It is no secret that some actors in Hollywood have relationships with other actors who are not their spouses. However, some actors chose not to acknowledge any children born from said affairs.
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This was the case for Clark Gable and Loretta Young in the 1930s. As per Hollywood Reporter, the two had an affair while filming The Call of the Wild in 1935, which resulted in a child being conceived, Judy Lewis.
Judy Lewis went on to publish a book, explaining who her parents were after her ‘adoptive’ mother finally revealed the truth.
Clark Gable and Loretta Young had an affair
1930s actors Clark Gable and Loretta Young had an affair while filming The Call of the Wild. At the time, Gable was married and Young was a ‘devout’ Catholic and didn’t want to give up her child nor did she want the affair to come to light.
As reported by Los Angeles Times, in the 1930s, actors had a ‘morals clause’ in their contracts and if there were suspicions of an affair or a child being born out of wedlock, they could have their contracts cancelled as well as their careers.
Loretta Young spent a lot of her pregnancy in Europe. According to Judy Lewis’s book, Young gave birth on November 6, 1935, in a darkened hide-out in Venice. She then left her baby with a nurse and occasionally visited under the cover of darkness.
Young’s daughter was then sent to a Catholic orphanage in San Francisco until she was two years old where Loretta Young eventually adopted her. Loretta Young maintained the story that Judy was her adoptive daughter until she was an adult.
Judy Lewis confronted her mother about her parentage
Judy Lewis revealed that she had often asked her mother about who her parents were. Speaking to Los Angeles Times she explained that when she would ask about why her biological mother had given her up, Loretta would be ‘evasive’ and her nanny had been instructed to say her father was dead.
However, within Hollywood, there were rumours about Judy Lewis’s parents as she had the same ears as Clark Gable and the same overbite and Loretta Young. Lewis revealed that her ears were always covered by her hair or a bonnet and by the age of 7, she had surgery on her ears.
On the eve of her wedding at the age of 23, her fiance had told her about the rumours that Gable was her father.
It wasn’t until Judy was 31 that Loretta confirmed that Clark Gable was her father, however, by then Clark Gable had died of a heart attack in 1960 and never acknowledged Judy as his daughter.
Loretta Young never admitted Judy was her biological daughter while alive, the truth came out after she died in 2000 when she admitted it in her memoir Forever Young.
Judy Lewis reveals what it was like growing up not knowing
In her memoir, Uncommon Knowledge, Judy Lewis revealed what it was like growing up not knowing who her parents were, she explained she felt like ‘half a person’. Moreover, as per Los Angeles Times, her friend Jack Haley Jr revealed everyone knew who her parents were:
Our whole group knew who her parents were--and we knew she did not know. But we thought her mother would tell her.
Throughout her life, Loretta had said that the ‘rumour’ she was her biological daughter was not true, which naturally made Judy feel ‘sad’.
Do you have any idea how sad it makes me that she still feels she must state that her daughter…is a rumor?
She also revealed that there are no photos from the first two years of her life as ‘no one cared enough to take any’.
Lewis adds that she tried hard to please her mother who was often busy and didn’t follow her dreams as her mother had other plans.
But all that glamour was meaningless to a little girl who felt she didn’t exist. I don’t know how else to phrase it. I was alive, but I felt I didn’t really exist. I was starved for attention, recognition, love.
Judy Lewis died on November 25, 2011, at the age of 76.
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Sources used:
Los Angeles Times: ‘I always felt half a person’
Hollywood Reporter: ‘Judy Lewis, Clark Gable and Loretta Young’s Secret Daughter, Dies at 76’
People: ‘Clark Gable's 2 Children: All About John Clark Gable and Judy Lewis’
