London - It was seen as one of the most notorious love affairs of Hollywood’s golden age.
Yet behind the apparent romance between Clark Gable and his co-star Loretta Young lay a dark secret, her family claim.
They say Gable, most famous for playing Rhett Butler in Gone With The Wind, raped her after bursting into her train compartment.
It happened in 1935 as the cast of The Call of the Wild were travelling by train from Seattle – near where it was filmed – to Los Angeles, Young’s daughter-in-law has claimed.
The stars had their own private areas and at some point on the journey, Gable sneaked into Young’s compartment. A month later, she discovered she was pregnant.
Both were married and the scandal of their supposed illicit fling would have destroyed their careers. So Young, then 22, hid her pregnancy.
When it began to show, she went on a holiday to England and returned several months later to California, where she secretly gave birth to a daughter, Judy.
Although she reportedly sent Gable a telegram announcing a “beautiful blue-eyed, blonde baby girl”, he never replied and had virtually no involvement in Judy’s life.
The baby was sent to an orphanage outside Los Angeles only to be “adopted” several months later by her real mother.
Young later admitted the girl was her biological child. By the time Judy discovered her father’s identity, she was 23 and Gable had died of a heart attack. When she finally confronted her mother, the actress confirmed it was true and that her daughter was a “walking mortal sin”.
However, it now appears the mortal sin may have been committed by Gable. According to her daughter-in-law, Linda Lewis, Young – who died in 2000 – claimed she was a victim of rape. Lewis recalled that she and Young, then aged 85, had been watching a television discussion that mentioned the issue of date rape. Afterwards, Young asked her to define what it meant.
On hearing her reply, the elderly star said: “That’s what happened between me and Clark.”
Lewis told the website Buzzfeed she was appalled but kept quiet to protect Judy.
After Judy died aged 78 in 2011, Lewis and her husband, Chris – Young’s son by her second husband, Tom Lewis – decided to reveal it publicly.
“Judy is not here to be hurt by this,” she said. “And that’s what Loretta really wanted to avoid – because who doesn’t want to be conceived in love?”
Daily Mail