The secret love child of “Gone with the Wind” legend CLARK GABLE and LORETTA YOUNG has died.
JUDY LEWIS, a former soap opera star, died Nov. 25 at the age of 76 in Pennsylvania — her origin the secret stuff of soap operas and tawdry Hollywood melodramas often too realized in real life.
Judy Lewis didn’t find out she was the secret daughter of two major Hollywood superstars until she was 31 years old.
Lewis sadly learned the truth when she had an identity crisis before getting married and her fiancé blurted out, “It’s common knowledge, Judy — your father IS Clark Gable.”
Judy’s mom was Loretta Young, the star of “Come to the Stable” and “The Farmer’s Daughter” who told Lewis she was adopted after getting pregnant after a short-lived affair with Gable during the filming of "Call of the Wild".
For years, her mother reportedly hid Lewis’ larger than life Gable-like ears under a hat and had them surgically clipped at the age of 7 to quell the ongoing whispers.
The New York Times reported that Lewis spent the first 19 months of her life hidden away in orphanages so her mother could protect her career from the shame of pregnancy.
One day in 1950, Judy returned home from Marymount Girls Catholic School to find Gable standing in her front hallway.
"I couldn't believe my eyes," Judy wrote in her memoir "Uncommon Knowledge."
"He was right in front of me, and he was smiling at me. His eyes were crinkled into smile lines at the corners and he was so tall that I had to look up. He was much more handsome than I remembered him from the movies.… What is he doing here? I wondered to myself. But I could say nothing. I was speechless."
She tried to escape upstairs to prepare but her mom Loretta ordered her to stay.
For the next hour, Gable sat next to her on the sofa, engaging in earnest conversation about herself.
Before Gable departed, he thanked Judy for a lovely visit.
Then, she recalled, he "bent down and, cupping my face in his two big hands, kissed me lightly on the forehead."
She never saw him again.
A longtime resident of Los Angeles, Judy died of cancer, her daughter, Maria Tinney Dagit, told the LA Times.
She had starred on the ironically titled TV soap “The Secret Storm”.
