Stars who hid secret love children until after they died

Clark Gable was married to Maria Franklin when he began filming The Call of the Wild with Hollywood up-and-comer Loretta Young in 1934, and the pair quickly engaged in an on-set affair. 

When Loretta fell pregnant, Clark's status as a married man and her conservative religious views meant that she needed to hide the pregnancy at all costs.

Loretta fled to Europe in 1935 and gave birth to their daughter, Judy Lewis, before pretending to adopt her from an orphanage. As Judy grew up, she bore a striking resemblance to Clark – particularly her ears – which led to her undergoing surgery to pin them back.

Judy met her father only once, when she was 15 and unaware of the rumours surrounding her parentage. "He was like a God. I couldn't believe that he wanted to sit and talk to me," she recalled to The New York Post years later.

"We talked for maybe half an hour about school, my favourite subjects, boys, ballet class. When he got up to go, I walked him to the door, and he kissed me on the forehead… I had no idea why Clark Gable was talking with me, but he was saying goodbye."

As an adult, Judy confronted her mother about the rumours, and Loretta finally revealed the truth. "I told my mum that all I wanted was to be accepted and loved – and if she couldn’t do that, why didn’t she give me to a family that could have?" Judy wrote in her memoir, Uncommon Knowledge.

"It was very difficult for me as a little girl not to be accepted or acknowledged by my mother, who, to this day, will not publicly acknowledge that I am her biological child." Clark also refused to acknowledge her and left her out of his will.

"I ask myself why he didn’t leave me something. Forget money – even just a letter," she told People. "It leaves me in the dark."

While Clark never revealed the truth about his secret love child, Loretta certainly did in an authorised 2000 biography, Forever Young, authored by Joan Wester Anderson. The late actress was firm in the fact that she only wanted to tell the truth after her death, and the biography was published posthumously.

Marlon Brando was a famous philanderer and acknowledged a total of 10 biological and adopted children in his will, although it is widely believed that he fathered many more. 

Christian, Miko, Rebecca, Simon, Tarita, Maimiti, Raiatua, Ninna, Myles, and Timothy all made it into Marlon's will, yet after he died in 2004, another love child came out of the woodwork.

Lisa Brando is the product of an affair between Marlon and Hogan's Heroes actress Cynthia Lynn, whom Lisa claimed her mother had met while he was on a break from filming 1962's Mutiny on the Bounty. They reportedly conceived Lisa and went on to film Bedtime Story together in 1964.

British TV presenter Paula Yates was devastated to learn in 1997 that her father, producer Jess Yates, was not her real father; in fact, she was actually born from an affair between Helene Thornton and Jess' rival, Hughie Green.

The news was released shortly after Hughie, an English TV presenter and game show host, passed away in May 1997. His friend, Noel Botham, dropped the bombshell of her parentage at Hughie's funeral, and later confirmed it to the press.

"I don't know if this girl even knows that Hughie is her dad," Noel reportedly said at the funeral, per The Evening Standard. "But he used to see her on the TV or in the newspapers and say: 'Oh, it's that daughter of mine again.'"

Paula found out that Hughie was her father after seeing it in the papers, and decided to get a DNA test, which confirmed that the headlines were correct. "I'm horrified. I thought I was at the darkest point in my life – now this," she told The Sun at the time.

Paula's biological brother, Christopher Green, shared with The Evening Standard that Hughie took the secret to his grave. "He just couldn't bring himself to tell me about Paula. He must have been in such mental pain. He had lived with the lie and died with it, too."

Legendary entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. was a father of four, having welcomed one biological daughter, Tracey, and three adopted children, Mark, Manny and Jeff, with his wife, May Britt.

Mark made headlines around the world in 2015 when he claimed that Sammy had admitted on his deathbed that Mark was his son. This admission made Mark reconsider his entire childhood, and wonder whether he was not merely adopted by Sammy, but his son by blood.

"I am a huge living question mark, and that is because I have never understood anything 100 per cent about where I came from," Mark told the Daily Mail. "If I am Dad's natural son, and I believe very much that could be the case, then there could have been many reasons why I was put down as adopted."

"Maybe it was the whole showbiz thing and the scandal it might cause, or the colour thing, or even that my natural mother's identity had to remain secret too," he continued.

Mark then recounted his final moments with his famous dad in 1990. "I had arrived from Lake Tahoe, which was about eight hours away. He called me to his bed, and I will never forget what he said as he pulled me close."

"'You are my son' were his last words to me, and I have from that day wondered what he meant," he said. "I might never know what he actually meant. Was he confessing to being my real father? Was he just thanking me for coming to see him as he was dying? Was he just trying to make it up to me in those last few moments and telling me he really loved me?"

Mark also claimed that various people told him throughout his childhood that Sammy was his biological father. 

He found his answer later in 2015 when he took a DNA test on Inside Edition alongside his older sister. The test proved that Mark was not, in fact, Sammy's biological son, making his deathbed words even more mysterious.