Loretta even kept the secret from Judy for as long as she possibly could.
Two weeks before her wedding, Judy had an identity crisis, telling her fiancé, Joseph Tinney, “I can’t marry you. I don’t know anything about myself.” She was distraught over her relationship with Loretta and the mystery of her father’s identity. Joseph told her, “It’s common knowledge, Judy. Your father is Clark Gable.” This spurred her to confront her mom, who finally told her then-31-year-old daughter the truth. Loretta reportedly told Judy, “Why shouldn’t I be unhappy? Wouldn’t you be if you were a movie star, and the father of your child was a movie star, and you couldn’t have an abortion because it was a mortal sin?”
Before Loretta’s memoir was published, Judy shared the truth about her biological parents in her 1994 memoir, Uncommon Knowledge, writing, “It was very difficult for me as a little girl not to be accepted or acknowledged by my mother, who, to this day, will not publicly acknowledge that I am her biological child.”
