Born: 6 January 1913, United States
Died: 12 August 2000
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Gretchen Michaela Young
This entry is reprinted in full with permission from the National Women’s History Museum (United States of America). All rights reserved.
Loretta Young was the first A-list movie star to headline a television series. Her friend David O. Selznick counseled her against joining the television “enemy” whose existence threatened the entire motion picture industry. Once she appeared on television, he warned, she would no longer be cast in films. Young, however, reasoned that, as a woman over 40, few movie scripts were coming her way as it was. Television represented a new medium in which to make an impact.
NBC, the smallest network, courted Young, seeing in her not only a name to attract audiences but also someone to raise television’s status. Young won an Academy Award in 1947 for her role in The Farmer’s Daughter. Audiences who had watched her in theaters since her film debut in 1917 happily invited her into their living rooms.
Young brought a singular, creative vision to her new program self-titled The Loretta Young Show. Young and her husband Tom Lewis formed the Lewislor production company, which exercised full creative and production control. Though Young technically held the title of associate producer, staff recollected afterwards there was no doubt about who was really in charge. Young’s creative goal was to dramatize ideas to integrate them into mainstream, popular culture. The anthology show featured different characters and stories each week, with Young starring in about half of the 30-minute programs. The storylines conveyed strong moral and religious messages that reflected Young’s deep, Catholic faith.
Though groundbreaking in many ways, including its sympathetic treatment of contemporary women’s issues, The Loretta Young Show found itself out of step with the times as the 1950s morphed into the 1960s. The Television Academy nominated Young for acting awards in each of her program’s seasons, and she won three times: in 1955, 1957, and 1959. However, her show never reached the heights of popularly. Its highest ratings came in 1954-55 when it was rated #28 and 1957-58 when it reached #30. Citing viewer mail that complained about Young’s conservative point of view, Proctor and Gamble dropped its sponsorship after the 1959-60 season. The company complained that the show was too focused on a narrow, conservative Catholic audience. Young later claimed the rift came over political differences. The show returned in 1960-61 with new sponsor Listerine, lasting for one more season before being cancelled by NBC.
[Loretta Young] always felt that she had a responsibility to live up to her own standards, and if people knew that she had failed, they might be so disappointed or cynical that it would affect their own spiritual faith. She knew she was a role model, and she took that very seriously. Tied into that was the guilt that she, who had such strong convictions, was sometimes unable to live up to them herself. – Joan Wester Anderson