At the risk of exposing a dark secret self to my readers, I’m going to reference Star Trek, The Next Generation. That’s right. We’ll get to Myrna Loy in two shakes, so bear with me. So, there’s this STNG episode about a female alien (in the usual tin-foil jumpsuit) who morphs her persona to align with the Alpha male in the room: with Worf, she gargles prune juice and chatters in Klingonese; with Lt. Riker, she lounges on divans spouting come-hither lines; with Capt. Picard, she quotes Shakespeare and quaffs Earl Gray, hot. Most female viewers reluctantly recognize the ugly truth, that gunning for a guy means (in the words of antiquated charm books) “falling in with his interests.” He hunts, you don cammo. He loves trains; you feign fascination, etc.

Myrna Loy, ambitious and eager, was a prisoner of what we might call “bamboo handcuffs” for years when she first started out in Hollywood, thanks to male studio executive and their talent for ignoring the obvious. These days, she’s known as the sassy, smart, sophisticated Nora Charles, the distaff half of Movieland’s number one romantic detective duo. But, it took some doing to get her there.

Dance, Gypsy, Dance

Teenaged Myrna Williams could teach today’s scrapbookers a thing or two. Her bulging scrapbook titled “The Angels of Dance” included hundreds of photos of Ruth St. Denis, self-style interpretive dance guru who taught young Myrna to waft dreamily across her front lawn, diaphanously gowned in wisps of chiffon. Though educated at an exclusive girl’s school that emphasized posture, piano, poise, and poetry, Myrna felt more in tune with St. Denis’ free-spirited, romantic ethos. Myrna’s burning ambition: to become a professional dancer. Happily, she and her mother now lived in Culver City, California, where that sort of goal isn’t quite as out of place as it was years before when they lived in Montana. When Grauman’s Egyptian Theater needed dancers for their “Live Girls!” prologues, they contacted Ms. St. Denis’ school.

Myrna was soon wowing ‘em as third danseuse on the left prior to silent movie screenings. The girls danced their feet off attired in barely-there outfits and chowed down at Musso & Frank’s (check out GlamAmor’s excellent photo essay about this old Hollywood hangout here). Admiring Hollywood portraitist Henry Waxman took photos of a barefoot, wild-tressed Myrna that soon adorned the Egyptian’s courtyard and his own studio walls. Rudolf Valentino saw the images at Waxman’s studio, and went to watch Myrna dance. What he saw convinced him she had star power and he set up a screen test in 1925. Well, in a word, she stunk, and Rudy withdrew his support.

2nd from L: Joan, 3rd, Myrna

Myrna, convinced that her dancing gig had taken her as far as it could, quit her job, and set her sights to being ON the screen, instead of dancing in front of it. To that end, she hung around the M-G-M casting office until she landed the part of a wicked mistress in Ben-Hur; the scene was cut from the final picture. The studio gave her a booby prize (pun intended)—she was next assigned to hang around in body paint and little else as a part of a living chandelier (you can’t make this stuff up) in a backstage drama entitled Pretty Ladies. (It was there she first met and befriended jazz baby Lucille Le Sueur, soon to be called Joan Crawford, whom she later described as having “more willpower than anyone I ever knew.” More about Joan’s go-get-‘em techniques here.)

Pixie dust and bamboo handcuffs

A few months later, a fan-magazine layout featuring Myrna in an elfin hairstyle created some welcome buzz: “Who Is She?” screamed the headline. Well, said her friends, good question. Maybe the problem was her name: “Myrna Williams” was too pedestrian, too blah. “Loy” was suggested to capitalize on the current Orientalism rage in Hollywood; the name had a certain tang of incense about it. Apparently, something worked, because Myrna Loy was soon signed to Warner Brothers contract. Her loose-hipped dancer’s grace and almond-shaped eyes indicated to the stereotype-driven studio execs one thing and one thing only—exotic hoochie. So good was she in a string of foreign floozy roles that even aw-shucks poet Carl Sandberg sang her praises, saying “This here Myrna Loy is the star player; she is the subject of a thousand poems and stories of the Orient.” Silken-clad Myrna was a thousand poems alrighty, mostly limericks.

Myrna the artiste had willingly morphed into Asian love slaves, wanton gypsies, Senegalese spies, and Javanese call-girls—her business card might have read: “Have sarong, will grovel.”

Daryl Zanuck was the chief architect of Myrna’s on-screen exotic seductress roles; she soon became his go-to gal for tropical temptresses or roll-in-the-hay peasants. She had fun at first, researching native customs to inject some realism into her portrayals. Life seemed good. She was making a name for herself and if she spent most of her on-screen time barefoot, what of it?

You know that saying, “What charms in the date, repels in the mate?” Well, the fun train was leaving the station for Myrna as she slowly realized that she would be a scarlet woman as long as Warners owned her. In order to branch out as an actress, Myrna begged Zanuck for some other roles. He threw her some bones in the form of gun moll parts in Warner’s highly successful gangster flicks. By the late Twenties, she could joke to the Los Angeles Times: “I have had an almost steady job carrying a .38 and dodging machine gun bullets.” Some critics chided Warners for putting such an obviously intelligent, well-bred young lady in tough cookie roles. Her uppercrust upbringing kept bleeding through, but no one, least of all Myrna, recognized that her undeniably well-bred demeanor would eventually be her meal ticket to stardom.    For years, Myrna‘s on-screen performances seesawed between savvy spitfires and streetwise strumpets in locales exotic and urban. Then, as enigmatically as it started, the vogue for vamps and vixens of the Asian variety faded and Warners told Myrna she was out of fashion and therefore, out of luck.

Outfoxed

Myrna signed on with Fox Studios, proudly (and prematurely) declaring that “…the scarlet woman of the screen is a thing of the past for me.” She hadn’t reckoned on the power of stereotyping. Even when Fox released her after several forgettable films where she inevitably played “the other woman,” she couldn’t shake her sin-soaked on-screen persona. She signed with M-G-M and worked steadily, perfecting her craft under the watchful eye of young Irving Thalberg. She landed a plum role here and there, but somehow still wound up in Asian makeup again for in The Mask of Fu Manchu…and subjecting Ramon Novarro to the whip and lounging provocatively in a petal-strewn pool in The Barbarian.

Happily, her next few parts allowed for some swinging room, including the role of a likable, wise-cracking moll in Penthouse, directed by Woody Van Dyke. Critics sat up and took notice: “Myrna Loy reveals new skill in the management of light scenes. She now stands as one of the most serviceable femme leads in the Hollywood lists—one who has escaped from a limited type to a broad range of leading roles,” noted Variety. Woody pegged her as the best bet for his upcoming film, Manhattan Melodrama. His hurry-up style of direction was the catalyst for the “meet cute” of the century.

When, at Woody’s barked direction, Myrna hustled across a darkened set to leap into a car, she landed in the lap of her as-yet-unmet co-star. William Powell, never flustered, quipped, “Miss Loy, I presume?” She grinned back to the dapper M-G-M newcomer, “Mr. Powell?” And a timeless, ageless cinematic couple was created. Woody Van Dyke gleefully observed their on- and off-screen chemistry and signed them for his next feature, The Thin Man. And, the rest is, well, you know the drill.

Branded

Myrna’s whatever-it-takes ambition and the studios’ exploitative execs were a bad romance. To please the all-important men in her business life, Myrna disguised her true nature—a smart, witty woman of the world—and adopted an on-screen slutty persona, even though nothing could have been farther from her rather shy, very romantic, dreamy self. Economics and ambition may have dictated that this as her wisest course of action—but truth will out. When she first crashes onto the screen as Nora Charles, her dancer’s training allowing her to execute a perfect pratfall in one take, she definitively demolishes any chance of returning to portraying cardboard cuties. When Nora sassily orders a parade of cocktails to challenge Nick’s intake, she directs the waiter to “line ‘em up.” And line ‘em up she did. Adoring audiences lined up for years to worship Myrna’s crinkled nose, innate style, classy charm, and fun-loving nature. One wag put it perfectly; Loy was born “…for caviar, not corned beef.” And we might add, not for chop suey, either!

The lessons to today’s woman are obvious. Without getting too shrill about it, most of us sell out on a daily basis. We play a part to keep the lights on or to reassure or placate someone. At the office, at home, to friends and family, even, perhaps. Are you trying to fit in where it’s obvious you don’t belong? How about making sure there’s some corner of your life where your true nature can shine, won’t you? And watch what happens. 

P.S. For more about the marvelous Myrna, catch Emily W. Leider’s well-researched and fascinating bio Myrna Loy: The Only Good Girl in Hollywood. Quotes in my article are distilled from Leider’s terrific text; info and images used hail from many sources.