Loretta Young (1913 2000) was an Academy Award winning actress known for devout Catholicism and her performances in "The Farmer s Daughter," "The Bishop s Wife," and "Come to the Stable," and for her long-running and tremendously popular television series. But that was not the whole story."Hollywood Madonna" explores the full saga of Loretta Young s professional and personal life. She made her film debut at age four, became a star at fifteen, and many awards and accolades later, made her final television movie at age seventy-six. This biography withholds none of the details of her affair with Clark Gable and the daughter that powerful love produced. Bernard F. Dick places Young s affair in the proper context of the time and the choices available to women in 1935, especially a noted Catholic like Young, whose career would have been in ruins if the public knew of her tryst. With the birth of a daughter, who would have been branded a love child, Loretta Young reached the crossroads of disclosure and deception, choosing the latter path.

That choice resulted in an illustrious career for her and a tortured childhood for her daughter.".