Clark Gable's 'Secret' Daughter Judy Dies

The woman at the centre of one of Hollywood's best kept secrets of the 20th century, Judy Lewis, has died at the age of 76.

The secret daughter of film legend Clark Gable and starlet Loretta Young only revealed who she really was in 1994.

Lewis, of Palm Springs, California, was raised in Los Angeles by Young as her adopted daughter. 

She was an adult when she learned that Young, a devout Roman Catholic, was really her mother and conceived her during an affair with Gable in the 1930s. 

The pair were working on the film Call Of The Wild when they had a fling.

Gone With The Wind star Gable, who died in 1960 aged 59, was married five times. Young, who married three times, died in 2000 aged 87. 

Lewis's story was finally revealed to the public in the 1994 autobiography Uncommon Knowledge. 

"At the time, what Loretta Young did was completely successful," said Leonard Maltin, a film critic and Hollywood historian.

"The general public never had any inkling that she had done this. It protected her stardom and her image as a wholesome young woman." 

Lewis wrote that Young left her with a nurse for months after her birth in 1935, and that she was then turned over to an orphanage.

When she was two, Young brought her home as her adopted daughter. 

The identity of her parents had long been rumoured before her memoir was published, .

In the book Lewis describes how her mother told her about her true identity in 1966. 

In the book, Lewis said Young told her: "Well, he was your father. ... He was a darling. Sweet and very gentle..

"(But) he was married, so when I discovered I was pregnant with you, I was frantic and terrified. 

"It would have ruined both our careers, a scandal like that."

Lewis grew up to perform on Broadway and enjoyed a successful television career before becoming a psychotherapist.