Myrna Loy

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Myrna Loy (born Myrna Adele Williams; August 2, 1905 – December 14, 1993) was an American film, television, and stage actress.

Loy, who was originally trained as a dancer, committed herself entirely to an acting career after a brief appearance in silent films.

She was first typecast in exotic roles, often as a vaper or a woman of Asian descent, but her career prospects improved dramatically after her portrayal of Nora Charles in The Thin Man (1934).

There, she began studying dance and then continued her high school education.

She was discovered by production designer Natacha Rambova, who helped facilitate film auditions for her, and she began to film auditions in the late 1920s, mainly portraying vamps.

Nora Charles' appearance in The Thin Man raised her profile as a versatile actress, and she reprised her role as a versatile actress five times. Loy's career began to decline in the 1950s, with her leading roles in the comedy Cheaper by the Dozen (1950), as well as supporting roles in The Ambassador's Daughter (1956) and the dramatic Lonelyhearts (1958).

She appeared in only eight films between 1960 and 1981, after which she ceased acting. Loy was never nominated for an Academy Award in March 1991, awarded the honorary Academy Award for her lifetime's service on and off the board, including as an assistant to the Red Cross's head of military and naval welfare during World War II and as a member-at-large of the United States Commission to UNESCO.

Loy died in December 1993 in New York City, at the age of 88.

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Life and career

Loy was born in Helena, Montana, the niece of Adelle Mae (née Johnson) and rancher David Franklin Williams. Loy's parents had married in Helena in 1904, a year before Loy was born. She had one younger brother, David Frederick Williams (d. 1982). David Thomas Williams, Loy's paternal grandfather, was Welsh and emigrated from Liverpool, England, to the United States in 1856, arriving in Philadelphia. He later settled in Montana, where he began his career as a rancher, but not able to read or write in English. Loy's maternal grandparents immigrated from Scotland and Sweden. Her father served in Helena as a banker, real estate developer, and farmland appraiser, and was the youngest man to serve in the Montana state legislature during her lifetime. Her mother studied music at the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago and had intended to work as a concert performer at one time, but instead she dedicated her time to raising Loy and her brother. Loy's mother was a lifelong Democrat, while her father was a hardline Republican. She was raised in the Methodist faith.

Loy lived in Radersburg, Montana, a rural mining community about 50 miles (80 km) southeast of Helena. Loy's mother died from pneumonia in 1912, and her father sent his wife and her daughter to La Jolla, California, during the winter of 1912. Loy's mother saw a lot of promise in Southern California, and she encouraged her husband to buy real estate there on one of her husband's visits. Among the properties he purchased was land that he would later sell for his film studio there, and he did a good job. Despite her mother's efforts to convince her husband to move to California permanently, the three children later returned to Montana, where she finally did. Loy's mother requested a hysterectomy shortly afterward, and Loy's brother David, a Los Angeles resident, agreed that Los Angeles was a safer place to get it done, so she, Loy, Loy's brother David, and Loy's brother David moved to Ocean Park, where Loy's sister David began learning dancing lessons. Loy's family returned to Montana, Loy continued her dancing lessons, and Myrna Williams performed her first dance at age 12 based on "The Blue Eagle" from the Rose Dream operetta at Helena's Marlow Theater.

Loy was 13 years old when her father died during the 1918 flu pandemic in November of that year. Loy's mother migrated the family to California, where they settled in Culver City, just south of Los Angeles. While studying dance in downtown Los Angeles, Loy attended the exclusive Westlake School for Girls. When her teachers objected to her extracurricular involvement in the dramatic arts, her mother enrolled her in Venice High School, and at 15, she began performing in local stage productions.

Loy posed for Venice High School sculpture instructor Harry Fielding Winebrenner as "Inspiration" in 1921; the full length figure was a key figure in his allegorical sculpture group Fountain of Education. The sculpture group, which was completed in 1922, was unveiled in front of the campus outdoor pool in May 1923, where it stood for decades. Loy's slender figure with her uplifted face and one arm extending skyward showed a "vision of fidelity, grace, youthful vigor, and aspiration" that was singled out in a Los Angeles Times story that included a photograph of the "Inspiration" model alongside the model's name, the first time her name appeared in a newspaper. A few months later, Loy's "Inspiration" figure was temporarily removed from the sculpture and carried aboard the Battleship Nevada for a Memorial Day pageant in which "Miss Myrna Williams" appeared. In the opening scenes of the 1978 film Grease, the Fountain of Education can be seen. After decades of exposure to the elements and vandalism, the original concrete statue was taken down from display in 2002 and replaced by a bronze version that was funded by an alumni-led fundraising effort.

Loy left school at the age of 18 to begin to help with the family's finances. She found work at Grauman's Egyptian Theatre, where she appeared in prologues, complex musical sequences that were related to and served as preliminary entertainment before the film's premiere. Loy encountered Eleonora Duse in the play Thy Will Be Done, and her simple acting techniques impressed Loy that she sought to imitate them throughout her career.

Although Loy was performing in prologues at the Grauman's Egyptian Theatre, portrait photographer Henry Waxman took many photos of her that were not captured by Rudolph Valentino when the actor went to Waxman's studio for a viewing. Valentino was looking for a leading lady for Cobra, the first solo project he and his wife Natacha Rambova were delivering. Loy was tested for the job, but she and fellow newcomer Joan Crawford were hired as an extra for Pretty Ladies (1925), in which she and fellow newcomer Joan Crawford were among a bevy of chorus girls dangling from an elaborate chandelier.

In What Price Beauty?, a film she was directing, Rambova recruited Loy for a small but showy role opposite Nita Naldi. The film was shot in May 1925 and has been unveiled for three years; but Loy's exotic makeup and costume appeared in Motion Picture magazine and culminated in a Warner Bros deal. Williams' surname was changed from Williams to Loy.

Loy's silent film roles were mostly as a vain or femme fatale, and she often portrayed characters from Asian or Eurasian roots in films including Across the Pacific (1928), The Black Watch (1929), and The Desert Song (1929), which she later recalled "kindly solidified my exotic non-American image." She appeared in The Great Divide in 1930. It took years for her to escape this typecasting, and she was cast as a villainous Eurasian in Thirteen Women (1932). Boris Karloff was also portrayed in The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932), the depraved sadistic daughter of the title character's depraved sadistic daughter of the title character.

Loy began dating Arthur Hornblow Jr. in 1932, while his wife, Juliette Crosby, was still married. Loy appeared in small parts in The Jazz Singer and a number of early Technicolor musicals, including The Bride of the Regiment, and Under a Texas Moon. As a result, she became involved with musical careers, and when they started to lose attention from the public, she began to sluggish, leading to a stalemate. Loy appeared in the Manhattan Melodrama with Clark Gable and William Powell in 1934. After leaving a screening of the film at the Biograph Theater in Chicago, gangster John Dillinger was shot to death, the film received a lot of buzz, with some publications revealing that Loy was the preferred actress of Dillinger.

Loy played Nora Charles in the 1934 film The Thin Man after appearing with Ramón Novarro in The Barbarian (1933). Director W. S. Van Dyke selected Loy after he spotted a wit and a sense of humor that her previous films hadn't revealed. He pushed her into a swimming pond to see her reactions, and felt that her aplomb in handling the situation was exactly what he had imagined for Nora at a Hollywood party. Loy refused to perform because he felt she was a dramatic actress, but Van Dyke insisted. As Loy promised to filming in Stamboul Quest, Mayer relented on the condition that filming be completed within three weeks. The Thin Man was one of the year's biggest hits, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. Loy received raves and was praised for her comedic abilities. William Powell, her costar, became a well-known screen couple who appeared in 14 films together, one of Hollywood's most popular pairings. Loy later described The Thin Man as the film "that made me cry... after more than 80 films."

Her appearances in Manhattan Melodrama and The Thin Man were a turning point in her career, and she was in more important films. Clark Gable and Jean Harlow's Wife vs. Secretary (1936) and Petticoat Fever (1936) gave her the opportunity to develop comedic skills. In addition to William Powell's Libeled Lady (1936), Jean Harlow and Spencer Tracy; The Great Ziegfeld (1936), in which she appeared Billie Burke opposite Powell's Florenz Ziegfeld; and the romantic comedy Double Wedding (1937). In 1936, Loy married Arthur Hornblow, who appeared in several films. When filming Whipsaw and Libeled Lady, she was later discovered to have affairs with co-star Tracy between 1935 and 1936. Loy later told educator Alan Greenberg that she was in love with Spencer Tracy: "I loved him and I really did love him." I adored him. I was in love with him, but [Katharine Hepburn] got in the way."

Parnell (1937), one of the most poorly received films of either Loy's or Gable's careers, was also successful, but their other pairings in Test Pilot and Too Hot to Handle (both 1938) were also successful. Loy was outspoken about the studio's casting hierarchy, particularly based on race, and was quoted as saying: "Why does every black person in the films have to play a servant?" How about a black person carrying a briefcase up the steps of a courthouse?

Loy was one of Hollywood's busiest and highest-paid actresses during this period, and in 1937 and 1938, she was included in the annual "Quigley Poll of the Top Ten Money Making Artists," which was collected from the votes of movie producers around the country for the actors who had earned the most money in their theaters over the previous year.

Loy was well-known for her role in romantic comedies by the 1930s, and she wanted to prove her dramatic abilities by the late 1930s. In The Rains Came (1939) opposite Tyrone Power, she was cast as the leading female role. Melvyn Douglas appeared in I Love You Again (1940), Love Crazy (1941), and Shadow of the Thin Man (1941), all with William Powell.

Loy divorced husband Hornblow in Reno on June 1, 1942, citing "mental cruelty" as the reason for splitting. At his sister's home in New York City, five days after the divorce, she married John D. Hertz, Jr., an advertising executive and maker of Hertz Rent A Car. They were married for two years before divorcing in Cuernavaca, Mexico, on August 21, 1944, with Loy citing mental cruelty.

Loy all but gave up acting to concentrate on the war cause and started devoting her time with the Red Cross in the aftermath of World War II. She was so outspoken against Adolf Hitler that her name was included on his blacklist, resulting in her films being barred in Germany. She also operated a Naval Auxiliary canteen and traveled often to raise funds for war causes. Loy began dating producer and screenwriter Gene Markey, who had previously married actress Joan Bennett and Hedy Lamarr in 1945. On January 3, 1946, the two were married in a private ceremony at the chapel on Terminal Island, while Markey was serving in the military.

With The Thin Man Goes Home (1945), she returned to film. In 1946, she appeared in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). Loy was paired with Cary Grant in David O. Selznick's The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947). A teenage Shirley Temple co-starred in this film. She appeared in Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948), which was a huge success.

Loy co-starred in Cheaper by the Dozen (1950), a box-office flop in the United States, grossing $4.4 million. She divorced Markey in the same year. Howland H. Sargeant, the United States Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs and president of Radio Liberty, who married in Fort Myer, Virginia, on June 2, 1951. Sargeant, a Presbyterian, wanted the wedding to take place in the church but they were unable to do so due to Loy's latest divorce.

Loy served as co-chairman of the National Committee Against Discrimination in Housing during the 1950s and 1980s. She became a member of the United States National Commission for UNESCO in 1948, becoming the first Hollywood actress to do so. Belles on Their Toes, a Dozen sequel, starred her in 1952. She appeared in The Ambassador's Daughter in 1956, as well as John Forsythe and Olivia de Havilland. In Lonelyhearts (1958), Dore Schary's homage to Nathanael West's classic 1933 film Miss Lonelyhearts starred her opposite Montgomery Clift and Robert Ryan. She appeared in Midnight Lace and From the Terrace in 1960, but she was not in another film until 1969 in The April Fools. Loy received the Sarah Siddon Award in 1965 for her appearance in Chicago's theatre. Loy, a lifelong Democrat, has long endorsed John F. Kennedy's assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1960, finding Richard Nixon to be an unscrupulous man. Loy also dedicated herself to fighting for African-American civil rights as co-chair of the National Committee Against Discrimination in Housing, and she served as co-chair of the National Committee Against Discrimination in Housing. Eugene McCarthy, Hubert Humphrey, and George McGovern, 1972, would endorse her.

Loy moved to 23 East 74th Street in Manhattan's Upper East Side after divorcing her fourth husband Sargeant in 1960. She died on 425 East 63rd Street later in life. She appeared in an episode titled "Lady of the House" in 1967, when she was cast in the television series The Virginian. She appeared on "A Helping Hand" as a woman out of work and taking on hire-help and cook jobs, but Mr. French was assisting her in the case of Mr. Williams, who was briefly substituted for Sebastian Cabot in the role of Mr. French in 1967. In an episode of Columbo's television series "Étude in Black," she appeared as the perpetrator's mother-in-law in 1972. Mrs. Devaney, a heavy-drinking woman imbibing Jim Beam and Olympia Beer mixed together in 1974, was a counter to Sid Caesar's character. Loy was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1975 and underwent two mastectomies to treat the condition. She didn't recover her cancer diagnosis and subsequent treatment from the public until the publication of her autobiography in 1987.

She appeared in the film The End in 1978 as the mother of Burt Reynolds' main character. In 1980, Sidney Lumet's Just Tell Me What You Want was her last motion picture appearance. She also appeared on stage for the first time in Clare Boothe Luce's The Women, which took place in 1973. She appeared in Alan Ayckbourn's Relatively Speaking, directed by David Clayton, in 1978.

She appeared in the television drama Summer Solstice, Henry Fonda's last appearance. In 1982, she appeared on the sitcom Love, Sidney.

Loy was honoured by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with a special salute at Carnegie Hall in New York City, which she attended with 2,800 guests. Myrna Loy: Being and Becoming, her autobiography, was published in 1987. She was given a Kennedy Center Honor the following year. Despite Loy's fact that she was never nominated for an Academy Award for any single job, after an extensive letter-writing campaign and years of lobbying by screenwriter and then-Writers Guild of America, West board member Michael Russnow, who enlisted Loy's former screen colleagues and acquaintances, such as Roddy McDowall, Sidney Sheldon, Harold Russell, and many others, for her career accomplishment, she was nominated for a 1991 Academy Honorary "You've made me very happy," she said on camera from her New York City home. "Thank you so much." It was her last public appearance in any medium.

Loy died at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan on December 14, 1993, after suffering from a long-running, unspecified disease. She was frail and in poor health, resulting in her cancellation of the 1991 Academy Awards ceremony, where she was expected to receive a lifetime Achievement Award. She was cremated in New York and her ashes were laid on Mountview Cemetery in Helena, Montana.

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