When I listen to the song sung by Diana Ross and The Supremes entitled "Love Child" which was a top number one in the late 60s, I often wonder if the story I am going to write about now inspired the author of the lyrics to write it? Just a little bit...
I bought some dozens of old, some out-of-print books over two years ago but somehow did not
menage to read them all truly extensively. Anyway, I just have re-discovered "Uncommon Knowledge" by
Judy Lewis. To those who do not know her, Judy is the
love child by
Loretta Young and
Clark Gable.
It was a common thing for the famous actors children to write a tell-all
memoirs after
Christina Crawford, the adopted daughter of
Joan Crawford, wrote
"Mommie Dearest". The book's release was postponed until Joan's death, so she had no opportunity to tell her version. Anyway, friends and even enemies of Joan (and she had lots of both!) condemned Tina for publishing such a trash in order just to earn money on the name she did not work for. And they also summed it up with the clear statement that most of it is a fairy-tale, which was later proven. However, this did not make
Bette Davis' only biological child,
B.D. Hyman, stop from writing somehow simillar thing called
"My Mother's Keeper". The book broke Davis' heart. She, like Crawford, excluded B.D. from her will, though she also suffered several strokes, from which she never fully recovered and died of mesmerized breast cancer some time later.
However, Judy Lewis memoirs are definetely
not on the same level than the ones by Hyman or Crawford. Judy is a class apart from them, to say it delicately. The world she lived in was not an idyllic one the press knew. She truly suffered as a child, but her book is not any kind of an insult on Loretta Young, her famous mother, or her legendary father.
The story of Judith Young Lewis (as she was legally called) starts
on the set of little remembered William Wellman's romance
"Call of the Wild", made in 1935, starring two great stars: 22-year-old beauty Loretta Young and the greatest hearthrob of them all, 34-year-old Clark Gable. It is not an uncommon thing when the two beautiful and famous creatures fall in love on set. It is also nothing strange that they share the same bed and some time after the end of shooting the lady star discovers she is expecting. A perfect love story? Not really. She is a strict Catholic, to whom having an illegitimate child is one of the greatest sins. But also, he is a married man. His marriage to a woman who might have been his mother is a fiction. But the Hollywood's hypocrisy loves to believe that its stars are as saint as sexy so everybody think that the perfect screen lover is a happy, devoted husband.
There is a question: what should they do? In all the cases like this almost every actress does the same thing. She has an abortion, often arranged by the studio she is part of. But Loretta skips such an option. Her faith does not permit her to commit murder on a powerless little creature she is carrying - according to her faith. So, there is a whole rumor being evoluted in the next months and then decades of their lives.
Loretta kept her pregnancy a secret. There were only several people knowing she was expecting. Only those she trusted. The received great help from her mother, Gladys Blazer. Judith, later called simply Judy, is born on 6th November, 1935 and some months later her mother tells a fairy-tale to the newspapers that she is adopting two baby girls. Later she tells that the mother of the second girl changed her mind so she could not take the baby away, but she would have one baby girl and here Judy comes along.
Before I read the book by Judy I praised Loretta for being brave and not aborting, risking her career.
She had nuts, I thought. But now I know I was wrong. The one who "had nuts" was
Ingrid Bergman, when she disapproved any idea of an abortion. She was married to her first husband and a mother of a teen girl. And she was pregnant by another man. It meant her end in Hollywood. She could not keep it a secret. But she did not abort her child. She was named the worst of things by the senators in the US and had to move to Europe for several years. And I guess she was awarded for her being truly brave, as she came back as an Oscar winner. Loretta had
no nuts.
Judy grew up believing she was
no one's child. She wrote that she was a shy girl and always afraid whether her mommy won't change her mind and give her back to an orphanage. The things seemed to go quite smooth when Loretta married Tom Lewis, but it was just an illussion. When Judy's brothers appeared, she was not in the interest of her family anymore.
She also grew up in belief that there was something
wrong with her. Why? Loretta's nightmare was the fact that her daughter bore a big resemblance both to her and to her father. Judy had big, standing ears of Clark Gable. She also had his look, though it was mixed with Loretta's and
she looked very sweet. And she had the problems with her front teeth on the top, just as Loretta did in her childhood. And so Judy had to hide her ears. She did not know why but whenever she appeared in public, she wore bonnets. She hated them. She also wore braces on her teeth, being very young child. After some kids laughed from her big ears, Loretta insisted on "fixing" them. It was a painful surgery, but Loretta saw no other way of covering her "sin".
Yes, this is what Judy meant in her mother's life. I guess that the whole hiding of the little girl was like punishment for her sin. But did she realise that in fact it was Judy who was being punished?
When her half-brothers appeared, her stepfather prefered not to have little Judy on the family photos. To say that he did not love her it is too little, I suppose. And what surprises me most - everyone knew who Judy was. She was always in search for her identity. Her friends knew, but everyone kept it a secret. It was a
public secret. William Wellman, the director of the film on which set Judy's parents met and fell in love, when asked about Judy, answered: "All I know is that Loretta got a holiday after the filming and she came back with a girl with a veeeery big ears". Adela Rogers St. Johns, when asked about the gossips of her own child with Gable, who was her friend, answered: "For God's sake, would
any woman deny having a child with Clark Gable, especially if it was true?!". Well, there was at least one. Her name was Loretta Young.
Loretta was
not a saint. She was know for her affairs with most of her leading men. She once said that she was in love with every leading man she had co-starred with. In 1933 her affair with Spencer Tracy was well-publisized. The press wrote that Mr. Tracy is soon to divorce his wife. But after all they both decided to split because they claimed that they were devout Catholics. So she turned to Franchot Tone, Tyrone Power, and Clark Gable, of course (to name a few). She divorced Tom Lewis almost after 30 years of marriage, though most of it was a hidden nightmare (Judy said that their parents kept their conflicts quiet behind the door). She remarried to Jean Louis, a friend's widower, after Tom's death because Loretta did not believe in divorces.
Loretta, born Gretchen Young, was the third child of Gladys Blazer by John Young. He abandoned the family early in her childhood. Her two older sisters were Polly Ann Young and Sally Blane, born Elizabeth Jane Young (she used another name in her career not to be identified with her famous siblings). Later Gladys remarried and gave birth to Georgiana, who is still alive today and a happy wife of once an MGM actor, Ricardo Montalban. They married just after knowing each other for 3 weeks (Loretta died of ovarian cancer in Montalbans' household). What is significant, all the 4 sisters bore strong resemblance to each other. Even Georgiana, who was a half-sister. Generally it was thought that Loretta was the most beautiful one, but I am not sure as in my opinion all were really great beauties and Loretta was inquestionably the most famous one (the only Oscar winner).
But what about Clark? It seems the easiest thing to call him bastard who put his pants on and his paternity ended when he left Loretta's bed. Well, it was not exactly like this. Loretta did not tell Judy that she was her natural child by Clark Gable until very late in her lifetime. But she confessed that when
Clark was brought the news of her pregnancy, he kept calling and coming to the 20th Century Fox's lot (where Loretta worked). She was afraid of a scandal. She kept avoiding him and left to recluse to give birth in secret. He finally gave up and
Carole Lombard appeared. The rest is history.
What if they would risk their careers? If Loretta came public with her child of Clark Gable, two great movie careers would be definetely over. And from what I concluded career was the most important thing for Loretta. Far more than her Catholic upbringing, being a wife and a mother. I guess she just added these functions because everyone expected this from her. She told Judy that Clark was the love of her life and she always felt sorry they never married. Did she blame Judy? After all, without this child then, Clark would go on to divorce his wife (which he did) and marry Loretta (but he married Carole, who was free). It is also not risky to tell that Clark also would not be so sure to leave all the stardom behind. Not because he loved his star status, but
because as a man who grew up without his mother with a strict, raw father (later he had a stepmother whom he adored but she also passed away), who never recognized his profession. He had no education and, which is more basical in such cases, no faith in himself at all. He never felt he was a real actor. Frank Capra discovered his great sense of acting talent and it granted him an Oscar, but Clark had to little belief in himself to try to fight for good roles. He knew little on literature or music, because from the early age his father insisted on his son working physically. There was no a pattern of a real parent in his life.
Yes, it is strange that a group of teenagers never dared to tell Judy the truth. Everybody knew the truth, it was Hollywood's most public secret.
New ears &
new teeth did not change the truth, they simply could not.
Judy remembered that she was asked by her friend Mary Frances why Judy was looking like
her mum if she was adopted? Mary Frances was the adopted daughter of Irene Dunne, a Hollywood star and a friend of Loretta. Mary insisted that adopted children do not look like their adoptive parents. When asked by Judy, Loretta told her that while they lived together it was natural that Judy took her ways of behaving, and so on.
But, additionally, Loretta did not tell the truth to her husband, Tom. He seemed never to ask. Later Judy's half-brother, Christopher, told her that Tom asked Clark Gable while he was at a party during the making of his second movie with Loretta, "Key to the City". Clark denied this rumors, saying that he would love to have a child and adding, "Do you think I would let anyone else bringing up my only child?". He did. Tom Lewis was bringing up his only child, and, additionally, never acted like her father. He even suspected that maybe Judy was the daughter of Loretta's older sister, Sally (all sisters were looking very alike).
I do not want to summerize what I read in Judy's book. I just think that she managed to combine the class with the truth. Anyway, I just was thinking if it was be better for Judy not be born at all? What if her mom aborted her? Well, I think, beside it all, that it is good to have her on this world, as against all odds, she became a successful and happy human being.
people who impress me. My first meeting with Cyd Charisse came along when I saw her dancing in "Singin' in the Rain" (1952). Cyd appears as a dancing vamp, which seduces Gene Kelly with her dancing. The movie was to feature Debbie Reynolds in these sequences but the aspiring 20-year-old failed to satisfy Kelly, who was one of the directors (together with Stanley Donen). So, Gene relied on a trained dancer with those famous beautiful perfect legs.
someone who aspired to become a real actress. However, Cyd received one Golden Globe nom for best actress in a musical or comedy for "Silk Stockings" (1957).
