Immediately upon his return from New York, Clark phoned Loretta and said he wanted to see the baby. She told him the baby’s name and said she was delivered healthy in Venice.  She also told him not to contact her any further.

Feeling guilty, she did let Clark visit baby Judy once. It was night time, and he parked his car far away and walked to the back door of Loretta's mother's home. Little Judy was asleep in a dresser drawer. Clark held her and talked to her, even laughed a little at her ears. He gave Loretta a wad of cash that equaled about four hundred dollars and said, "At least buy her a decent bed."  Loretta told him she set up a private bank account that he could make deposits into for Judy if he wished and gave him the information on it. He just nodded. He never made any deposits into the account.

Judy was soon placed in a foundling home, where she remained until Loretta thought it the right time to "adopt" her. When Judy was about two years old, it was announced that Loretta had adopted two blonde girls named Judy and Jane. Details were scarce as to the who, what, when and why and the press, probably knowing the truth, didn’t press Loretta for the details. Oddly, these reports never included a photo of Loretta with her new daughters. It’s not clear why it was announced she adopted two girls—“Jane” never existed. A month later, Loretta declared that “Jane’s” mother had reconsidered the adoption and wanted her daughter back. But Judy would stay.

Loretta was still extremely paranoid that everyone would learn the truth. She lied about Judy’s age, making her a bit younger than she actually was, so nobody would do the math and figure out that Judy would have been born near the end of Loretta’s mystery “illness.” The number one threat to expose the truth was Judy’s large ears--her nurses were instructed to keep a bonnet on her at all times.

During this time, Clark had met and fallen in love with a certain Miss Lombard. Loretta said later that she was heartbroken upon learning this, that she had held out the hope that perhaps they could still be a family. It seemed, though, that with all of her efforts to disguise the truth, she had made it easier and easier for Clark to disconnect completely from her and their daughter.

In 1949, Clark and Loretta were proposed to costar in a new romantic comedy for MGM. Neither of them seemed to hesitate to star together in the new project, Key to the City,  probably figuring that refusing to star together would just ignite old rumors as to why. By this time Loretta had been married for several years to Tom Lewis, had two small children and was pregnant with her third child ( though she suffered a miscarriage on set). Clark and Loretta seemed to get along fine, although she objected to the clause in Clark’s contract that allowed him to end his work day at 5:00pm, leaving her to do her close-ups with a script girl reading his lines. To make peace, the whole production was put on a nine to five schedule.

Judy (who had now taken her stepfather’s surname) recalls that around this time Clark came to see her at their home—the one and only time she had a conversation with her father. She arrived home from school to find him standing in the foyer. She didn’t think much of it, figuring he was there to see Loretta, but soon they were seated in the living room and he asked her about school, her interests, and if she had a boyfriend.

“I was surprised. Usually my mother’s friends paid very little attention to me. Their questions were always polite, but they weren’t interested in my answers, they just asked out of courtesy. But he was different. I could tell he really cared what I was saying. I liked him.”

He gave her a kiss on the forehead before he left  and then was gone from her life forever. Loretta denied that this meeting ever took place.

In 1955, Clark and Kay Gable received an invitation to attend the wedding of twenty two-year-old Judy to Joseph Tinney. They declined and also didn’t send a gift.  Bride-to-be Judy had cold feet about the wedding and was starting to really wonder about her origins. All her life, she had heard the whispers. One of her childhood friends was the adopted daughter of actress Irene Dunne, Mary Frances. Mary Frances said to Judy once, “I’m adopted too, and I look nothing like my mother. Why do you look so much like yours?” Loretta had always deflected when Judy had asked about her real parents. Even Loretta’s husband, Tom Lewis, never got the truth out of her. When he had mentioned the resemblance of Judy and Loretta, Loretta had even gone so far as to hint to him that Judy was the illegitimate daughter of her sister Sally!

Judy told her fiancé that she didn’t think she could go through with the wedding because she wasn’t sure who she really was. Her fiancé told her pretty much point blank, “You’re Clark Gable’s daughter.” Judy was shocked to her very core. Knowing that confronting her mother wouldn’t do any good, she kept the news to herself, but she asked the priest who performed her wedding ceremony not to state her or Joseph’s last names, as she felt uncomfortable now being called ““Judy Lewis.”