A Film Diva adopted her as a baby, and at the age of 23, her husband told her, “All of Hollywood KNOWS WHO YOUR FATHER IS”: Her birth was the MOST SCANDALOUS SECRET — and everyone knew it except her.

While the famous actress and producer Judy Lewis was growing up in Hollywood, everyone knew who her famous father was—except her. Judy was raised with the belief that she was the adopted daughter of film star Loretta Young, but only at the age of 23 did she discover the incredible secret behind her birth. The unusual revelation and disturbing details about the situation came to light years later, with Judy sharing the whole story in her 1994 memoir.

Loretta Young, Judy’s mother, was a young starlet who regularly appeared in Hollywood films alongside legends like Spencer Tracy and Jimmy Stewart. Among her co-stars was the famous actor Clark Gable, with whom she filmed Call of the Wild in 1935. At the time, Gable was married to heiress Ria Langham, while Loretta, a devout Catholic, soon fell in love with him. As rumors of their affair spread, Loretta’s doctor informed her studio, Twentieth Century Pictures, that she needed to take a break due to a “serious illness.”

Foto:dreamsofloretta / Instagram / Profimedia

This was merely an excuse, as Young was pregnant with Gable’s child. After giving birth in secret, she reportedly sent Gable a telegram announcing the birth, but according to Judy’s memoir, Uncommon Knowledge, he tore it up and threw it in the toilet. Loretta then placed her newborn, Judy, in foster care before later “adopting” her own daughter—a carefully crafted strategy to conceal the truth about her out-of-wedlock pregnancy in the conservative society of that time.

Despite the public story, few in Hollywood believed the farce. However, Judy herself had no idea of the secret, although she bore a striking resemblance to Gable in childhood.

When Loretta married producer Tom Lewis in 1940, Judy took his last name, which she kept for the rest of her life. Judy later wrote in her memoir that many of her high school friends already knew she was the daughter of a Hollywood legend, and they assumed her mother would eventually tell her the truth. However, Judy spent her youth in ignorance.

A surprising visit that changed everything
One September during Judy’s sophomore year of high school, she came home to find an unexpected guest waiting for her. “I walked into the hall and stopped. Standing there, several feet away, was Clark Gable,” she wrote.

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Judy was stunned when her mother asked her to sit and talk with their guest, leaving them alone. In her book, Judy recalled feeling incredibly comfortable in Gable’s presence as he asked her about her life and schooling. Still, she had no suspicion about the real reason for his visit. “I answered his questions freely because something inside me told me he had to know everything I could tell him about myself,” she wrote. At the end of their meeting, Gable kissed her forehead and left. They never saw each other again. “That day—those few shared hours—is all I have of my father. There’s not much to remember,” she wrote.

Judy didn’t discover the reason for Gable’s visit until she was 23. When she and her fiancé, Joe Tinney, applied for a marriage license, she became obsessed with the suspicion that Loretta was actually her real mother and began questioning who her father was. When she told her fiancé she couldn’t marry him because she didn’t know her real parents, he responded, “It’s common knowledge.” He then admitted that he had been told, before their first date, that he was going out with “Clark Gable’s daughter.”

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Loretta finally told Judy the truth in 1960, after Gable died from a heart attack at 59. She explained how she had hidden her pregnancy and the birth and revealed that Gable had only seen Judy twice as a baby, leaving her a bank account to help financially.

“It hurt, but I understood why she did it. In fact, we grew closer after that because there were no more secrets,” Judy told the New York Post in 2001.

In Judy’s 1994 memoir, she wrote that Loretta told her she would never publicly confirm what had happened, referring to it as her “mortal sin.” However, Loretta’s authorized biography, published in 2000 after her death, included the actress’s admission that Judy was indeed Gable’s daughter.

Years later, further unsettling details emerged. In 2015, BuzzFeed News reported that in 1998, Loretta confided in her daughter-in-law, Linda Lewis, and family friend Ed Funk about what had really happened between her and Gable. Loretta had learned the term “date rape” that year and recognized it as describing her experience. In her mid-80s, Loretta admitted that Gable had entered her sleeping compartment when they were returning home by train after filming and that her participation in the intimate encounter had not been voluntary.

Foto:20thCentFox / Everett / Profimedia / Profimedia

Nonetheless, the actress was worried that this revelation would hurt Judy, so the family kept it private until both mother and daughter had passed away—Loretta at age 87 from ovarian cancer and Judy from lymphoma at age 76.