Gretchen "Loretta" Young (January 6, 1913 – August 12, 2000) was an American actress and singer. Starting as a child actress, she had a long and varied career in film from 1917 to 1953. She won the 1948 Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in the 1947 film The Farmer's Daughter and received an Oscar nomination for her role in Come to the Stable in 1949. Young moved to the relatively new medium of television, where she had a dramatic anthology series, The Loretta Young Show, from 1953 to 1961. The series earned three Emmy Awards and was rerun successfully on daytime TV and later in syndication. In the 1980s, Young returned to the small screen and won a Golden Globe for her role in Christmas Dove in 1986. Young, a devout Roman Catholic, worked with various Catholic charities after her acting career.
She was born Gretchen Young in Salt Lake City, Utah, the daughter of Gladys (née Royal) and John Earle Young. At confirmation, she took the name Michaela. When she was two years old, her parents separated, and when she was three, her family and she moved to Hollywood. Her sisters Polly Ann and Elizabeth Jane (better known as Sally Blane) and she worked as child actresses, but of the three, Gretchen was the most successful.