Loretta Young (January 6, 1913 - August 12, 2000) was an Academy Award-winning American actress.

Early life

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. Her mother, a Catholic convert, left her unfaithful husband and headed West. Loretta and her sisters, Polly Ann Young and Elizabeth Jane Young (screen name Sally Blane), worked as child actresses, of which Loretta was the most successful. Young's first role was at the of 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.

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. The next year, she was anointed one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars.

In 1930, Young, then only 17, ran off 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.

In 1934, Young had an affair with Clark Gable while on location for "Call of the Wild", and became pregnant. Returning from a long "vacation" (during which she secretly gave birth to a daughter), Young announced that she had "adopted" the little girl. The child was raised as "Judy Lewis" after taking the name of Young's second husband, producer Tom Lewis. According to Judy's autobiography Uncommon Knowledge, she first learned that Gable was her father from other children at school.

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.
Hosting The Loretta Young Show
Hosting The Loretta Young Show

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 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. (Young's TV shows 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.)

These arrangements, however, were made before the invention of videos and DVDs, and so luckily, her television work can still be viewed.

Marriages and Relationships

    * Married to actor Grant Withers in 1930, but it lasted only a year, and was annulled, in part because Loretta was only 17.
    * Married to producer Tom Lewis in 1940. Lewis died in 1988.
    * Married to fashion designer Jean Louis in 1993. Louis died in 1997.
    * Involved in affairs with Spencer Tracy and Clark Gable; in 1935 she and Gable produced a daughter, known as Judy Lewis, whose legitimation required a considerable amount of ingenuity.

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 her death, she devoted herself to volunteer work for charities and churches with her friend of many years, Jane Wyman.

She died at 87 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.

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.

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