Ham on Wry Award-Judy Lewis, Love Child of Clark Gable and Loretta Young, Dies at 76

Judy Lewis with her Mother Loretta Young in 1961

While working on The Call of the Wild, a movie shot in 1935 from the book written by Jack London, Clark Gable and Loretta Young had a romantic liaison that resulted in a pregnancy.  Young refused to end it because of her Catholic upbringing, but Gable was married to his second wife at that time.  As a result the whole situation remained secret in order to avoid a scandal.  Young went abroad for awhile and returned to California to give birth to Lewis in Venice, California, where mother and daughter lived together for eight months.

Young then contrived a huge deception, placing her child in an orphanage under the care of nuns for the next eleven months.  She then reclaimed her daughter, but told everyone that she had adopted the girl.  When her daughter turned five, Young married Tom Lewis.  Young gave Judy her husband's last name, bur he never adopted Judy and treated her poorly.

As a child, Lewis suffered the slings and arrows of other children, who called her "Dumbo Ears" because her ears closely resembled her father's.  At the age of seven, Young arranged for an ear surgery to make her daughter's ears less prominent and diminish the likelihood of people drawling conclusions about Gable being her father.  Gable did visit her once at the age of 15, but he never saw her again.  Lewis was mystified by the visit and his show of affection when he left.

Judy Lewis in 1997/Photofest

Two weeks before 23-year-old Lewis married Joe Tinney, he told her the truth about her parents, but she didn't confront her mother about it until eight years later.  Young finally confessed the entire story to her, although she publicly denied Gable was the father when Lewis's memoir Uncommon Knowledge was published in 1994.  This caused a rift between the two that lasted until a few weeks before Young died in 2000. when they reconciled.  After her death, Forever Young, the authorized biography of her life, ended any speculation about Judy Lewis's true parentage.

Lewis pursued a successful acting career for two decades, but switched to marriage and family therapy after that.  She spent much of her later career working with foster children and pregnant teens.  Perhaps her parents' refusal to acknowledge her and her unhappy early life prompted her choice to focus on troubled children.  Lewis never really made peace with Gable's absence from her life.  Of his only visit she wrote, "As he left, he gave me a kiss on my forehead, but I didn't know he was my father. I cry when I watch his films. Why didn't he ride up on a white horse and rescue me?" Ham on Wry finds it tragic that a child suffered so that her parents' careers could flourish.