Obituary: Loretta Young

Hollywood screen actress. Born in Salt Lake City on January 6, 1912. Died in Los Angeles on August 12, aged 87.

She was one of the most prolific Hollywood actresses of the studio era, whose grace and high-cheekboned elegance kept her working in film and television for 40 years.

Her career began with silent movies and went out with her own long-running show on the small screen. Along the way she featured opposite most male stars of her day and worked with directors Frank Capra, Cecil B. DeMille, John Ford and Orson Welles.

She won the Best Actress Oscar relatively late for her role as a Swedish maid who gets elected to Congress in the 1947 comedy The Farmer's Daughter.

"At long last," she sighed as she clutched her statuette at the awards.

Young had the perfect physique for Hollywood - stick-thin but broad-shouldered enough to appear taller than her 165cm.

In The Loretta Young Show, which ran for most of the 1950s and early 1960s, she made fun of her own iconic status with a grand entrance each week in a sweeping movie-star gown.

But her performances were often more memorable than the fare she appeared in and she had the bad luck never to be in a film of enduring appeal.

At a time when movie studios were like factory production lines Young shone as a versatile performer who maintained strict professional standards. There were years in which she appeared in as many as 10 films, such as Born to be Bad (1934), with Cary Grant, or Call of the Wild (1935), with Clark Gable, or Shanghai (1935), with Charles Boyer.

Young entered show business when she was 4, thanks to an uncle in the industry. Her father had walked out on the family a year earlier, forcing her mother to move to Los Angeles from Salt Lake City and start a boarding house.

By the time she was a teenager, Gretchen Michaela Young had become Loretta Young and was working regularly. She eloped with one of her co-stars, Grant Withers, when she was 17, but it did not work out.

She married twice more - once to producer-writer Thomas Lewis, and again, when she was 80, to her long-time companion, fashion designer Jean Louis. Young, a Catholic, threw much of her energy into charity work, particularly after retiring in 1963.

"She was an incredible lady," says her agent Norman Brokaw. "I learned from her that if you can handle yourself with class and dignity you can work as long as you want in this business."

- INDEPENDENT