Judy Lewis was in her thirties before she discovered what was common knowledge among the Hollywood elite - that she was the daughter of Clark Gable and Loretta Young. The two had fallen in love while on location filming Call of the Wild - but Gable was a married man and, according to Young's Catholic beliefs and Hollywood's strict moral code, he was off limits.
On the brink of mega-stardom herself and terrified that her romance with Gable would ruin their careers, Young gave birth to Judy in secret - later "adopting" her from the orphanage to which she had been sent as an infant. While growing up, Judy, who met "Mr. Gable" once, was never told that he was her father.
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Set against the backdrop of Hollywood in its heyday, Uncommon Knowledge depicts a world where home movies were filmed by studio cameramen, home was a thirty-eight-room house on a five-hundred-acre estate in the heart of Beverly Hills, friends were the children of Bing Crosby or Joan Bennett, and getting off a train could be delayed by a mob of fans clamoring to get your mother's autograph.
But it is also the story of a lonely little girl who felt she didn't belong anywhere, and who comforted herself by sitting in a dressing room full of her mother's clothes. Hungry for her mother's attention, Judy felt even more excluded after Young's marriage to advertising executive Tom Lewis - a martinet who once said to her two half-brothers, "Judy's adopted. She's not part of our family."
Loretta Young was a controlling woman who had little time for the daughter whom she later described as "a mortal sin" - a child who was a reminder of the one thing she had been unable to control. To this day she has never publicly acknowledged her daughter as her own. Judy didn't hear the truth about her parents until her own marriage, when her husband told her what Hollywood had been whispering about for years.
And, for years, Loretta Young denied it - until Judy forced an admission that ultimately left the connection between mother and daughter in tatters. Only then was Judy able to claim her father: a man she would never know, except on the movie screen.
Uncommon Knowledge joins Haywire and Mommie Dearest as a fascinating behind-the-scenes memoir of Hollywood in its golden days. A devastating character portrait, it is an engrossing narrative of glamour and pathos, controlling ambition and unfulfilled longing, loneliness and resolution. It is also the account of a journey of self-discovery that was difficult but ultimately triumphant. Judy Lewis went on to her own success as actress, producer, and writer.
She married, became a mother and a grandmother, and she continues to break new ground in her personal and professional life. Here is her unforgettable story.
