Saturdays with the Stars: Loretta Young

Each month of 2022 we will be taking a look at one-time film actors who became foundational figures in the early days of television, stretching from the early 1950's into the mid-1960's.  Last month we talked about Spring Byington, a character actress who specialized in mother's and aunt's until she became a December Bride in the 1950's, finally graduating to leading actress.  This month, we're going to play a little bit with the formula by picking an actress who was a big deal in the 1930's & 40's, but whose star persona has largely been forgotten by modern audiences, and is perhaps best known today for her eponymous drama anthology that ran the bulk of the 1950's.  This month's star is Loretta Young.

Loretta Young (born Gretchen) is the first star we've profiled so far who started working in films pretty much from her childhood.  Her first silent film she made when she was just three-years-old, and along with her sisters regularly appeared in films as a child, and started to go by Loretta in her billing at age 15.  Young was pretty much a go-to star throughout the 1930's & 40's, and made as many as eight films a year during the peak of her fame, starring opposite Cary Grant, Clark Gable, Orson Welles, & David Niven

Young is a bit of a cheat to include this season.  Unlike people like Lucille Ball & Jack Benny, she hit the peak of her career.  She was regularly a major star throughout over two decades of headlining parts, and she even won an Oscar for 1947's The Farmer's Daughter.  Yet, if you asked even a devoted film fan to name 4-5 of Young's movies, they'd struggle outside of her two Oscar-nominated roles, and even then it's not like The Farmer's Daughter or Come to the Stable are regularly name-checked as fine films.  If anything, Young's entire persona today, if she's remembered at all, is for twirling through a door frame in an elegant ballgown at the start of her series.  On a personal note, as well...I'm not a big Loretta Young fan.  I've never seen a film that really called out "this is it for me" and as she's one of the few big name stars of that era without such a title, I wanted to rectify that.  So throughout July, we're going to look at the at one-time big deal titles of Young's film and see which ones should be rescued as "rediscovered classics" and which ones, well, should remain where they are.