Uncommon Knowledge [VINTAGE 1994] [FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING]

Fine unread condition beige boards, gold cloth spine and blue spine lettering contained in a fine condition non price-clipped color photographic dust jacket. Includes Author Dedication; Acknowledgments; Foreword; Epilogue: A House of My Own and Index. Illustrated with black-and-white photographs and black-and-white photographic portrait frontispiece. "Not everyone has Clark Gable and Loretta Young as their parents but all of us in the human condition are 'victims of victims' and Judy Lewis's search for wholeness is dramatic, powerful, and inspiring." - Maria Cooper Janis. "Judy Lewis was in her thirties before she discovered what was common knowledge among the Hollywood elite - that she was the daughter of Clark Gable and Loretta Young. The two had fallen in love while on location filming Call of the Wild - but Gable was a married man and, according to Young's Catholic beliefs and Hollywood's strict moral code, he was off limits. On the brink of mega-stardom herself and terrified that her romance with Gable would ruin their careers, Young gave birth to Judy in secret - later "adopting" her from the orphanage to which she had been sent as an infant. While growing up, Judy, who met "Mr. Gable" once, was never told that he was her father. Set against the backgrop of Hollywood in its heyay, Uncommon Knowledge depicts a world where home movies were filmed by studio cameramen, home was a thirty-eight-room house on a five-hundred-acre estate in the heart of Beverly Hills, friends were the children of Bing Crosby or Joan Bennett, and getting off a train could be delayed by a mob of fans clamoring to get your mother's autograph. But it is also the story of a lonely little girl who felt she didn't belong anywhere, and who comforted herself by sitting in a dressing room full of her mother's clothes. Hungry for her mother's attention, Judy felt even moe excluded after Young's marriage to advertising executive Tom Lewis - a martinet who once said to her two half-brothers, "Judy's adopted. She's not part of our family." Loretta Young was a controilling woman who had little time for the daughter whom she later described as "a mortal sin" - a child who was a reminder of the one thing she had been unable to control. To this day she has never publicly acknowledged her daughter as her own. Judy didn't hear the truth about her parents until her own marriage, when her husband told her what Hollywood have been whispering about for years. And, for years, Loretta Young denied it - until Judy forced an admission that ultimately left the connection betwen mother and daughter in tatters. Only then was Judy able to claim her father: a man she would never know, except on the movie screen. Uncommon Knowledge joins Haywire and Mommie Dearest as a fascinating behind-the-scenes memoir of Hollywood in its golden days. A devastating character portrait, it is an engrossing narrative of glamour and pathos, controlling ambition and unfulfilled longing, loneliness and resolution. It is also the account of a journey of self-discovery that was difficult but ultimately triumphant. Judy Lewis went on to her own success." - from the jacket flaps. "Judy Lewis's genealogy, the love child of two famous film stars, was familiar to all who knew her, but spoken of by no one.Her book is brave and compelling, revealing the tragic consequences of family secrets, held secret too long." - Dominick Dunne, author. "Searching for the authentic self is difficult enough when you have all the information, but having only half-truths and secrets to deal with makes wht Judy has accomplished miraculous." - Christina Crawford, author of Mommie Dearest. "Judy's way of handling her particular tragedy - with love and acceptance and kindness - enabled her to win in the end." - Gary Crosby, author. "Judy's . parents lived in a world where there were no easy choices.they did the best they could: a dark, intriguing story." - Jill Robinson, author of Perdido.…