The film traces Loy's beginnings as Myrna Williams, a red-haired, freckle-faced girl from Montana who came to Hollywood after the death of her father in 1918. As a child, she studied dancing and later did extra work in movies like Ben Hur (1925). Soon, bit parts came her way, as in Warner Bros.' 1926 John Barrymore film, Don Juan . Despite having red-hair, her more noticeable early talking roles had the sloe-eyed Loy playing exotic women, including Latin and, more often, Eurasians in films like Thirteen Women (1932) and The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932), a film that was so campy Loy and co-star Boris Karloff played it over-the-top on purpose. She was finally able to highlight her comic talents in the risqué Love Me Tonight (1932) opposite Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald.
Now under contract at MGM, Loy was championed by director Woody Van Dyke, who told the production executives that they should cast her as she was - an American woman. They put her with William Powell and Clark Gable in Manhattan Melodrama (1934), but her career defining role would come when Van Dyke read Dashiell Hammett's novel, The Thin Man and cast Loy opposite William Powell in the screen adaptation as the wise-cracking Nora Charles. The chemistry between Powell and Loy was one of the strongest in Hollywood history, and spawned the six film Thin Man series. As Nora Charles, Loy was a thoroughly modern woman, able to match her husband drink for drink and refusing to play the stay-at-home wife. She was sexy, funny, and the camera loved her. Loy made a total of fourteen films with William Powell, and although the two were very close friends, they were never romantically involved. As Powell would later say, "We weren't acting; we were two people in perfect harmony." Nevertheless, when Powell died in 1984, Loy received many sympathy cards from fans who thought that they were married in real life.
Her popularity was so great that in 1936, she was voted "Queen of the Movies" in a poll by moviegoers, and moved Loy to go on strike at MGM until they paid her what she was worth. She won. During the height of her career, Loy starred opposite MGM's best, like Gable, Powell, Spencer Tracy, Melvin Douglas, and Franchot Tone. But, by the end of the decade, like many actresses in their 30s, Loy knew that her days as a leading lady were numbered.
At the onset of World War II, Loy spent most her time volunteering full-time for the Red Cross doing war work, only returning to the screen in 1946 for what is arguably the best dramatic role of her career: Milly Stephenson in William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives , a woman who has to hold her family together during the war, adjust to the change that war has made to her husband (Fredric March) once he returns, and help her daughter (Teresa Wright) when she falls in love with an embittered veteran (Dana Andrews).
Loy's film career slowed down in the 1960s, and she turned her focus to humanitarian work with UNESCO and liberal political causes. She also moved to New York, where she appeared often in the theater, and made the occasional return to film or television. Myrna Loy died in 1993.
SOURCES:
Corliss, Richard Mom in the Movies: The Iconic Screen Mothers You Love and a Few You Love to Hate
Gilbert, Ruth "The Tops in Town This Week: Television" New York Magazine 11 Jun 90
Hiltbrand, David "Picks and Pans Review: Myna Loy: So Nice to Come Home To" People 4 Jun 90
By Lorraine LoBianco
