Clark Gable And Loretta Young’s Hollywood Scandal Involves Date Rape Allegations


Clark Gable and Loretta Young’s Hollywood scandal involves date rape, according to Young’s daughter-in-law, Linda Lewis. Lewis claims Loretta didn’t realize she had been the victim of a sexual assault until years later.

The New York Post reports that “The King of Hollywood,” Clark Gable, and Academy Award winning actress Loretta Young’s alleged scandal came out of the closet about four years after the death of their purported daughter, Judy Lewis.

In her best-selling 1994 memoir, Judy claimed that “she was conceived during a consensual affair her parents had while on a remote location in Washington State shooting the 1935 film version of The Call of the Wild.”

According to a BuzzFeed article, Clark Gable and Loretta Young were known to be in one of the biggest Hollywood cover-ups ever.

BuzzFeed posted the following allegation.

“In 1935, at the age of 23, she became pregnant with Clark Gable’s child while Gable was married to another woman. 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.”

The story about Gable and Young was successfully concealed from the public for years, even though a small group of Hollywood people knew about the so-called date rape.

Clark Gable And Loretta Young
Clark Gable And Loretta Young starred in The Key to the City. (Photo courtesy of Dr. Macro)

It’s reported Loretta Young enjoyed watching the Larry King Live television show. After watching the show, Loretta asked her biographer, Edward Funk, and daughter-in-law Linda Lewis to explain the term date rape.

Linda recalled it took some tact to explain to Loretta, in a way that an 85-year-old could understand, the meaning of date rape.

“I did the best I could to make her understand. You have to remember, this was a very proper lady.”

According to Lewis, after hearing the definition of date rape, Loretta Young made a brief comment about what happened to her and Clark Gable.

“That’s what happened between me and Clark.”

Lewis and Young
Loretta Young and Judy Lewis at the American Film Institute cocktail party aboard the Pacific Princess cruise ship in 1978.
(Photo courtesy of Getty Images)

The New York Post wrote that film historian Robert Matzen heard a little about what was going on with Clark Gable and co-star Loretta Young on the movie set of The Call of the Wild.

“Director William A. Wellman wrote in his autobiography that there was monkey business between Gable and Young and that he asked Gable to cool it. And that 15 years later, as an Oscar-winning freelance actress, Young chose to work with Gable again on a second film, Key to the City.”

Matzen added more on his take of this story.

“So this sophisticated woman has to ask for the definition of date rape? This new story makes her sound sort of like an idiot. Loretta was no idiot. She was a Hollywood survivor capable of engineering the whole adoption thing, and she also steadfastly denied Gable’s paternity through the course of her life.”

Film historian David Stenn offers his view on this recent account.

“It’s entirely conceivable that Loretta Young’s version is true. It’s also possible that her Catholic guilt caused her to reframe the narrative decades later. It speaks to the tragic and unjust attitudes of the era. Not only did Loretta have the shame of premarital sex, but [she] had the burden of pregnancy. Judy told me her mother told her, ‘You are my mortal sin.'”

Stenn continues and offers his perspective of the Gable and Young’s relationship.

“So I find it highly conceivable either way. She was devout, but she was also a successful career woman, a very tough person and a survivor. If she had another opportunity to work with Gable, she would have considered the box-office potential. If the story is true, there’s something deeply poignant about her only understanding what happened many decades later. It shines a light on an ugly period of Hollywood and its treatment of women.”

When Loretta Young was asked about her alleged affair with Clark Gable in a rare 1986 interview with Entertainment Tonight, she successfully dodged the questions.

However, the following year, she offered more about Clark Gable when talking with Interview Magazine.

“Clark was certainly very appealing and one could easily fall in love with him, and if we did it was nobody’s business but ours and [there’s] clearly nothing to discuss, for he was married. He was also a wonderful man in that he was so at ease with himself. As rough and tough as he played many of his parts, you will notice that in all of those love scenes, particularly in Gone With the Wind, he is so gentle with women. And does treat them with such tenderness, such sweetness. Clark Gable was certainly everything he was supposed to be. I will confess that I love the idea of Clark and me falling in love and having Judy. I have to admit it’s really a charming idea, very romantic.”

[Featured image via Dear Mr. Gable]

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