Clark Gable never acknowledged his first child and died four months before his second child was born

NEED TO KNOW

• Clark Gable was the father of two children
• The Gone with the Wind star never publicly acknowledged his daughter, Judy Lewis, whom he shared with actress Loretta Young
• Gable died in November 1960, four months before the birth of his son, John Clark Gable

Clark Gable was one of Hollywood’s biggest stars during its Golden Age, but his personal life was marked by complicated relationships and long-held secrets.

Many believed that the Gone with the Wind actor’s first child, Judy Lewis, was the product of an affair between Gable and actress Loretta Young. Gable’s son with wife Kay Williams, John Clark Gable, was the only child he ever acknowledged, and he was born after the actor died in November 1960.

For many years, rumors circulated that Gable and Young had an affair while filming 1935’s The Call of the Wild, which resulted in Lewis’ birth. Neither publicly acknowledged the rumors. Young spent much of her pregnancy in Europe before bringing her 19-month-old daughter home in 1937 and announcing that she had adopted her.

The truth about Lewis’ parentage contributed to a years-long rift between mother and daughter. “When you’re not accepted by your parent, it’s very difficult,” Lewis told PEOPLE in 1994. “Lies and secrets are not only destructive, they’re cruel.”

Meanwhile, Gable never had the chance to meet his son. In 1960, while Williams was five months pregnant, the actor unexpectedly died of a heart attack at age 59, per the Los Angeles Times. John was born the following March.

Here’s everything to know about Clark Gable’s two children, Judy Lewis and John Clark Gable.

Judy Lewis

The official story, which Young maintained until her daughter was an adult, was that Young adopted Lewis when she was 19 months old. In reality, Lewis was born to Young on Nov. 6, 1935, and Young concealed the girl’s birth, shuttling her between caregivers and an orphanage until she could arrange an adoption that would explain why a young, unmarried woman had a baby, according to Lewis’ interview with Dini Petty in 1994.

But in Hollywood, rumors swirled that Lewis was Gable’s daughter. “I remember how eerie it was watching Clark Gable movies with Judy,” Jack Haley, Jr., Lewis’ high school sweetheart, told PEOPLE in 1994. “You wanted to give her a nudge and say, ‘Hey, that’s your dad.’ ”

According to Lewis, she first confronted Young about her parentage in 1966, telling PEOPLE decades later that Young privately confirmed Gable was her father. However, after that revelation, the actress continued to maintain that Lewis was adopted to the public. The idea that Gable was Lewis’ father, Young told PEOPLE in 1994, was “a very romantic thought that many wish to believe. As I have in the past, I have chosen not to give it further credence.”

Lewis published a memoir, Uncommon Knowledge, in 1994, wherein she revealed the truth about her parentage and her difficult experiences growing up. “It was very difficult for me as a little girl not to be accepted or acknowledged by my mother, who, to this day, will not publicly acknowledge that I am her biological child,” she said that year, according to The New York Times.

Lewis also struggled with why Gable wouldn’t acknowledge her before he died. “I ask myself why he didn’t leave me something. Forget money — even just a letter,” she told PEOPLE. “It leaves me in the dark.”

According to Lewis, she confronted her mother again in 1986 about coming clean: “I told my mom that all I wanted was to be accepted and loved — and if she couldn’t do that, why didn’t she give me to a family that could have?” Three years later, Lewis began writing her book, with accounts pieced together from nannies and staff from her childhood.

“If I could talk to [my father] now,” she told PEOPLE, “I’d say, ‘Where were you when I needed you? Why did you stay away?’ Then, of course, I’d tell him how much I missed him.”

Young eventually admitted the truth of the story, though not until after her death in 2000, when she posthumously published her memoir Forever Young.

In her 20s and 30s, Lewis had an acting career, appearing on the soap opera The Secret Storm and in many Broadway plays, before going back to school in her 40s to become a clinical psychologist. She had one daughter, Maria, with her ex-husband Joe Tinney. Lewis died in 2011.

John Clark Gable, 65

Gable had been divorced three times and widowed after his then-wife, Carole Lombard, died in a plane crash when he married Kay Williams in 1955. In 1960, she became pregnant.

“This is a dividend that has come too late in life,” Gable told a reporter in 1960 while he was filming his final movie, The Misfits, in Nevada, according to the Los Angeles Times. “When I wind up this picture, I’m taking off until after the baby is born. I want to be there, and I want to be there a good many months afterward.”

John was born on March 20, 1961. He grew up on the family’s ranch in Encino and has dabbled in acting, appearing in the 1990 film Bad Jim with James Brolin and a few other movies. His real passion, though, is car and truck racing, which he did professionally for several years.

“I think my father’s love of auto racing, which I learned about from my mother, has been a special bond with his memory,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 1990. “My mom tried to discourage me from racing but I just knew it was in my blood. She even hid all my dad’s racing memorabilia from me.”

John is currently married to his third wife, Debra Hartsell Gable, whom he wed in 2020, per his website.

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