The quintessential American beauty, Loretta Young, whose acting career extended from silent cinema to Hollywood's golden era of the Forties, died yesterday in Los Angeles. Young, 87, had battled against ovarian cancer for several months - and recently returned home after surgery.
During her Hollywood heyday, Young shared the silver screen with most of the era's leading men - Lon Chaney, Clark Gable, James Cagney, Spencer Tracy, Cary Grant, Tyrone Power, David Niven, Robert Mitchum and William Holden. With her blue-grey eyes and sculpted cheekbones, she rose from child star, to ingenue, to one of Hollywood's leading ladies.
Born Gretchen Michaela Young in 1913 in Salt Lake City, Young spent most of her childhood in a convent school. Her father was a railway auditor who left the family; mother and three children resettled in Los Angeles. Young had her first screen role at the age of four, in The Only Way as a weeping child on an operating table.
It was on her return from schooling, in 1928's The Magnificent Flirt, that Young first began to play righteous women of moral strength. Between 1929 and 1930, she appeared in 15 films - including Broken Dishes, with western star and hellraiser Grant Withers. They eloped and lived together for eight months before she filed for divorce in 1931. Young never mentioned it in her 1961 autobiography, The Things I Had To Learn.
When she signed to Fox Studios in the mid-Thirties, Young became one of the era's leading ladies. In 1947, she starred in The Farmer's Daughter - a tale of a farm girl who becomes a Congresswoman. The role was her career highlight, for which she was awarded a Best Actress Academy Award. That same year, she featured alongside David Niven and Cary Grant in The Bishop's Wife - a cornerstone of US Christmas television schedules.
Outwardly the face of American virtue, Young's personal life was less shiny. In a 1994 autobiography, Uncommon Knowledge, Judy, a daughter adopted in the mid-Thirties, claimed she was the result of an affair between Loretta Young and Clark Gable. This was denied. In 1995, the elderly actress told the New York Times it was a 'rumour of a bygone time'. Young married a third time in 1993, at 80 - to fashion designer Jean Louis. 'We've known each other for so long. And when something is right, it just slips into place,' she said.
Young made a triumphant switch to television in 1953, with Letters To Loretta - later The Loretta Young Show . The variety show was perfect for her wholesome, family-orientated style - with Young reading a poem or Bible passage at the end. It earned her three Emmy Awards in eight years.
Yesterday Norman Brokaw, her agent of 50 years, said: 'She was an incredible lady. I learnt from her that if you can handle yourself with class and dignity, you can work as long as you want in this business.'