- Clark Gable is a legendary Hollywood star
- He apparently hid a horrible secret
- The story only came out 50 years after he died
Clark Gable is remembered by most as a Hollywood legend. But many began viewing the Gone with the Wind star differently when an awful story came to light a decade ago.
Gable, who died in 1960, had an erratic personal life and was married five times. He also had a secret child with one of his co-stars. However, that story got more complicated and disturbing in the 2010s.
Clark Gable kept a terrible secret
In the 1930s, Clark Gable acted in the film Call of the Wild. It was on this movie that he impregnated his co-star Loretta Young. She had the baby, who became the actress Judy Lewis, on Nov. 6, 1935.
Young was 22 and Gable was 35 and married at the time. The baby was kept a secret through a lie about adoption, and Young raised it herself. Judy Lewis only learned that Gable was her father after his death in 1960.
According to People magazine, "Hollywood insiders" always believed Gable was the father, because of when Judy was born — just after Clark and Loretta's film — and a resemblance to the actor. But the world didn't learn the story until the 1990s, when Judy Lewis wrote her autobiography.
But it gets worse. Judy passed away in 2011, and another of Loretta Young's children came forward with the truth several years later: Judy Lewis was conceived by rape.
Loretta Young accused Clark Gable of rape
In 2015, Loretta Young's son, daughter-in-law, and biographer told BuzzFeed that she confided in them that Clark Gable date raped her on a train. It led to the pregnancy with Judy in 1935.
It took Young decades to come to terms with this, as "date rape" was not a common term at the time. After she was told what date rape is, Young apparently said to her biographer: "That's what happened between me and Clark."
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The descendants waited until both Loretta Young and her daughter Judy Lewis passed away to reveal the truth about alleged rapist Clark Gable. That was in 2015. Gable had been dead for 55 years at the time, and Young for 15 years as well.
The late actress Judy Lewis is now widely acknowledged as the daughter of Clark Gable, though he of course never confirmed it. Likewise, the rape accusations will stand as they are — unverified — since they came decades after Gable died.
