Daughters of Stars Speak Frankly, My Dear

Up close, would Judy Lewis look like the stars she claims are her parents, Loretta Young and Clark Gable?

That’s what hundreds of movie buffs hoped to find out when they gathered recently at the Balboa Bay club to hear Lewis talk about her autobiography, “Uncommon Knowledge.”

Her dancing eyes? A blend of Gable’s and Young’s. Her strong jawline and forehead? Definitely Gable’s. Her drop-dead smile? The same one Rhett flashed at Scarlett in “Gone With the Wind.”

And, dare we say it, she once had Gable’s wonderful, flyaway ears. But they are flat against her head now, almost hidden beneath a platinum bob. “I had plastic surgery on them when I was 7,” she said. “Mom had it done.”

Also on the agenda at the monthly get-together of Round Table West: Maria Riva, daughter and biographer of Marlene Dietrich.

Tell Riva she looks like her late mother and she winces, then replies: “As long as it’s on the outside . I think she was a beautiful woman--a gorgeous woman. I had great respect for her professionally. But as a human being, I had no respect for her at all.”

Neither Lewis or Riva had met before, but when they were introduced, they clicked like castanets, first shaking hands, then embracing. “Just call us survivors in beige,” Riva deadpanned (both women wore neutral knit suits). “We share a common Auschwitz, right?” she added. Lewis nodded and smiled.

Both women had tragic tales to tell. Lewis spoke of being raised as Young’s “adopted” child, though she was really her natural daughter. Riva talked about being raised as “the queen’s lady-in-waiting.”

“When my mother and father did a film “Call of the Wild” in 1935,” Lewis began, “my mother was single and Clark Gable was married.

“The ‘30s were a different time than today . . . (an announcement of my mother’s pregnancy) would have ruined their careers.”

So Young had her baby in secret, then pretended to adopt her--a perfect cover-up. “It was all a smoke screen, all fabricated,” she said.

“When I was 5, my mother married Tom Lewis and they had two boys. I felt like an outsider in my own home.”

When she was 15, she finally got to meet her father. “But I didn’t know he was my father,” Lewis said. “I came home from school and Clark Gable is standing in my living room.

“I was overwhelmed by him. We sat down and he asked about my life, school. Mother left us alone. I was nervous for a while and then became at ease.

“He was very warm, genuine. To have this time with this man was quite enjoyable for me.”

When she was 31, Lewis finally found the courage to confront her mother. She had long suspected she was her mother’s natural child and had heard talk that Gable was her father.

“I finally said to her: ‘Mom . . . is my father Clark Gable?’ She said yes, and told me the story of how they met and fell in love, how she had to hide me from Hollywood.”

Lewis agreed to keep the secret, she said. And then, while studying clinical psychology in the ‘80s, she began to write about her life, using it as a case history. “I found as I wrote, it became easier to talk about it.

“I had to write this book. I don’t think anybody knows what it’s like not to be acknowledged by your own parents. To this day, my mother still does not publicly acknowledge that I am her biological child and that Clark Gable is my father. I had to claim my identity publicly, in writing.”

How does her 81-year-old mother feel about the book? Lewis, 59, doesn’t have a clue. “We haven’t had a relationship--haven’t spoken--in eight years,” she said. “Eight years ago she thought I was writing a book and I wasn’t. She asked me to leave her home.”

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During the luncheon that preceded the talks, Riva said her tome about Dietrich was going to be made into a movie, directed by Louis Malle (husband of Candice Bergen). “I can only see Michelle Pffeifer playing my mother,” she said. “She has just the right amount of arrogance.”

Arrogance indeed. “When you are very beautiful, everything is permissible,” Riva told the crowd. “Just be beautiful. Be that dashing image and you can get away with murder. That’s why I wrote the book.”

Privately, Riva confided that she had to emotionally detach herself from her mother. “When you live with these legendary creatures, it is the way you survive.

“If you try to apply any normal rules or analyses to them you are always going to end up with frustration. You have to accept them for what they are and not try to be put to death by them, if you are related.”

Did she feel like she had grown up without a mother? “I knew I was a child,” Riva said. “I didn’t know what a mother was. You see, if you don’t go to school or don’t fraternize with ‘the little people,’ as my mother called them, you have nothing to compare with.

“(Dietrich) was the queen, my father was her major domo, her lovers were her suitors, and I was the lady in waiting. I didn’t think it was strange; I had nothing to compare it to.”

When Dietrich died two years ago in a filthy bed, “bony hands cradling a sunken cheek, matchstick legs tucked high against her frail body,” Riva writes, her first thought was to destroy the bed “so that no one would be able to take pictures of her last, terrible leavings,” Riva said.

Dietrich was a sad woman, Riva, 69, told her enraptured audience. “And if you find, when you read the book, that you’ll stop yourself or a friend from taking that one, first pill or first drink, I’ll have done my job.

“But, in her time, she was a fascinating lady and you have to give her that.”

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Hoags receive Golden Baton: Talk about a social soldier. Philanthropist George Hoag suffered a heart attack a week ago, but that didn’t keep him from attending a Saturday night gala where he and his wife, Patty, received the prestigious Golden Baton Award from the Orange County Philharmonic Society.

Ever the jokester, Hoag told 300 music lovers at the Four Seasons Hotel that he had “never been one for music appreciation,” but that he did have a favorite composer.

“Does anybody remember Stewart Hamlin? He was a very famous Western star who became a radio minister and made a fortune.

“He wrote a great song and Patty and I are proud to have a 78 record of it. It’s called, ‘I Won’t Go Huntin’ With You Jake, but I’ll Go Chasin’ Women.’ ” I’m sure the Philharmonic would love to have it.”

Jack and Nancy Caldwell were co-chairmen of the gala, which celebrated the Philharmonic’s 40th anniversary season.

Former Golden Baton winners in attendance were Floss Schumacher, Elaine Redfield, Jean Aldrich (on behalf of her late husband, Daniel Aldrich Jr.) and John and Donna Crean.