grace

Loretta Young: Beauty, Serenity and Grace

“A charming woman...

doesn't follow the crowd. She is herself. ”

A&E`s "Biography" (1987) said Loretta Young "remains a symbol of beauty, serenity, and grace. But behind the glamor and stardom is a woman of substance whose true beauty lies in her dedication to her family, her faith, and her quest to live life with a purpose."

Few actors have enjoyed the professional longevity of the stunning Loretta Young (1913-2000) and even fewer in three media--motion pictures, radio theatre, and television. Her remarkable career, begun as a child extra during the Silent Era of motion pictures, extended through the Golden Age of Hollywood. She attained star status on film as well as on the radio, even though she had no theater or dramatic school instruction. Young ended her film career to become a pioneer of the Golden Age of Television. She was the first actor to win both an Academy Award and an Emmy.

When people today think of Loretta Young, they usually think of the good Christian girl who starring in wholesome films like The Bishop’s Wife. But Loretta Young had been acting in films since the 1920s, and was actually one of the most active actresses of the pre-code era. She showed her fantastic range time and time again during the era, playing a wide variety of roles, from the good girl (Platinum Blond, Heroes for Sale) to the sexy bad girls (Midnight Mary, Born to Bad) to the girls in between (Employees’ Entrance, Life Begins).

Her angel face certainly allowed for her to play those good girl roles, but as with most pre-code films, morality wasn’t black and white, and those good girls weren’t always quite so good, just like the bad girls weren’t always quite so bad. She was a sweet girl getting ready to have a baby in Life Begins - but she was in prison for killing her boss. She was the seductive girlfriend of a gangster in Midnight Mary, but she was really just a victim of unfortunate circumstance.

Loretta Young appeared in 1982 at the Academy Awards ceremony, where she presented the Best Director statuette to Warren Beatty. In 1996, she finally made her long overdue return to acting with a starring role in the NBC movie Christmas Eve, as a dying widow playing host to her estranged grandchildren. She received a Golden Globe Award for her performance. Three years later, she portrayed a fashion editor in another television movie for NBC, Lady in a Corner, which marked the last time she would be seen on screen. (Her final credit found her narrating the 1994 special Life on the Mississippi.) Having finished her acting career in a starring role, and having retained the glamorous image she had created for herself for more than sixty years, she spent the remainder of her life living in comfortable retirement. She died of ovarian cancer on August 12, 2000, at the Los Angeles home of her half sister, Georgiana, and her brother-in-law, actor Ricardo Montalban. Her agent, Norman Brokaw, remarked, “I learned from her that if you can handle yourself with class and dignity, you can work as long as you want in this business.”

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