Loretta Young was "an American actress. Starting as a child actress, she had a long and varied career in film from 1917 to 1953. She won the 1948 best actress Academy Award for her role in the 1947 film The Farmer's Daughter, and received an Oscar nomination for her role in Come to the Stable, in 1949. Young moved to the relatively new medium of television, where she had a dramatic anthology series, The Loretta Young Show, from 1953 to 1961. The series earned three Emmy Awards, and reran successfully on daytime TV and later in syndication. In the 1980s Young returned to the small screen and won a Golden Globe in Christmas Eve in 1986."[1]
She was born Gretchen Young 6 January 1913 in Salt Lake City, Utah, the daughter of John Mendell and Gladys Royal.[2] By 1920, her family was living in Los Angeles.
Loretta was married three times.
Her first husband was Granville Gustavus Withers, whom she married 26 January 1930 in Yuma, Arizona.[3] The newspapers covered the marriage: "Loretta Young's elopement with Grant Withers got a lot of attention from Mrs. George Belzer, Loretta's mother. They argued all night and when dawn came up on Beverly Hills everybody agreed to an annulment. Loretta's so young -- only 17."[4] Loretta and Grant were divorced September 1931 after actually living together for three months.[5]
Her second husband was Thomas Howard Augustine Lewis, whom she married 31 July 1940 in Westwood in Los Angeles.[6]
Her third husband was Jean Louis Berthault, whom she married 10 August 1993 in Beverly Hills, California. At the time of their marriage, she was 80 and he was 85.
Loretta died 12 August 2000 in Los Angeles, California, at the age of 87.[8]
Obituary:[9]
Loretta Young, the elegant Academy Award-winning actress who charmed film and television audiences for half a century with her beauty, wholesome image and aura of unabashed romanticism, died early Saturday of ovarian cancer, her longtime friend and agent, Norman Brokaw, announced. She was 87.
Ms. Young, who had been reported hospitalized since early July, died in Los Angeles at the home of her sister Georgiana Montalban, the wife of actor Ricardo Montalban.
Her gritty determination to be a star - and her hardheaded business sense - kept Ms. Young in front of the cameras for decades after most stars from Hollywood's Golden Age had faded into nostalgia.
Gliding easily from silent films to talkies to television, the ever-slim and smiling Ms. Young delighted fans with her luminous eyes, wistful face and elaborate wardrobes.
She made nearly 100 movies, churning out mainly comedies and romances until she left the wide screen for television in 1953.
She played opposite all the romantic heroes: Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Gary Cooper, James Cagney, Tyrone Power. She acted for famed directors Orson Welles (in The Stranger), Cecil B. De Mille (in The Crusades) and Frank Capra (in Platinum Blonde). And to sear her image into the public's consciousness, she modeled for Vogue, Harper's Bazaar and Cosmopolitan magazines.
Her lead role in The Farmer's Daughter - as a Swedish maid who parlays her smarts into a seat in Congress - won her the 1947 Academy Award for best actress. And she became one of the first Oscar winners to pull in a television Emmy in 1955, when she was honored for her anthology series, The Loretta Young Show.
She was born Gretchen Michaela Young, the third of five children, in Salt Lake City on Jan. 6, 1913. As a teenager, she adopted the stage name Loretta, when studio executives decided that Gretchen sounded too clunky for the dainty young actress.
Her husband, the Academy Award-winning costume designer Jean Louis, died in 1997.
Ms. Young is survived by her sister and her three children, Judy, Christopher and Peter Lewis.
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The father of Loretta Young was never biologically a Young. He was born out of wedlock and his birth name was his mother's maiden name. His mother much later married a man named Young, but that was his stepfather. John used many names variously, and even after he abandoned his wife and children to re-marry and create a new identity, he also invented a name. If you read the newspaper account of his death and while Loretta was a young actress, this best describes the various name changes. it is true he used his step father name of Young, but he was not a Young.