Judy Lewis
| Judy Lewis | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Judith Young November 6, 1935 Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Died | November 25, 2011 (aged 76) Gladwyne, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Occupation | Actress, producer, author, psychotherapist |
| Years active | 1958–1977 |
| Spouse(s) | Joe Tinney (divorced) |
| Children | 1 |
| Parent(s) |
Clark Gable (father) Loretta Young (mother) Tom Lewis (stepfather) |
Judy Lewis (born Judith Young; November 6, 1935 – November 25, 2011) was an American actress, writer, producer, and therapist. She was the secret biological daughter of actor Clark Gable and actress Loretta Young.
Lewis was the biological daughter of actress Loretta Young and actor Clark Gable. She was conceived while her parents were working on the film The Call of the Wild. She was the only biological child that Gable had while he was still alive (his only son was born four months after his death), but he had no relationship with her. Gable was married at the time to Maria "Ria" Langham. Young concealed her pregnancy to protect their film careers and to avoid scandal. Young went to Europe for several months and then returned to a small house in Venice, California with her mother. A Hollywood gossip columnist interviewed Young because she was claiming to be ill for weeks and needed rest. She gave the interview from her bed, covered in blankets to conceal her pregnant belly.
Young gave birth, and weeks later, the baby was put in an orphanage. Lewis would spend the next 19 months in various "hideaways and orphanages" until Young's mother retrieved the toddler. Later she told Hollywood gossip columnist Louella Parsons that she had "adopted" two children and several weeks later, told Parsons that she had to give one of the children back to its biological mother. She did this as a smokescreen to cover up the birth and to make her adoption story more believable.
When Lewis was four years old, her mother married businessman Tom Lewis, and Judy went by his last name. However, Tom never adopted Judy because he never knew that she was Loretta's biological daughter, a fact that he would have learned had he gone through adoption procedures. Christopher Lewis once told Judy that at one time his father thought that Judy was the biological daughter of Loretta's sister, Sally Blane, because of Judy's resemblance to Sally. Her mother went on to have two sons, Christopher Lewis and Peter Lewis, with Tom Lewis.
Lewis looked strikingly like Gable as she grew older, including having ears that stuck out like his. Young often put bonnets on the toddler, and had Lewis undergo a painful operation on her ears as a child to pin them back in another attempt to hide her real parentage. As Lewis grew up, several people in Hollywood, as well as the public, began to believe that Clark Gable was her biological father. When Judy was fifteen, Gable came to her mother's house to visit her briefly. Gable asked Lewis about her life and then upon leaving, kissed her on her forehead. It was the only time that Judy ever spoke to Gable, and she had no idea he was her father. When Lewis met her future husband at the age of twenty-three, it was he who told her that Gable was her biological father and that "everyone" knew, which stunned Lewis. Lewis, at age 31, finally confronted her mother when Gable had been dead for five years. Loretta Young became nauseated but confirmed the truth. Lewis wrote a book about her life titled Uncommon Knowledge, because it seemed that she was the only one who did not know about her true parentage. Loretta Young died on August 12, 2000, at age 87; her autobiography, published posthumously, confirmed that Gable was indeed Lewis's father. Loretta Young reportedly told her daughter-in-law in 1998 that she was date raped by Clark Gable, which was how her daughter was conceived. The family stayed silent about the claim until after both Loretta Young and her daughter Judy Lewis had died.
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