November 15, 2024 • 9 mins
Loretta Young was a superstar during Hollywood’s golden age. But after her death, in her memoir, she admitted that her daughter was fathered by Clark Gable. Her family later said she’d told them it was date rape.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Right. Imagine your career in Hollywood is just launching. When
you make a film with a huge heart throb, a
mutual flirtation turns into a night of unwanted sex leading
to a baby, and you have to hide the pregnancy
and the child's origin for decades. I'm Patty Steele. Loretta Young,
huge mid century movie star, date raped by another superstar.
(00:23):
That's next on the backstory. We're back with the backstory now.
OI live in a time when anything goes when it
comes to sex, religion, social expectations. At least we think
we live in that time, but not all that long ago.
It was a whole different world, and if you were
a well known figure, you had to maintain your image
(00:45):
as though your career and even your life depended on it.
Because it did. Loretta Young was a superstar actress of
the mid twentieth century, both in film and later on TV,
but she could have lost it all due to a
very early incident in her Hollywood career. Born Gretchen Young
in nineteen thirteen, her mother launched her three daughters into
(01:06):
show business to make an extra buck after her divorce.
Who was a rough life at first. Her mother even
gave her only son up for adoption to a wealthy
woman she'd met. He eventually became a successful lawyer, but
he didn't have much contact with his sisters. Loretta was
in her first silent movie at the age of three.
Between fifteen and seventeen, she starting twenty two movies with
(01:29):
stars like Lawn Cheney. At seventeen, she eloped with her
co star on a film, but that was a null.
The year later, in nineteen thirty four, just twenty one
years old, she co starred in a steamy story about
an udwed mother with Carrie Grant. Loretta now is becoming
a Hollywood sex symbol. Tall, slender, sultry, beautiful with big
(01:51):
green eyes. She's red hot. But her mother had sent
the girls to a convent for school and regularly had
their priests over for dinner. So Loretta is also a
devout Catholic, but she also loves men, and she has
a number of relationships that end sort of badly. Then,
when she's twenty, she meets Spencer Tracy. He's also a
(02:12):
devout Catholic, but he's married. Although separated, the pair openly date,
albeit without sex, but it becomes pretty clear Spencer will
not get a divorce. Of course, he went on to
have a long relationship with Catherine Hepburn while still remaining
married to his wife. Kate apparently didn't mind that, so
(02:32):
in nineteen thirty five, Loretta makes The Call of the
Wild with an even bigger superstar of the era, Clark Gable,
and also with a dog who actually steals the movie,
but whatever. She's twenty two years old. Clark's thirty four
and once again married, but he is a huge womanizer,
constantly at war with his wife over his cheating with
(02:54):
co stars like Joan Crawford. He'd also been involved in
a drunk driving accident a year earlier that killed a pedestrian.
MGM Studio's legendary team of fixers already had their hands
full when Clark, Loretta, and the rest of the cast
and crew head to the mountains in Washington State to film,
things heat up. Even as the film set is in
(03:16):
a freezing place, they're caught in a blizzard for almost
two weeks. It's eleven degrees below zero, and Loretta does
multiple takes for an outdoor scene where she's doused with
water to the point where she's chattering her teeth so
much she starts to cry. She needs somebody to warm
her up, and she and Gable have fun together and
are flirting wildly. In nine weeks on the set, they
(03:40):
were only able to film for six days, so there
was lots of downtime. Years later, Loretta's daughter said, my
mother always claimed that every performance involved falling a little
bit in love with her co star, and with the snow,
cold and isolation, a feeling was amped up. There were
rumors in Hollywood that Gable had betted yet another costar,
(04:03):
but Loretta said she didn't feel any guilt because nothing
sexual happened between them while out there in the wilderness.
Then it was time to head back to la she
thought the flirtation would end. But on the overnight train back,
while the film crew was seated or sleeping elsewhere on
the train late at night, Gable comes walking into Loretta's
sleeping compartment. She didn't share what happened that night with
(04:26):
anyone for a long time, but the end result, Loretta
gets pregnant. It's a situation that if it came to
light in that time, would have ended her career and
Gables as well, so she kept her mouth shut. Anyway,
what she have said sex wanted or unwanted was something
women did not talk about. If it was unwanted and
(04:48):
happened on a date, the word rape didn't seem appropriate
in those days. That was something that happened to women
who were attacked by strangers. If it happened on a date,
you probably were asking for it. That was what they thought.
The term date rape wasn't used until the late nineteen seventies.
Loretta was eighty five years old and heard that term
(05:08):
on TV. She asked her son and daughter in law
about it, and they explained it, and Loretta said, that's
what happened with Clark and me. After she found out
she was pregnant, she didn't tell her movie studio fixers
because they would have arranged an abortion, which she would
see as a mortal sin. But she did tell her
sisters and eventually her mother, and they came up with
(05:29):
a plan. First, she did two more films with plenty
of public appearances. She hosted some parties and then publicly
claimed she was simply exhausted. She and her mom sailed
to Europe for the summer. When she came back, her
doctor claimed she needed at least two months of bed rest.
In order to relieve her boredom, she'd go to the movies,
(05:49):
but only late at night to drive ins where no
one would see her. There was some talk around town
that she might be ill, so Loretta finally gave an
interview to a gossip columnist while in bed with pillows
strategically piled all around her. She said, while I'm sad
that I'll be missing my sister's upcoming wedding, I still
got my books, my thoughts, and my cigarettes. Meantime, her
(06:13):
mother got busy soundproofing the house for the home birth
so no one would hear her screams as she went
into labor. Then, on November sixth, nineteen thirty five, Loretta
started screaming and her doctor chloroformed her as she gave
birth on her sister's massage table. She had a baby
girl named Judy. Someone no one knows who actually sent
(06:35):
Gable the following telegram, beautiful blue eyed, blonde baby girl
born eight fifteen this morning, where it is Gable tore
it into pieces. At first, the baby stayed nearby with
a nurse named Frenchie, but when Frenchie started talking blackmail,
the baby was taken and put in a Catholic orphanage. Finally,
when Judy was two, Loretta made a big public show
(06:58):
of adopting Judy she could raise the baby herself. Gable
never acknowledged fathering the baby, and Loretta believed she was
the only person responsible for the pregnancy, so she invited
Clark to visit little Judy, which he did but only once.
She also opened a bank account so he could contribute
to raising her, but he never gave a nickel, and
(07:19):
because Judy looked so much like Gable, including his protruding ears,
she kept the baby in bonnets until she was five
or six, not really a baby at that point, and
then had her get surgery to pin her ears back.
Judy never found out who her father was until right
before her wedding when she was twenty three. Loretta and
Judy had a falling out years later over Judy's memoir,
(07:43):
in which she went after her mom for lying to
her all those years. On the first page, she wrote,
my life has been filled with hypocrisy and deception from
the moment I was born. The story of Loretta's pregnancy
by Clark Gable quietly made the rounds in Hollywood for years,
with Loretta finally confirming it in her autobiography, which was
(08:04):
released as per her wishes only after her death in
two thousand. The story of the date rape only came
out after Judy's death through Loretta's son and her daughter
in law, who said that the story needed to be
told as encouragement to other women who had gone through
the same thing. Linda Lewis said, too many women have
believed that in relationship, the guy tries to get what
(08:26):
he wants and the woman's job is to fight him off.
That game is over. Hope you're enjoying The Backstory with
Patty Steele. Follow or subscribe for free to get new
episodes delivered automatically, and feel free to dm me if
(08:48):
you have a story you'd like me to cover. On Facebook,
It's Patty Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele. I'm
Patty Steele. The Backstory is a production of iHeartMedia from
networks the Elvis Durand Group and Steel Trap Productions. Our
producer is Doug Fraser. Our writer Jake Kushner. We have
(09:08):
new episodes every Tuesday and Friday. Feel free to reach
out to me with comments and even story suggestions on
Instagram at real Patty Steele and on Facebook at Patty Steele.
Thanks for listening to the backstory with Patty Steele, the
pieces of history you didn't know you needed to know.
Right. Imagine your career in Hollywood is just launching. When
you make a film with a huge heart throb, a
mutual flirtation turns into a night of unwanted sex leading
to a baby, and you have to hide the pregnancy
and the child's origin for decades. I'm Patty Steele. Loretta Young,
huge mid century movie star, date raped by another superstar.
(00:23):
That's next on the backstory. We're back with the backstory now.
OI live in a time when anything goes when it
comes to sex, religion, social expectations. At least we think
we live in that time, but not all that long ago.
It was a whole different world, and if you were
a well known figure, you had to maintain your image
(00:45):
as though your career and even your life depended on it.
Because it did. Loretta Young was a superstar actress of
the mid twentieth century, both in film and later on TV,
but she could have lost it all due to a
very early incident in her Hollywood career. Born Gretchen Young
in nineteen thirteen, her mother launched her three daughters into
(01:06):
show business to make an extra buck after her divorce.
Who was a rough life at first. Her mother even
gave her only son up for adoption to a wealthy
woman she'd met. He eventually became a successful lawyer, but
he didn't have much contact with his sisters. Loretta was
in her first silent movie at the age of three.
Between fifteen and seventeen, she starting twenty two movies with
(01:29):
stars like Lawn Cheney. At seventeen, she eloped with her
co star on a film, but that was a null.
The year later, in nineteen thirty four, just twenty one
years old, she co starred in a steamy story about
an udwed mother with Carrie Grant. Loretta now is becoming
a Hollywood sex symbol. Tall, slender, sultry, beautiful with big
(01:51):
green eyes. She's red hot. But her mother had sent
the girls to a convent for school and regularly had
their priests over for dinner. So Loretta is also a
devout Catholic, but she also loves men, and she has
a number of relationships that end sort of badly. Then,
when she's twenty, she meets Spencer Tracy. He's also a
(02:12):
devout Catholic, but he's married. Although separated, the pair openly date,
albeit without sex, but it becomes pretty clear Spencer will
not get a divorce. Of course, he went on to
have a long relationship with Catherine Hepburn while still remaining
married to his wife. Kate apparently didn't mind that, so
(02:32):
in nineteen thirty five, Loretta makes The Call of the
Wild with an even bigger superstar of the era, Clark Gable,
and also with a dog who actually steals the movie,
but whatever. She's twenty two years old. Clark's thirty four
and once again married, but he is a huge womanizer,
constantly at war with his wife over his cheating with
(02:54):
co stars like Joan Crawford. He'd also been involved in
a drunk driving accident a year earlier that killed a pedestrian.
MGM Studio's legendary team of fixers already had their hands
full when Clark, Loretta, and the rest of the cast
and crew head to the mountains in Washington State to film,
things heat up. Even as the film set is in
(03:16):
a freezing place, they're caught in a blizzard for almost
two weeks. It's eleven degrees below zero, and Loretta does
multiple takes for an outdoor scene where she's doused with
water to the point where she's chattering her teeth so
much she starts to cry. She needs somebody to warm
her up, and she and Gable have fun together and
are flirting wildly. In nine weeks on the set, they
(03:40):
were only able to film for six days, so there
was lots of downtime. Years later, Loretta's daughter said, my
mother always claimed that every performance involved falling a little
bit in love with her co star, and with the snow,
cold and isolation, a feeling was amped up. There were
rumors in Hollywood that Gable had betted yet another costar,
(04:03):
but Loretta said she didn't feel any guilt because nothing
sexual happened between them while out there in the wilderness.
Then it was time to head back to la she
thought the flirtation would end. But on the overnight train back,
while the film crew was seated or sleeping elsewhere on
the train late at night, Gable comes walking into Loretta's
sleeping compartment. She didn't share what happened that night with
(04:26):
anyone for a long time, but the end result, Loretta
gets pregnant. It's a situation that if it came to
light in that time, would have ended her career and
Gables as well, so she kept her mouth shut. Anyway,
what she have said sex wanted or unwanted was something
women did not talk about. If it was unwanted and
(04:48):
happened on a date, the word rape didn't seem appropriate
in those days. That was something that happened to women
who were attacked by strangers. If it happened on a date,
you probably were asking for it. That was what they thought.
The term date rape wasn't used until the late nineteen seventies.
Loretta was eighty five years old and heard that term
(05:08):
on TV. She asked her son and daughter in law
about it, and they explained it, and Loretta said, that's
what happened with Clark and me. After she found out
she was pregnant, she didn't tell her movie studio fixers
because they would have arranged an abortion, which she would
see as a mortal sin. But she did tell her
sisters and eventually her mother, and they came up with
(05:29):
a plan. First, she did two more films with plenty
of public appearances. She hosted some parties and then publicly
claimed she was simply exhausted. She and her mom sailed
to Europe for the summer. When she came back, her
doctor claimed she needed at least two months of bed rest.
In order to relieve her boredom, she'd go to the movies,
(05:49):
but only late at night to drive ins where no
one would see her. There was some talk around town
that she might be ill, so Loretta finally gave an
interview to a gossip columnist while in bed with pillows
strategically piled all around her. She said, while I'm sad
that I'll be missing my sister's upcoming wedding, I still
got my books, my thoughts, and my cigarettes. Meantime, her
(06:13):
mother got busy soundproofing the house for the home birth
so no one would hear her screams as she went
into labor. Then, on November sixth, nineteen thirty five, Loretta
started screaming and her doctor chloroformed her as she gave
birth on her sister's massage table. She had a baby
girl named Judy. Someone no one knows who actually sent
(06:35):
Gable the following telegram, beautiful blue eyed, blonde baby girl
born eight fifteen this morning, where it is Gable tore
it into pieces. At first, the baby stayed nearby with
a nurse named Frenchie, but when Frenchie started talking blackmail,
the baby was taken and put in a Catholic orphanage. Finally,
when Judy was two, Loretta made a big public show
(06:58):
of adopting Judy she could raise the baby herself. Gable
never acknowledged fathering the baby, and Loretta believed she was
the only person responsible for the pregnancy, so she invited
Clark to visit little Judy, which he did but only once.
She also opened a bank account so he could contribute
to raising her, but he never gave a nickel, and
(07:19):
because Judy looked so much like Gable, including his protruding ears,
she kept the baby in bonnets until she was five
or six, not really a baby at that point, and
then had her get surgery to pin her ears back.
Judy never found out who her father was until right
before her wedding when she was twenty three. Loretta and
Judy had a falling out years later over Judy's memoir,
(07:43):
in which she went after her mom for lying to
her all those years. On the first page, she wrote,
my life has been filled with hypocrisy and deception from
the moment I was born. The story of Loretta's pregnancy
by Clark Gable quietly made the rounds in Hollywood for years,
with Loretta finally confirming it in her autobiography, which was
(08:04):
released as per her wishes only after her death in
two thousand. The story of the date rape only came
out after Judy's death through Loretta's son and her daughter
in law, who said that the story needed to be
told as encouragement to other women who had gone through
the same thing. Linda Lewis said, too many women have
believed that in relationship, the guy tries to get what
(08:26):
he wants and the woman's job is to fight him off.
That game is over. Hope you're enjoying The Backstory with
Patty Steele. Follow or subscribe for free to get new
episodes delivered automatically, and feel free to dm me if
(08:48):
you have a story you'd like me to cover. On Facebook,
It's Patty Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele. I'm
Patty Steele. The Backstory is a production of iHeartMedia from
networks the Elvis Durand Group and Steel Trap Productions. Our
producer is Doug Fraser. Our writer Jake Kushner. We have
(09:08):
new episodes every Tuesday and Friday. Feel free to reach
out to me with comments and even story suggestions on
Instagram at real Patty Steele and on Facebook at Patty Steele.
Thanks for listening to the backstory with Patty Steele, the
pieces of history you didn't know you needed to know.
Host
Patty Steele
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