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Loretta Young’s Son Peter Recalls Her ‘Big Argument’ With Daughter About Being Clark Gable’s Child
As a little boy, Peter Lewis loved to see his mother, Loretta Young, get ready for a night out. “I remember watching her at her dressing table,” he tells Closer. “The way she would do her face was like the way an artist would use a canvas. I was just fascinated by it.”
Loretta, the best actress Oscar winner for 1947’s The Farmer’s Daughter and the host of the long-running anthology series The Loretta Young Show, was on the A-list when Peter, her youngest of three, was born.
“I remember her being happiest at the height of her career. She was like the sun, and we were planets revolving around her,” he says. But for all of Loretta’s beauty, talent and success, she weathered many private troubles that made her lean heavily on faith.
“She was somebody who could survive a transition, even if it was painful,” Peter says. On The Loretta Young Show, which broadcast from 1953 to 1961, the glamorously dressed star would often include a Bible verse in her weekly introduction.
“She was a religious person. She felt she had the opportunity to set an example,” explains Peter, 76. TV viewers liked Loretta’s positive message and made the show a big hit. “We moved to Hollywood. My parents bought a whole city block and built a compound,” says Peter, who recalls Loretta and his father, producer Tom Lewis, throwing dinner parties with guests including Cary Grant and William Holden. “I’d sneak out of bed, sit on the stairs and watch them take turns entertaining each other,” he says.
Despite appearances, Loretta’s life wasn’t perfect. She had a difficult relationship with her eldest, Judy Lewis. The actress told the press that she adopted Judy in 1935, but the child was actually her biological daughter with Clark Gable.
“One time, we were having dinner for Mother’s Day and my mom and Judy got into a big argument — that’s how I found out,” Peter recalls. The stress of creating a weekly series also weighed heavily on Loretta.
“My dad was producing the show, but she was really the star, so there was a power struggle,” Peter says. “Her marriage to my dad didn’t survive it.” Loretta almost didn’t, either.
During the show’s second season, she was hospitalized for exhaustion. “She drove herself so hard that she got hooked on prescription drugs,” Peter says. “Then the stress got on top of my mom and she had a nervous breakdown.”
The Loretta Young Show would go on to win its star three Emmys and set a record for the longest running prime-time series hosted by a woman.
But Peter remembers the period after it ended as special. “My brother and sister had moved out, and I was the only one left home with my mom,” he recalls. “I felt like I became the closest person to her.”
Not long after, Loretta, who passed away in 2000 at age 87, stopped acting to devote herself to charity work. “The biggest lesson I learned from her is that things are going to always change,” he says, “but it’s up to you to make sure they change for the better.”
