Letter to Loretta

I am so happy to have been able to "connect" with Loretta Young again. One of our Christian TV channels has been showing the episodes and it has brought back happy memories from my childhood. I so enjoy her commentaries before and after the shows. I recently purchased the 3 DVD set of "Letters to Loretta" and have really been enjoying them. Now that I understand there is a biography written by her daughter, I want to read that, too. I have tried to find out information on her gowns because they seemed so beautiful, as it would be fun to see what they looked like in color. I haven't had much luck. Perhaps the biography will contain pictures of some of them?

I saw reruns of Loretta Young's TV show when I was little.

My lingering impression was... one of the most beautiful women on TV, and a lady of class and kindness.

When I purchased a DVD with a few old TV show episodes, I found my childhood impression essentially---correct. Note also the beauty of her gowns.

One episode (based on a reader letter) of Loretta as the devoted wife working to save her husband in an iron lung from dying during a power outage was quite touching.

Young is also great in the 1940's movie "The Farmer's Daughter" as a Swedish immigrant's daughter turned politician, and in an earlier 40's movie "The Minister's Wife" with Cary Grant.

This show has been running in reruns on a Christian station for some years now (since maybe 2004) and it really is a good show. Ms. Young was able to really show the real depth of her talent for possibly the first time, in all kinds of roles, which is what she loved about the series, that she could do all kinds of parts, in the abbreviated 30 minute anthology format. There are a few episodes that are extra special, in which she plays a nun (same character in at least 2 shows) and you can really tell she wanted to pay tribute to them. They are both set in a hospital and really have not dated. In another, she is a lady who befriends a little Oriental boy and thinks he has cheated her; when she discovers he has not she feels awful. It is one of her best acting scenes ever. Also another episode in which she loses her husband in the war, falls in love again, and then the husband comes back. It was set in a beach setting and her performance (with her regular co star, John Newland I think his name is) is a great one. Also a performance from I think the early 60s, she is a teacher in love with her principal, and is accused of an affair. She has a lot of facial props to make her look unattractive and this half hour is probably the best acting she ever did. You really see the depth of her talent in this show and the shows are upbeat, realistic, but make you typically feel better or make you think of their topic. She did a great job, as she was not only the principal actor, she also was the principal director. It really was Loretta Young's show.

This must rank as one of the greatest series in television history. Really there is nothing quite like it so far as I know, since I am not the best TV addict in the world. But offhand I don't know of any other series where one person acts a different part every week and did so for at least 8 years and the parts covered an extraordinary wide range of characters and emotions as well as genres, a few morphing into sci-fi territory, and some in comedy, soap opera, Western, etc. It's true after she suffered exhaustion Young did not star in every show, but still what we have is a remarkable achievement.

As I said, though not the ideal TV addict, offhand I can't think of a similar achievement. Sitcoms are NOT the same thing. An actor such as Marjorie Lord or Jane Wyatt would perform weekly too but the character was the same and the scripts required little emotion. Compare that with Young's often powerful explorations of different characters.

It's odd that, to my knowledge, Young's achievement in the series is no sufficiently acknowledged. Young also deserves credit for her tactical switch from the cinema to the TV screen where, instead of waiting months for a decent movie script to turn up she was able to perform in a miniature movie every week. In terms of glamour, she immortalized her beauty in literally thousands of glamour close-ups and sometimes even extreme close-ups. How man such close-ups does the average star get in a lifetime in movies?

The shows themselves were incredibly well written, some bordering on what today we would call "feminist" themes, especially "Incident in India" where Young plays a Muslim woman who outsmarts all the met in the village, but also where she plays an Egyptian queen, Nefertiti, always looking absolutely gorgeous but superbly acting as well, Kudos also the "Dear Midge" where Young showed she could do comedy with the best of them, as when she tries to use her eyes to seduce a man. In a few episodes she adopts a false nose and eyeglasses to make herself look unattractive.

To contextualize my praise, other series that I have admired are the Alfred Hitchcock Presents series, the Alfred Hitchcock Hour, the Twilight Zone, One Step Beyond, The Outer Limits to name similar anthology series. But those were not one-man shows like Young's was a one-woman's show.

Besides their aesthetic quality, the series also had an epiphanic moral at the end, where one of the characters realizes that they had something to learn.

Often this epiphany can be just a little too pat, but that's the only criticism I can make. In one episode with John Newland it's hard to believe that a Hollywood director would rip up his contract just to be with his wife, even someone as lovely as Loretta Young.

In 1953 Loretta Young left films and ventured to television.

Remember how she would come out on the screen in elegant gowns? She would thank John, the man who introduced her.

This television series was an anthology. Loretta tackled a different role each week. Most of the shows were dramas but Ms. Young had the ability to do comedy as well.

She really did some fine acting here. I vividly remember the show where she played a woman dying of a brain tumor. I'll never forget when she met the priest by the gate and said that she wasn't Catholic but was dying. How about the one where the principal of a school visits her home at the end of summer vacation. She is the typical spinster teacher here. The principal tells her of his archaeological adventures that summer. When she comes back from making him tea in the kitchen, she discovers him dead. The whole town engages in vicious gossip on what must have been going on between the 2. I'll also not forget when Walter Slezak appeared as Emil Kronstadt, a chemistry or physics teacher who told a child not to wear falsies. Still another memorable episode was where Loretta comforted her next door neighbor when the latter lost his wife in a hit and run accident.

The opening music to the show was marvelous as Loretta waltzed in. She gave us some wonderful memories!