Loretta Young

Loretta Young (January 6, 1913 – August 12, 2000) was an American actress.

Early life

She was born in Salt Lake City, Utah as Gretchen Young (she took the name Michaela at confirmation) she moved with her family to Hollywood when she was three years old. Loretta and her sisters Polly Ann Young and Elizabeth Jane Young (screen name Sally Blane) worked as child actresses, of whom Loretta was the most successful. Young's first role was at age 3 in the silent film The Primrose Ring. The movie's star Mae Murray so fell in love with little Gretchen that she wanted to adopt her. Although her mother declined, Gretchen was allowed to live with Murray for two years. Her half-sister Georgiana (daughter of her mother and stepfather George Belzer) eventually married actor Ricardo Montalban. During her high school years, she was educated at Ramona Convent Secondary School.

Career

She was billed as "Gretchen Young" in the 1917 film, Sirens of the Sea. It wasn't until 1928 that she was first billed as "Loretta Young", in The Whip Woman. That same year she co-starred with Lon Chaney in the MGM film Laugh, Clown, Laugh. The next year, she was anointed one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars.

In 1930, Young, then 17, eloped with 26-year-old actor Grant Withers and married him in Yuma, Arizona. The marriage was annulled the next year, just as their second movie together (ironically titled Too Young to Marry) was released.

During the Second World War, Young made "Ladies Courageous" (1944; reissued as "Fury in the Sky"), the fictionalized story of the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron. It depicted a unit of female pilots during WW2 who primarily flew bombers from the factories to their final destinations.

Young made as many as seven or eight movies a year and won an Oscar in 1947 for her performance in The Farmer's Daughter. The same year she co-starred with Cary Grant and David Niven in The Bishop's Wife, a perennial favorite that still airs on television during the Christmas season and was later remade as The Preacher's Wife with Whitney Houston. In 1949, Young received another Academy Award nomination (for Come to the Stable) and in 1953 appeared in her last film, It Happens Every Thursday.

Moving to television, she hosted and starred in the well-received half hour anthology series The Loretta Young Show. Her "sweeping" trademark appearance at the beginning of each show was to appear dramatically in various high fashion evening gowns. She returned at the program's conclusion to restate to the viewer the moral of the story just seen. (Young's introductions and conclusions to her television shows, which were widely satirized at the time, are not rerun on television because she had it legally stipulated that they not be; the ever image-conscious Young didn't want to be seen in "outdated" wardrobe and hairstyles.) Her program ran in prime time on NBC for eight years, the longest-running prime time network program ever hosted by a woman up to that time.

The program, which earned her three Emmys, began with the premise that each drama was an answer to a question asked in her fan mail; the program's original title was Letter to Loretta. The title was changed to The Loretta Young Show during the first season, and the "letter" concept was dropped altogether at the end of the second season. At this time, Young's health required that there be a number of guest hosts and guest stars; her first appearance in the 1955-56 season was for the Christmas show. From this point on, Young appeared in only about half of each season's shows as an actress and merely functioned as the program host for the remainder. This program, minus Young's introductions and summarized conclusions, was rerun in daytime by NBC from 1960 to 1964 and also appeared, again without the introductions and conclusions, in syndication.

In the 1962-1963 television, Young appeared as Christine Massey, a free-lance magazine writer and the widowed mother of seven children in CBS's The New Loretta Young Show. It fared poorly in the ratings on Monday evenings against ABC's Ben Casey and was dropped after twenty-six weeks. Dack Rambo, later a co-star of CBS's Dallas, appeard as one of her twin sons in the series.

Affair with Clark Gable

In 1935, Young had an affair with Clark Gable, who was married at the time, while on location for The Call of the Wild. During their relationship, Young became pregnant. Due to the moral codes placed on the film industry Young covered up her pregnancy in order to avoid damaging her career (as well as Gable's). Returning from a long "vacation" (during which she secretly gave birth to her daughter), Young announced that she had adopted the infant girl. The child was raised as "Judy Lewis" after taking the name of Young's second husband, producer Tom Lewis.

According to Lewis's autobiography Uncommon Knowledge, Lewis was made fun of because of the ears that she received from her father, Clark Gable. In the documentary Girl 27, she states that, at 7, she had an operation to "pin back" her large ears and that her mother always had her wearing bonnets as a child. Over the years she had heard rumors and secretly knew that Clark Gable was her biological father, but it was not until 1958 when Judy's future husband Joseph Tinney told her that "everybody" knew the rumors that she really began to suspect.

Several years later, after becoming a mother herself, she finally confronted her mother, who, after promptly vomiting, admitted to her true parentage, stating that she (Judy) was a "just a walking mortal sin."

Marriages and relationships

• Married to actor Grant Withers from 1930-1931.
• Married producer Tom Lewis in 1940 and they divorced very bitterly in the mid 1960s. Lewis died in 1988. They had two sons, Peter (Peter Lewis of the legendary San Francisco rock band Moby Grape) and Christopher, a film director.
• Married fashion designer Jean Louis in 1993. Louis died in 1997.
• Involved in affairs with Spencer Tracy and Clark Gable; in 1935, she gave birth to Gable's daughter, who was known as Judy Lewis.

Later life

Loretta Young was the godmother of actress Marlo Thomas, whose parents (her father was Danny Thomas), were, like Young, devout Roman Catholics. From the time of Young's retirement in the 1960s, until not long before her death, she devoted herself to volunteer work for charities and churches with her friend of many years, Jane Wyman. Young did, however, briefly come out of retirement to star in two television films, Christmas Eve (1986), and Lady in a Corner (1989). Young won a Golden Globe Award for the former, and was nominated again for the latter.

Young died on August 12, 2000 from ovarian cancer at the Santa Monica, California home of her half-sister, Georgiana Montalban, and was interred in the family plot in the Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California. The last song she heard was a version of Amazing Grace, recorded by her son Peter Lewis and the band he was associated with at the time.

Young has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame — one for motion pictures, at 6104 Hollywood Blvd, and another for television, at 6141 Hollywood Blvd.

Filmography

Year	Film	Role	Other notes
1917	The Primrose Ring	Fairy	uncredited
	Sirens of the Sea	Child	as Gretchen Young
1919	The Only Way	Child on the operating table
1921	White and Unmarried	Child	uncredited
	The Sheik	Arab child	uncredited
1927	Naughty But Nice	Bit Part	uncredited
	Her Wild Oat	Bit by Ping Pong Table	uncredited
1928	The Whip Woman	The Girl
	Laugh, Clown, Laugh	Simonetta
	The Magnificent Flirt	Denise Laverne
	The Head Man	Carol Watts
	Scarlet Seas	Margaret Barbour
1929	Seven Footprints to Satan	One of Satan's victims	uncredited
	The Squall	Irma
	The Girl in the Glass Cage	Gladys Cosgrove
	Fast Life	Patricia Mason Stratton
	The Careless Age	Muriel
	The Forward Pass	Patricia Carlyle
	The Show of Shows		Meet My Sister number
1930	Loose Ankles	Ann Harper Berry
	The Man from Blankley's	Margery Seaton
	Show Girl in Hollywood	Herself, Cameo Appearance at Premiere	uncredited
	The Second Floor Mystery	Marion Ferguson
	Road to Paradise	Mary Brennan/Margaret Waring
	Warner Bros. Jubilee Dinner	Herself	short subject
	Kismet	Marsinah
	War Nurse	Nurse	uncredited
	The Truth About Youth	Phyllis Ericson
	The Devil to Pay!	Dorothy Hope
1931	How I Play Golf, by Bobby Jones No. 8: 'The Brassie'	Loretta (uncredited)	short subject
	Beau Ideal	Isobel Brandon
	The Right of Way	Rosalie Evantural
	The Stolen Jools	Herself (cameo)	short subject
	Three Girls Lost	Norene McMann
	Too Young to Marry	Elaine Bumpstead
	Big Business Girl	Claire 'Mac' McIntyre
	I Like Your Nerve	Diane Forsythe
	The Ruling Voice	Gloria Bannister
	Platinum Blonde	Gallagher
1932	Taxi!	Sue Riley Nolan
	The Hatchet Man	Sun Toya San
	Play-Girl	Buster 'Bus' Green Dennis
	Week-end Marriage	Lola Davis Hayes
	Life Begins	Grace Sutton
	They Call It Sin	Marion Cullen
1933	Employees' Entrance	Madeleine Walters West
	Grand Slam	Marcia Stanislavsky
	Zoo in Budapest	Eve
	The Life of Jimmy Dolan	Peggy
	Heroes for Sale	Ruth Loring Holmes
	Midnight Mary	Mary Martin
	She Had to Say Yes	Florence 'Flo' Denny
	The Devil's in Love	Margot Lesesne
	Man's Castle	Trina
1934	The House of Rothschild	Julie Rothschild
	Born to Be Bad	Letty Strong
	Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back	Lola Field
	Caravan	Countess Wilma
	The White Parade	June Arden
1935	Clive of India	Margaret Maskelyne Clive
	Shanghai	Barbara Howard
	The Call of the Wild	Claire Blake
	The Crusades	Berengaria, Princess of Navarre
	Hollywood Extra Girl	Crusades cast member	short subject
1936	The Unguarded Hour	Lady Helen Dudley Dearden
	Private Number	Ellen Neal
	Ramona	Ramona
	Ladies in Love	Susie Schmidt
1937	Love Is News	Toni Gateson
	Café Metropole	Laura Ridgeway
	Love Under Fire	Myra Cooper
	Wife, Doctor and Nurse	Ina Heath Lewis
	Second Honeymoon	Vickie Benton
1938	Four Men and a Prayer	Miss Lynn Cherrington
	Three Blind Mice	Pamela Charters
	Suez	Countess Eugenie de Montijo
	Kentucky	Sally Goodwin
1939	Wife, Husband and Friend	Doris Borland
	The Story of Alexander Graham Bell	Mrs. Mabel Bell
	Eternally Yours	Anita
1940	The Doctor Takes a Wife	June Cameron
	He Stayed for Breakfast	Marianna Duval
1941	The Lady from Cheyenne	Annie Morgan
	The Men in Her Life	Lina Varsavina
	Bedtime Story	Jane Drake
1943	A Night to Remember	Nancy Troy
	China	Carolyn Grant
	Show Business at War	Herself	short subject
1944	Ladies Courageous	Roberta Harper
	And Now Tomorrow	Emily Blair
1945	Along Came Jones	Cherry de Longpre
1946	The Stranger	Mary Longstreet
1947	The Perfect Marriage	Maggie Williams
	The Farmer's Daughter	Katrin Holstrom	Academy Award for Best Actress
	The Bishop's Wife	Julia Brougham
1948	Rachel and the Stranger	Rachel Harvey
1949	The Accused	Dr. Wilma Tuttle
	Mother Is a Freshman	Abigail Fortitude Abbott
	Come to the Stable	Sister Margaret	Nominated - Academy Award for Best Actress
1950	Key to the City	Clarissa Standish
1951	You Can Change the World	Herself	short subject
	Cause for Alarm!	Ellen Jones(Brown) / Narrator
	Half Angel	Nora Gilpin
	Screen Snapshots: Hollywood Awards	Herself	short subject
1952	Paula	Paula Rogers
	Because of You	Christine Carroll Kimberly
1953	It Happens Every Thursday	Jane MacAvoy

References

• Loretta Young is referenced in the Sneaker Pimps song "Loretta Young Silks."
• Loretta Young at Turner Classic Movies Spotlight

Bibliography

• Brooks, Tim and Marsh, Earle (2003). The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows. New York: Ballantine Books. ISBN 0-345-45542-8.

External links

• Loretta Young stars in "Lady Killer" on the radio show Suspense in 1950.
• Loretta Young stars in "Jezebel" on the radio show Lux Radio in 1950 & other radio appearances.
• Photographs and bibliography
• Loretta Young and her "Adopted" Baby