Happy Centennial to Loretta Young! (January 6th, 1913 - August 12th, 2000) She was my mom's favorite actress as a little girl which is how I know her name.
So many ruffles! How can Loretta breathe in there?
Well that and my encyclopedic attention to the Best Actress category in theory long before I'd seen almost any of the movies as a kid. The Farmer's Daughter was literally the first of the 1940s Best Actress winners I ever saw -- entirely because of my mom's love for it -- but I have to admit that I don't remember the movie at all now. (FWIW my favorite Best Actress win of the 40s is a tight race between Crawford's Mildred Pierce and DeHavilland's The Heiress)
We name-checked Loretta very briefly on the recent podcast (Part 1 & 2) because my mom was so happy with the book I gave her as a gift recently. My mother is very conservative so perhaps it was Loretta's devout Christianity in the middle of the Sodom & Gomorrah --aka Hollywood -- that was a draw? Or maybe its was regional pride - Loretta Young was one of the few big movie stars from Utah, where my mom was born and raised.
The book is called "Hollywood Madonna Loretta Young" (by Bernard F Dick) and is apparently the first biography of this Leading Actress of the 40s. In addition to film stardom, she had a secret love child with Clark Gable and found major television stardom in as the host / sometime star of the long running drama series "The Loretta Young Show" (1953-1961)
Have you seen any of her films?
Loretta Young is naturally being celebrated this month here and there. Her official website is tracking the celebrations and screenings if you're interested in checking her work out. I've got to catch Come to the Stable (1949) one of these days. Such a major hole in my Oscar viewing what with its seven nominations (among the highest for a film that missed a Best Picture citation) and it's a nun movie for Christ's sake -- Oscar subgenre alert! Frustrated that Netflix doesn't have it.