A star and a fighter for humanity too

Budapest Times

4 days ago

Yes, I may have married and divorced four times but don't expect the Whore of Babylon, Myrna Loy cautions upfront. She can't understand how you can love one man while sleeping with another. No, rather, here is a level-headed woman, and what's really important is her 124-feature film career stretching over five decades from 1925 to 1980, while getting seriously involved in politics and possessing a deep feeling for human dignity too.
Film-wise, there were many highlights, but Loy is probably best known for her terrific rapport with William Powell in six 'Thin Man' comedies in the 1930s, part of their 14-film union. Then she peaked in the 1940s with 'The Best Years of Our Lives', 'The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer' and 'Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House'. We hope to read all about those.
Politics-wise, this was an equally important part of Loy's life, as she became increasingly passionate during World War Two. She had read Adolf Hitler's 'Mein Kampf', making her an outspoken critic, and later joined the US National Commission for UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation that promotes these qualities to foster peace and equality worldwide. She also actively supported Democratic presidential candidates from Harry S. Truman onwards. Surely this will all be well covered too.
But this is getting ahead of the story, and if there is some kind of proof that Myrna Loy was a methodical sort of lady, it is that she eschews the slide-in approach of many biographies and autobiographies by beginning right at the beginning, albeit after briefly excusing herself for failing to qualify in the above-mentioned Hollywood whoring stakes, unlike those 'bed-to-bed marathons that keep appearing'.
As she says, she sent a brazen Clark Gable flying off her back porch into the bushes one night. 'Keeping ahead of Spencer Tracy wasn't easy, either. He chased me for years, then sulked adorably when I married someone else. Leslie Howard wanted to whisk me off to the South Seas, and, believe me, that was tempting. But he happened to be married at the time – they all were – and that sort of thing never appeealed to me. Besides, I was usually married or about to be myself, so extracurricular activities didn't interest me.'
That beginning was as Myrna Adele Williams, born in Radersburg, Montana, on August 2, 1905. Her grandparents were adventurers, young people from Wales, Scotland and Sweden. They came to the wild, wooly West in the mid-1800s for gold or land or freedom or a better life. Her father was a congressman in the Montana House of Representatives. Mother was involved in music and active in local politics.
Her parents attempted ranch life, and when her father was taking cattle to market in Chicago the train made a whistle-stop at a place called Myrna in Nebraska, so that's how she got her name. The young Myrna began doing plays in their cellar, and after performing in one at school she decided that anything but being on stage seemed inconceivable.
In 1918 her father died of Spanish flu and Mother and the two children relocated to Culver City, a hamlet between Hollywood and the Pacific. Myrna became a professional dancer and she excited screen heartthrob Rudolph Valentino. She failed a screen test but it aroused in her an enormous interest in films and she haunted the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer casting office.
Fellow thespians thought the name Myrna Williams was unsuitable and she became Myrna Loy. Beginning with the film 'What Price Beauty?' in 1925, one minor part followed another in rapid succession as the studios worked actors hard. Her almond-shaped eyes saw her given 'exotica' roles, makeup transforming her into a slant-eyed Oriental – Burmese, Chinese, a South Sea islander, Mexican, a Creole. a Javanese-Indian half-caste. Also a vamp, moll, gypsy, slave girl, spy. Now, very few of those pictures stand out, she says. Many are lost.
In six years she was in 60 pictures. When the silent era ended she was among those able to make the transition to sound. A strong woman, she raised hell when the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer publicity department invented a 'torrid romance' with Ramon Novarro, and it never happened again. And she stood up to the imposing Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw when he visited a set and tried to goad her. 'Having been brought up by people who respected themselves, I wasn't easily done in by any of these great figures.'
As the 1930s progressed, in less than two years at MGM she made 15 films.'They worked us to death. You'd go from one picture to another without rehearsal, often not knowing what your part would be from scene to scene. They would hand you your afternoon lines in the commissary to learn over lunch. These so-called moguls used us terribly. We were little more than chattels, really, but it was valuable experience. You didn't need acting school; you learned on the job… '
Her famous and evergreen role as Nora Charles in the long-running 'Thin Man' series gilded her screen persona as 'the perfect wife''. But as film historian Imogen Sara Smith says in a Preface, this tag is 'dated and patronising (no one called William Powell 'the perfect husband', though for some he might be)'. And Loy found the tag restricting.
Nonetheless, this was her breakthrough and its success completely obliterated the mediocre parts that had gone before. It also caused her to become one of the first actresses to rebel against a Hollywood studio, staging a one-woman strike in 1935 over the poor roles she was getting and the fact that she was earning half Powell's salary on their films together. She fled to New York and beyond, and finally MGM caved, even giving her a bonus to lure her back.
As Loy unfolds her story, it is punctuated occasionally with personal reminiscences from many luminaries, with Gary Cooper (a fellow Montanan), Powell, Loretta Young, Gable, Rosalind Russell and Burt Reynolds among them. Hollywood biographies tend to drop names freely, and here are encounters with Garbo, Lamarr, Chaplin, Crawford, Harlow, Hemingway, Flynn, Grant, Dietrich, Sinatra, Reagan, Nixon and many more from both films and politics.
In 1946 'The Best Years of Our Lives' was a huge success and won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, but while all around her won Oscars, Loy was overlooked. In fact she was never nominated for one at all until in 1991 she received an Honorary Academy Award in recognition of her career achievement. Frail health prevented her attending the ceremony.
This was two years before she died on December 14, 1993 at age 88 during surgery. Fortunately, Loy had published this autobiography in 1987 and a lifetime in Tinseltown is a lifetime unlike most others. The book is available again in this new edition with the film historian's Preface, and there are tales galore such as this one: 'They put me right to work in 'Manhattan Melodrama' [1934], which precipitated the demise of John Dillinger, Public Enemy No. 1. FBI agents shot him down outside the Biograph Theatre, in Chicago, after he'd seen the film. Supposedly a Myrna Loy fan, he broke cover to see me. Personally, I suspect the theme of the picture rather than my fatal charms attracted him, but I've always felt a little guilty about it, anyway. They filled him full of holes, poor soul.'
Conglomerates moved into Hollywood and as she aged she transitioned from glamorous leads to supporting roles. She adapted to television and the stage. Hers was a life of full of commitment and responsibility, at the United Nations, in Washington, supporting civil rights and opposing discrimination in housing. She attended international conferences at which she gave important speeches. Here are her considered thoughts, mixed in with movie stardom.