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| Loretta Young with Tyrone Power |
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| Forecourt Ceremony held on Monday, May 31, 1937 |
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Born: Gretchen Young, January 6, 1913, in Salt Lake City, Utah
Age at the time of the ceremony: 24
Died: August 12, 2000, in Los Angeles, California, age 87 |
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Loretta Young might have had the longest carreer of anyone as a performer in films, beginning as a child actor in 1917, all the way up to winning an Emmy in 1986. Always willing to try new things, Young became an early hit on tevelvision, and was extremely active in Catholic charities.
Gretchen and her two sisters had been trained from their infancy to perform. When her parents divorced when she was three, mother Gladys moved the girls to Hollywood, where she bagged her first role as a toddler in The Primrose Ring (released in May 1917) at Paramount. While in high school, she was signed to a contract by producer John McCormick, husband of star Coleen Moore, who re-named the girl "Loretta."
Her first film for McCormick was Naughty But Nice (released in June 1927) starring Moore, but before long, Loretta was second-billed with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. in The Careless Age (released in September 1929), but was top-billed over him in Loose Ankles (released in February 1930). She co-starred with John Barrymore in The Man from Blankley's (released in March 1930). So at the age of 17, Loretta was on the fast track — she made many films during the 1930s. Young spent a lot of time at 20th Century and Fox Films as well as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and so, several of her films played the Chinese: The House of Rothschild with George Arliss (played in April 1934), The White Parade with John Boles (played in November 1934), Clive of India with Ronald Coleman (played in February 1935), The Call of the Wild with Clark Gable (played in July 1935); she played the title role in the early Technicolor film of Ramona with Don Ameche (played in September 1936).
Loretta Young had just finished her second film with Tyrone Power, Café Metropole which was playing the Chinese in May 1937, when the two of them were invited to make thier impressions together. Loretta went first. The ceremony attracted another huge crowd, requiring even more crowd-control than ever.
Although she was a reliable star at 20th, Young became dissatisfied with her roles; she quit and became a freelancer — just in time for the World War II years. After being incredibly busy during the 1930s, she slowed her pace, appearing in only one or two films a year through the 1940s, including Ladies Courageous (released in February 1944) and The Stranger (released in August 1946). She won the Best Actress Oscar for The Farmer's Daughter (released in March 1947), starred opposite both Cary Grant and David Niven in The Bishop's Wife (released in February 1947) and scored a personal triumph in Come to the Stable (released in September 1949).
Switching to television by 1953, she had her own anthology series, The Loretta Young Show, which ran on NBC from 1953 to 1961. Young won a primetime Emmy as Best Actress Starring in a Regular Series in 1955, 1957, and 1959; that year she won a Golden Globe for the show. The 165 episodes ran for years, both on NBC in daytime, and in syndication. She hosted The New Loretta Young Show on CBS during the 1962-1963 season, but it faired poorly in its time slot, and was cancelled after the first year.
In her retirement, Young worked with her fellow stars Jane Wyman, Irene Dunne and Rosalind Russell on Catholic charities. Pretty good company if you ask us. She came out of retirement to play in the TV movie Christmas Eve, and picked up another Golden Globe for her performance in 1986.
She died of ovarian cancer in 2000, at the age of 76. |
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| Grauman's Chinese Theatre, Hollywood, California. Loretta Young Forecourt block. Executed by Jean Klossner, Monday, May 31, 1937. 43 x 38 inches. |
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| Grauman's Chinese Theatre, Hollywood, California. Loretta Young / Tyrone Power Forecourt ceremony, Monday, May 31, 1937. An unknown attendant steadies a washbowl as Sid Grauman oversees Tyrone Power have his hand placed in the cement by Loretta Young. |
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