Gretchen Young was born on January 6, 1913 in Salt Lake City, Utah. She was the daughter of Gladys Royal Young and John Earl Young. When she was three, her parents separated and her mother moved Gretchen and her two sisters to California and into the home of Gladys' sister. Loretta's father later moved to join them. Gladys later found him with the maid and told him to get out. His children never saw him again. The family moved to a boarding house that Gladys ran. Around that time Loretta and her cousin went to live with actress Mae Murray, whom they called "Aunt Mazi".
After a year, they both returned to their mothers. When Loretta was 10, her mother married one of her boarders, George Belzer. They had daughter Georgianna two years later. One day at the age of 14, Gretchen (Loretta) answered the phone; the caller was seeking Gretchen's sister Polly Ann for an acting role. Instead, the caller hired Gretchen. She was put under contract, had braces put on her teeth and had her name changed to Loretta Young. In 1930. at the age of only 17, Loretta eloped with her costar Grant Withers to Arizona. Less than a year later the marriage was annulled.
In 1935, she was considered to be a very successful actress when she made The Call of the Wild (1935) with Clark Gable. They had an affair, and Loretta became pregnant. Because of the strict morality clauses in their contracts - and the fact that Clark Gable was married - they could not tell anybody except Loretta's mother. Loretta and her mother left for Europe where Loretta delivered a healthy baby girl on November 6, 1935, whom she named Judith. In 1940 Loretta married businessman Tom Lewis, and from then on the child was called Judy Lewis, although Tom Lewis never adopted her.
Judy was brought up thinking that both parents had adopted her and did not know, until years later, that she was actually the biological daughter of Loretta and Clark Gable. Four years after her marriage to Tom Lewis, Loretta had a son, Christopher Lewis and later another son Peter Charles. Loretta continued to make movies until the early 50's when she decided to go into television. She was very popular for about eight years and then the show went off the air. In 1960 she tried a new show with a new concept, but it lasted only one season. By that time Loretta was a grandmother. Her daughter Judy Lewis had married about three years before and had a daughter in 1959, whom they named Maria.
Loretta and Tom Lewis divorced in the early 1960's. Loretta enjoyed retirement, sleeping late, visiting her son Chris and daughter-in-law Linda, and traveling. She and her friend Josephine Alicia Saenz, ex-wife of John Wayne, traveled to India and saw the Taj Mahal. In 1990, she became a great-grandmother when grand-daughter Maria, daughter of Judy Lewis, gave birth to a boy. Loretta died in 2000 of ovarian cancer.