Scandalous Stories From Old Hollywood

Clark Gable was more of a creation than an actor. Early in his career he was coached by MGM executives who turned him from an amateur stage presence into one of the biggest stars in Hollywood. Along the way, he was married five times, was never faithful to any of his wives, and had such a relentless fling with Joan Crawford that MGM threatened to fire them both based on the morality clauses in their contracts. (Of course, everyone in Hollywood probably laughed as they signed those and then celebrated with a booze-filled orgy.)

Fast-forward a bit. In 1934, Clark Gable starred in Call of the Wild with a much younger Loretta Young. Yes, Gable was married at the time, to Maria Langham. Meanwhile, Young was such a devout Catholic that she insisted on a swear jar for on-set expletives, to which Spencer Tracy reportedly said, "Here's a twenty, sister. Go f**k yourself." After filming, Young headed off to Europe for a few months before returning to California. About 19 months later, she announced that she was going to adopt a young girl and picked one up from an orphanage. The girl was Judy, and she was the one Young had actually given birth to in California, after going to Europe to hide her pregnancy. It was a stunt that was only possible pre-internet.

In 1966, Young finally told not-so-little Judy the truth: her father was Clark Gable. But Young would never publicly admit that she was her own biological daughter, and that's not even where the real heartbreak comes in. Young beat the Hollywood odds, living to a ripe old age. It wasn't until she was an 85-year-old watching Larry King Live that she was introduced to the idea of date rape and asked her daughter-in-law to explain what it meant. Young's response was simply, "That's what happened between me and Clark."

Her memoirs were published after her death in 2000, describing a girl who grew up poor but beautiful, whose devout religious upbringing shamed her into silence.