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Loretta Young: Television
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The Loretta Young Show represents a type of television programming that no longer exists. The various anthology dramas of the 1950s disappeared as programs with continuing characters came to exemplify series television in the 1960s. TV series that worked through the image of the glamorous Hollywood star would forever remain a phenomenon of 1950s television, the period in which the Hollywood studio system that had created larger-than-life stars came to a close. The 1950s space for strong female stars ... closed because television now had a permanent place in American homes. The industry no longer felt the need to attract specifically female audiences in prime time as a strategy to secure domestic approval for the medium.
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The Loretta Young Show premiered on September 20, 1953. There were 256 episodes and Miss Young starred in 162 of them portraying a wide variety of characters (94 episodes had guest stars). The last telecast of this first series aired on September 10, 1961. Miss Young soon became know as the First Lady of Television, earning three Emmys and numerous other awards.
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Loretta Young was the godmother of actress Marlo Thomas, whose parents (her father was Danny Thomas), were, like Young, devout Roman Catholics. From the time of Young's retirement in the 1960s, until not long before her death, she devoted herself to volunteer work for charities and churches with her friend of many years, Jane Wyman. Young did... briefly come out of retirement to star in two television films, Christmas Eve (1986), and Lady in a Corner (1989). Young was the mother of Peter Lewis, guitarist and vocalist of seminal 60's San Francisco underground rock band Moby Grape.
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The early 1950s saw many radio and motion picture actors moving to television; Young wanted to be one of them. In 1953 she retired from motion pictures and developed a television pilot that Proctor & Gamble snatched up. "It was a new medium, and we all felt like pioneers," Anderson quoted Young. Titled Letters to Loretta, Young's weekly show began with her reading a fan letter at her dressing table, which posed a question answered by a presentation. Though ratings were adequate, they were not great, "and some critics were not kind, labeling 'Letters' 'treacle' and 'a disappointment,"' said Anderson. Thirteen weeks into the program, the show was renamed The Loretta Young Show and the format changed.
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Young ... consistently made headlines for her personal life, beginning in 1930 when she eloped at age 17 with the much-older Grant Withers, her costar in the film The Second Story Murder (1930). Their marriage was annulled the following year. In 1940, Young married the television producer Thomas H.A. Lewis, with whom she had two sons, Christopher and Peter. Young and Lewis divorced in 1969.
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From 1953 to 1963, she appeared on television in more than 300 episodes of The Loretta Young Show, opening the program with her much-satirized trademark of sweeping through a doorway, always in a high-style gown. She was nominated seven times for Emmys as best starring actress and won three times.
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