Clark Gable's 2 Children: All About John Clark Gable and Judy Lewis

Mar. 15, 2025

American actor Clark Gable (1901 - 1960), circa 1950; American actor John Clark Gable, February 1984.Photo:Silver Screen Collection/Getty; Ben Martin/Getty

Silver Screen Collection/Getty; Ben Martin/Getty

Few actors from Hollywood’s golden age are more recognizable thanClark Gable, the beloved leading man who played Rhett Butler inGone with the Wind.

But hisfamous screen personawas at odds with his personal life. Gable never acknowledged his first child, Judy Lewis, whom many believed was the product of an affair between Gable and actress Loretta Young. Gable’s son with wife Kay Williams, John Clark Gable, was the only child he ever acknowledged, and he was born after the actor died in November 1960.

In 1960, Gable’s fifth wife, model and actor Williams, became pregnant with the couple’s only child. But when Williams was five months pregnant, Gable unexpectedly died of a heart attack at age 59. John Clark Gable was born in March 1961 and never knew his father.

Lewis died in 2011, after fighting a long battle with her mother about the truth about her parentage and early life.

Here’s everything to know about Clark Gable’s kids.

Judy Lewis

American actress Judy Lewis and her actress mother Loretta Young (1913 - 2000) at an American Film Institute cocktail party held aboard the Pacific Princess cruise ship in California.Frank Edwards/Fotos International/Getty

Frank Edwards/Fotos International/Getty

But in Hollywood, rumors swirled that Lewis was Gable’s daughter. “I remember how eerie it was watching Clark Gable movies with Judy,” Jack Haley, Jr., Lewis’ high school sweetheart, told PEOPLE in 1994. “You wanted to give her a nudge and say, ‘Hey, that’s your dad.’ ”

According to Lewis, she first confronted Young about her parentage in 1966, telling PEOPLE decades later that Young privately confirmed Gable was her father. However, after that revelation, the actress continued to maintain that Lewis was adopted to the public. The idea that Gable was Lewis’ father, Young told PEOPLE in 1994, was “a very romantic thought that many wish to believe. As I have in the past, I have chosen not to give it further credence.”

Lewis also struggled with why Gable wouldn’t acknowledge her before he died. “I ask myself why he didn’t leave me something. Forget money — even just a letter,” she told PEOPLE. “It leaves me in the dark.”

Loretta Young’s daughter marries, 21 June 1958. Judith Therese Lewis (bride);Joseph Lewis Tinney Junior (groom).;Caption slip reads: ‘Photographer: Miller. Date: 1958-06-21. Reporter: Farrell. Assignment: Judy Lewis marriage (Loretta Young’s daughter). 219/220: Judith Therese Lewis and her bridegroom, Joseph Lewis Tinney Jr. on steps of Church of the Good Shepherd following marriage’.Los Angeles Examiner/USC Libraries/Corbis/Getty

Los Angeles Examiner/USC Libraries/Corbis/Getty

According to Lewis, she confronted her mother again in 1986 about coming clean: “I told my mom that all I wanted was to be accepted and loved — and if she couldn’t do that, why didn’t she give me to a family that could have?” Three years later, Lewis began writing her book, with accounts pieced together from nannies and staff from her childhood.

“If I could talk to [my father] now,” she told PEOPLE, “I’d say, ‘Where were you when I needed you? Why did you stay away?’ Then, of course, I’d tell him how much I missed him.”

Young eventually admitted the truth of the story, though not until after her death in 2000, when she posthumously published her memoirForever Young.

In her 20s and 30s, Lewis had an acting career, appearing on the soap operaThe Secret Stormand in many Broadway plays, before going back to school in her 40s to become a clinical psychologist. She had one daughter, Maria, and with her ex-husband Joe Tinney. Lewis died in 2011.

John Clark Gable, 63

Actor John Clark Gable, son of Clark Gable attends the MMPA Oscar Week Luncheon at The Four Seasons Hotel on February 22, 2008 in Los Angeles, California.Mike Guastella/WireImage

Mike Guastella/WireImage

Gable had been divorced three times and widowed when then-wife Carole Lombard died in a plane crash when he married Kay Williams in 1955. In 1960, she became pregnant.

John was born on March 20, 1961. He grew up on the family’s ranch in Encino and has dabbled in acting, appearing in the 1990 filmBad Jimwith James Brolin and a few other movies. His real passion, though, is car and truck racing, which he did professionally for several years.

Mrs Kay Gable and her son John, the family of actor Clark Gable, at the premiere of the movie ‘The Cowboys’, May 1972.Frank Edwards/Archive Photos/Gett

Frank Edwards/Archive Photos/Gett

“I think my father’s love of auto racing, which I learned about from my mother, has been a special bond with his memory,” he told theLos Angeles Timesin 1990. “My mom tried to discourage me from racing but I just knew it was in my blood. She even hid all my dad’s racing memorabilia from me.”

John welcomed two children with his first wife, Tracy Yarro: Kayley Gable, born in 1986, and Clark Gable III, born in 1988. Clark was a model and actor who hosted the reality showCheaters.In 2019, hedied of a drug overdoseat the age of 30.

John is currently married to his third wife Debra Hartsell Gable, whom he wed in 2020.

source: people.com