In an interview published in The Inquirer in 1994, Ms. Lewis said: "It was very difficult for me as a little girl not to be accepted . . . by my mother, who to this day will not publicly acknowledge that I am her biological child."
In an authorized biography published after her death in 2000, Ms. Young confirmed that Ms. Lewis was Gable's daughter.
Ms. Lewis met Gable, who died in 1960, only once when she was a teenager and he dropped by her mother's house. They spoke for hours, she later said, but Ms. Lewis didn't discover until several years later that he was her father.
Ms. Lewis grew up in Los Angeles. In Uncommon Knowledge, she wrote she was teased because of the ears that she inherited from Gable. At age 7, she had an operation to pin them back.
Her mother loved to sew and insisted that Ms. Lewis take sewing lessons. Ms. Lewis later wrote in a tribute to Young, "I inherited my mother's love of clothes . . . I made some beautiful prom dresses, suits, coats, even hats. My mother and I would leaf through the pages of Vogue magazine and then I'd copy the dress that I admired. I made my own daughter's clothes when she was small - and loved doing it - thanks to Mom."
After graduating from Marymount High School, Ms. Lewis pursued an acting career in New York City. In the early 1960s, she appeared on Broadway in Mary and Mary and began to have featured parts on daytime serials, including General Hospital, Kitty Foyle, The Brighter Day and The Doctors.
Her longest-running role was as Susan Ames Dunbar on The Secret Storm from 1964 to 1971. She had guest-starring roles on The Blue Angels, The Outlaws, Airport 1975, The Streets of San Francisco and Police Woman.
