Born to Be Bad

Loretta Young was born Gretchen Young in 1913 in Salt Lake City, Utah, and began appearing in silent films as a child, becoming a working actress by her teens and a major star by the early 1930s. She built a long career across genres, from pre-Code melodrama to prestige drama, appearing opposite Cary Grant in the pre-Code potboiler Born to Be Bad (1934), directed by Lowell Sherman. Young won the Academy Award for Best Actress for The Farmer's Daughter (1947), playing a Swedish immigrant who becomes a congresswoman, and received a further nomination for Come to the Stable (1949). Her film career included work with major directors across three decades, and she was known within the industry for strict personal standards on set, including a widely reported system of small fines for cast and crew who used profanity. In 1953 she made an unusual pivot for a film star of her stature, launching The Loretta Young Show, an anthology television series she hosted and frequently starred in, famously making a sweeping entrance through a doorway in a couture gown at the start of each episode. The show ran for eight seasons and won Young two Emmy Awards, establishing her as a successful producer under her own name at a time when few actresses controlled their own television production. She died in 2000 in Beverly Hills, having also faced, later in life, a paternity dispute over her daughter Judy Lewis's parentage involving Clark Gable, publicly acknowledged only in Young's later years. She is remembered both for her Oscar-winning film work and as a pioneer of actress-driven television production.