11/7/2023 0 Comments Loretta young starletIt’s harder to see what happened to her as indicative of larger structures of power - patriarchy, of course, but also Hollywood - that continue to make it so difficult for these stories to be told. ![]() ![]() It’s easy to look at Young’s elaborate cover-up and label it ridiculous. This is a story about the past, of course, but one with chilling echoes in the present: in the ever-accumulating allegations against Bill Cosby, or this week’s revelations about the rape of a 16-year-old member of The Runaways in 1976. But you also have to understand who Gable and Young were - what their larger-than-life images stood for, and all they stood to lose if the truth were revealed. When Lewis was finished describing the act, Young’s response was a revelation: “That’s what happened between me and Clark.”Īfter my extensive interviews with Young’s son, daughter-in-law, and longtime biographer, it seems clear to me that by keeping the secret of her daughter’s conception, Young was doing what millions of women have done before and since: using what little power she had to take back control of her life after it had been wrested from her.īut to understand this story - and why Young kept quiet for so long - one has to understand not only how women were made to understand their role in unwanted sexual advances, but also the expectations that governed Hollywood in the 1930s, and the well-honed studio system that ensured, at all costs, that stars hewed to them. “You have to remember, this was a very proper lady.” “I did the best I could to make her understand,” Lewis said. Young loved to watch Larry King Live, which is most likely what prompted her to first ask her friend, frequent houseguest, and would-be biographer, Edward Funk, and then her daughter-in-law, Linda Lewis, to explain the term “date rape.” As Lewis recalled from her Jensen Beach, Florida, home this April, sitting next to her husband, Chris - Young’s second born - and flanked by Young’s Oscar and Golden Globe, it took a tact to explain, in language that an 85-year-old could understand, what “date rape” meant. Over the course of her decades-long career, she was called a duplicitous liar, a fraud, a hypocrite. Meanwhile, Young attempted to reconcile her image as devout and often openly moralizing Catholic, known for implementing a “swear jar” on set, with the persistent rumors of an extramarital affair. The child wouldn’t learn of her parentage until just before her wedding, and Gable never acknowledged her as his own. The story was successfully concealed from the public, even as it circulated around Hollywood, at a muted level, for years - Young herself didn’t confirm it until after her death, via her posthumously released memoirs, in 2000. Over the course of the next two years, Young managed to hide the pregnancy, birth, and young infant for more than a year, eventually manufacturing an adoption narrative to bring her daughter home. ![]() Young was also known for her part in one of the biggest Hollywood cover-ups of all time: In 1935, at the age of 23, she became pregnant with Clark Gable’s child - while Gable was married to another woman. ![]() Even years out of the spotlight, her distinctive doe eyes and name would have been recognizable to anyone born before 1950. She’d first appeared onscreen in 1917, at the age of 3 by age 40, she’d appeared in over a hundred films. At 80, she’d married French fashion designer Jean Louis until his death in 1997, they had reveled in their collective fabulousness, drawing attention wherever they went, like an irresistible vortex of glamour.Īt that point, Young was best remembered for The Loretta Young Show, a pioneering and massively successful program that had put her in American living rooms for the bulk of the '50s. It was 1998 and the 85-year-old Young was living a life of comfort and splendor in Palm Springs. It’s unclear what news story, exactly, made Loretta Young - one of the most beautiful and celebrated actresses of Classic Hollywood - first wonder if she had been date-raped by one of the biggest stars of all time.
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