Clark Gable was married to Maria Franklin when he began filming The Call of the Wild with Hollywood up-and-comer Loretta Young in 1934, and the pair quickly engaged in an on-set affair.
When Loretta fell pregnant, Clark’s status as a married man and her conservative religious views meant that she needed to hide the pregnancy at all costs.
Loretta fled to Europe in 1935 and gave birth to their daughter, Judy Lewis, before pretending to adopt her from an orphanage. As Judy grew up, she bore a striking resemblance to Clark – particularly her ears – which led to her undergoing surgery to pin them back.
Judy met her father only once, when she was 15 and unaware of the rumours surrounding her parentage. “He was like a God. I couldn’t believe that he wanted to sit and talk to me,” she recalled to The New York Post years later.
“We talked for maybe half an hour about school, my favourite subjects, boys, ballet class. When he got up to go, I walked him to the door, and he kissed me on the forehead… I had no idea why Clark Gable was talking with me, but he was saying goodbye.”
As an adult, Judy confronted her mother about the rumours, and Loretta finally revealed the truth. “I told my mum that all I wanted was to be accepted and loved – and if she couldn’t do that, why didn’t she give me to a family that could have?” Judy wrote in her memoir, Uncommon Knowledge.
“It was very difficult for me as a little girl not to be accepted or acknowledged by my mother, who, to this day, will not publicly acknowledge that I am her biological child.” Clark also refused to acknowledge her and left her out of his will.
“I ask myself why he didn’t leave me something. Forget money – even just a letter,” she told People. “It leaves me in the dark.”
While Clark never revealed the truth about his secret love child, Loretta certainly did in an authorised 2000 biography, Forever Young, authored by Joan Wester Anderson. The late actress was firm in the fact that she only wanted to tell the truth after her death, and the biography was published posthumously.
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