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3 S C H A P T E R 1 Life without Father Loretta Young and director Frank Borzage had something in common besides Man’s Castle (1933), the only film (and one of Loretta’s best) that they made together: Both hailed from Salt Lake City, Utah. Loretta could have been born in any number of places. Her parents, Gladys Royal and John Earle Young, met in Denver, where they were married in 1907. Her sister, Polly Ann, was born there on 25 October 1908. In 1910, John Earle Young, who worked as an auditor for the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad, was transferred to Salt Lake City, and Gladys was required to relocate. It was not the ideal time to do so; she was pregnant again and scheduled to deliver in July. En route, Gladys went into labor in Salida, Colorado, in the heart of the Rockies; fortunately, Salida was a stop on the Denver and Rio Grande, and it was there that Elizabeth Jane Young (later known professionally as Sally Blane) was born on 11 July. Elizabeth Jane was not even in Salida long enough to have any memories of the town; once Gladys was able to travel, she and her children , now numbering two, continued on to Salt Lake City. Still, Salidans regard “Sally Blane” as one of their own. Catholicism played a major role in Gladys’s life. In 1908, a year after her marriage, Gladys, then twenty, converted to Roman Catholicism, unaware that she had married a man whose wooden leg proved no deterrent to women. Young exuded a potent masculinity that mocked the essence of seduction, which is usually slow and subtle until the moment of total surrender. In Young’s case, the ritual was unimportant. Gazes locked, loins throbbed, and bodies conjoined. Gladys knew the scenario, having seen her husband in action, but she believed—at least for a time—in remaining faithful to her marriage vows, which pledged couples to remain together “for better or worse.” But the worse was yet to come. L I F E W I T H O U T FAT H E R 4 Gladys was the force that kept the family from splintering when her husband’s promiscuity resulted in a cycle of separations followed by promises that were never kept. Gladys’s father, Robert Royal, differed from her husband only in degree. Gladys’s father was born in Tennessee ; her mother, Fanny, in Missouri; and Gladys herself in Los Angeles. Even so, Gladys acquired the airs of a genteel Southern lady, even as her graciousness belied her resilience and adaptability. Robert Royal was not meant to be a father, much less a father of three daughters. After Fanny died of appendicitis, Royal abandoned his family. Gladys was then five. Loretta was four when Gladys initiated the first of several separations from John Earle Young that culminated in desertion and divorce. Loretta came from a family where husbands failed their wives and children, abandoning them when supporting them became too onerous or when other women proved more desirable than their own wives. By the time Gladys was twenty-six, she was the mother of four. When the third child arrived, the Youngs had their own home where, on 6 January 1913, Gretchen Young was born, followed by her brother John a year later on 7 October 1914. “Gretchen” did not become “Loretta “ until she was fifteen and on the brink of stardom. But to her family she was always Gretchen, whom her sisters dubbed “Gretch the Wretch” owing to her aggressiveness. According to the studio biographies, which are often more like hagiographies , Loretta was born on Hollywood Avenue, the address an implicit harbinger of things to come. In this case, the biographies were partially correct. The Youngs did live on Hollywood Avenue, but not in 1913. According to the 1914 Salt Lake City Directory, they lived at 288 J. Street, within walking distance of what was then the city’s commercial and business center. The houses on J Street ranged from baronial to cottage-size, the latter most likely the kind in which the Youngs lived. Theirs was a respectable neighborhood, where residents included a large number of businesspersons. In 1915, the Youngs were at a different address: 1422 Hollywood Avenue . John was now working as a clerk for the Oregon Shortline Railroad Company. Hollywood Avenue was about four miles from the center of the city in what would now be considered the suburbs...

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