NYT-1201: STATE OF THE ART A Thermostat That's Clever, Not ...

ays and orphanages, and the rest of her early life
untangling a web of lies spun by a young mother h
ungry for stardom but unwilling to end her unwed p
regnancy.
Loretta Young’s deception was contrived to protect
her budding movie career and the box-office power
of the matinee idol Gable, who was married to som
eone else when they conceived their child in snowe
d-in Washington State. They were on location, shoo
ting the 1935 film "The Call of the Wild," fiction
al lovers in front of the camera and actual lovers
outside its range.
Ms. Lewis, a former actress who died on Friday at
the age of 76, was 31 before she discerned the sco
pe of the falsehoods that cast her, a daughter of
Hollywood royalty, into what she later described a
s a Cinderella-like childhood. Confronted by Ms. L
ewis, Young finally made a tearful confession in 1
966 at her sprawling home in Palm Springs, Calif.
Young was 22 and unmarried when she and Gable, 34
and married to Maria Langham, had their brief affa
ir. She spent most of her pregnancy in Europe to a
void Hollywood gossip. Ms. Lewis was born on Nov.
6, 1935, in a rented house in Venice, Calif. Soon
she was turned over to a series of caretakers, inc
luding St. Elizabeth’s Infants Hospital in San Fra
ncisco, so that Young could return to stardom.
When Ms. Lewis was 19 months old, her mother broug
ht her back home and announced through the gossip
columnist Louella Parsons that she had adopted the
child.
Ms. Lewis grew up in Los Angeles, cushioned in the
luxury of her mother’s movie-star lifestyle even
as she endured what she later described as an outs
ider’s isolation within her family and the teasing
of children at school.