actress Loretta Young admitted to having an affair with co-star Clark Gable — and that her “adopted” daughter, Judy Lewis, was actually her own daughter with Gable. The long-secret details of the affair are finally confirmed in Young’s new authorized biography, Forever Young: The Life, Loves, and Enduring Faith of a Hollywood Legend. The book went on sale Friday, three months after Young’s death at age 87. Daughter Had Suspected Truth. According to Forever Young, the unmarried Young found herself pregnant after she and the married Gable had a tryst on a train ride following the filming of the 1935 film Call of the Wild. Young, a strict Catholic, disappeared from Hollywood life, had the baby in secret, and later, pretended to adopt her own daughter. The scandal of having an illegitimate child would surely have ended her career. Ironically, Young was known for her proper, almost puritanically prim attitudes, including “fining” fellow actors for swearing on set. Lewis had previously published her own suspicions about her heritage in her book Uncommon Knowledge, but Young steadfastly had refused to comment on the story, which has long been an unconfirmed Hollywood rumor. Lewis, 65, said in her book that she remained in the dark about her true parentage until the age of 31, when she confronted her mother with the rumors she had heard. Gable never knew his only other child, John Clark Gable, who was born to his fifth wife, Kay Spreckles, not long after the actor’s November 1960 death.

  4. Loretta Young, in Dear Mr. Gable.

    Extract: Loretta insisted that she had only “given into temptation” with Clark once. It was much to her shock and disbelief that she discovered she was pregnant a few weeks after the film wrapped. Judith Young was born on November 6, 1935, blonde and blue-eyed, with her father’s ears.