Loretta Young Biography

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Quick Facts

NAME: Loretta Young
OCCUPATION: Actress
BIRTH DATE: January 06, 1913
DEATH DATE: August 12, 2000
PLACE OF BIRTH: Salt Lake City, Utah
PLACE OF DEATH: Santa Monica, California
Originally: Gretchen Michaela Young

Best Known For

Loretta young was a child actor who became one of Hollywood's leading ladies in the 1930s and 1940s.

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Loretta Young

APA Style

Loretta Young. (2013). The Biography Channel website. Retrieved 08:05, May 25, 2013, from http://www.biography.com/people/loretta-young-9542113.

Harvard Style

Loretta Young. [Internet]. 2013. The Biography Channel website. Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/loretta-young-9542113 [Accessed 25 May 2013].

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"Loretta Young." 2013. The Biography Channel website. May 25 2013, 08:05 http://www.biography.com/people/loretta-young-9542113.

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"Loretta Young," The Biography Channel website, 2013, http://www.biography.com/people/loretta-young-9542113 [accessed May 25, 2013].

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"Loretta Young," The Biography Channel website, http://www.biography.com/people/loretta-young-9542113 (accessed May 25, 2013).

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Loretta Young [Internet]. The Biography Channel website; 2013 [cited 2013 May 25] Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/loretta-young-9542113.

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Loretta Young, http://www.biography.com/people/loretta-young-9542113 (last visited May 25, 2013).

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Loretta Young. The Biography Channel website. 2013. Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/loretta-young-9542113. Accessed May 25, 2013.

In 1940, Young married the television producer Thomas H.A. Lewis, with whom she had two sons, Christopher and Peter. Young and Lewis divorced in 1969.

In 1994, Young's daughter, Judy Lewis who had been publicly presented since the 1930s as the actress' adopted child and had taken Young's second husband's name claimed in her autobiography, Uncommon Knowledge,

that she was actually the daughter of Young and Clark Gable. Lewis claimed she was conceived during the making of The Call of the Wild (1935), in which Young and Gable (then married to his first wife, Ria Langham) costarred. Young refused to ever publicly confirm or deny her daughter's account during her lifetime, and the two were estranged for several months after the book's publication. (In a biography published after her death, Young admitted in an interview with the book's author that Gable was indeed the father of Judy Lewis.)

Later Years

After leaving show business altogether in 1963 to devote her time to Catholic charities, Young returned to the small screen in several television movies in the late 1980s. Her last major role was in Lady in the Corner, a 1989 television drama. In her later years, Young was increasingly reclusive, though she made occasional public appearances in support of her favorite charities. She lived in Palm Springs, California, with her third husband (since 1994), the Oscar-winning costume designer Jean Louis, until his death in 1997. Young died of ovarian cancer on August 12, 2000.