Judy Lewis, the woman believed to be the secret daughter of Clark Gable and Loretta Young, has died at 76, MSNBC is reporting. She died at a retirement community in Gladwyne, Pennsylvania, after battling cancer.
In her 1994 memoir ‘Uncommon Knowledge,’ Lewis revealed that she was conceived in 1935 when Young and Gable were shooting ‘The Call of the Wild.’ The unwed Young hid her pregnancy at the time, as Gable was married, and the two were having an affair. After initially putting her daughter in orphanages, the actress brought Lewis home, and told the public she adopted a child.
Young later married Thomas Lewis in 1940, and her daughter took her husband’s surname, even though he never officially adopted her. “It was very difficult for me as a little girl not to be accepted…by my mother, who to is day will not publicly acknowledge that I am her biological child,” Lewis wrote in her autobiography. Lewis said she had to write the biography because she didn’t think “anyone knows what it’s like not to be acknowledged by your own parents.”
An authorized biography published after Young’s death in 2000 claims the actress confirmed Lewis was her biological child. Young and Gable never publicly confirmed the news, however, even after Lewis met him when she was a teenager.
Lewis is survived by her partner Steve Rowland, her daughter, son-in-law and two grandsons. She also had three half-brothers, including John Clark Gable.
Written by: Karen Benardello
