Myrna Loy (born Myrna Adele Williams; August 2, 1905 – December 14, 1993) was an American film, television, and stage actress. As a performer, she was known for her ability to adapt to her screen partner's acting style.
Born in Helena, Montana, Loy was raised in rural Radersburg and Helena. She relocated to Los Angeles with her mother in early adolescence and trained as a dancer in high school. She was discovered by production designer Natacha Rambova, who organized film auditions for her. She began obtaining small roles in the late 1920s. Loy devoted herself fully to acting after a few roles in silent films. She was originally typecast in exotic roles, often as a vamp or a woman of Asian descent, but her career prospects improved greatly following her portrayal of Nora Charles in The Thin Man (1934). The role helped elevate her reputation, and she became known as a versatile actress adept at both drama and comedy; she would play the role of Nora Charles five more times.
Loy's performances peaked in the 1940s, with films like The Thin Man Goes Home, The Best Years of Our Lives, The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, and Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. In the 1950s, she appeared in a lead role in the comedy Cheaper by the Dozen (1950), as well as supporting roles in The Ambassador's Daughter (1956) and the drama Lonelyhearts (1958). She appeared in eight films between 1960 and 1981, after which she retired from acting.
Although Loy was never nominated for an Academy Award, in March 1991, she received an Honorary Academy Award in recognition of her life's work both onscreen and off, including serving as assistant to the director of military and naval welfare for the Red Cross during World War II, and a member-at-large of the U.S. Commission to UNESCO. In 2009, The Guardian named her one of the best actors never to have received an Academy Award nomination. Loy died in December 1993 in New York City at age 88.
Loy was born Myrna Adele Williams on August 2, 1905, in Helena, Montana, the daughter of Adelle Mae (née Johnson) and rancher David Franklin Williams. Her parents had married in Helena in 1904, one year before Loy was born. She had one younger brother, David Frederick Williams (1911–1983). Loy's paternal grandfather, David Thomas Williams, was Welsh and had emigrated from Liverpool, England, to the United States in 1856, arriving in Philadelphia. Unable to read or write in English, he later settled in the Montana Territory, where he began a career as a rancher. Loy's maternal grandparents were Scottish and Swedish immigrants. During her childhood, her father worked as a banker, real estate developer, and farmland appraiser in Helena and was the youngest man ever elected to serve in the Montana state legislature. Her mother had studied music at the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago and at one time considered a career as a concert performer, but instead devoted her time to raising Loy and her brother. Loy's mother was a staunch Democrat, while her father was a lifelong Republican. She was raised in the Methodist faith.
Loy spent her early life in Radersburg, Montana, a rural mining community about 50 miles (80 km) southeast of Helena. During the winter of 1912, Loy's mother nearly died from pneumonia, and her father sent his wife and daughter to La Jolla, California. Loy's mother saw great potential in Southern California, and during one of her husband's visits, she encouraged him to purchase real estate there. Among the properties he bought was land that he would later sell, at a considerable profit, to filmmaker Charlie Chaplin for his film studio there. Although her mother tried to persuade her husband to move to California permanently, he preferred ranch life and the three eventually returned to Montana. Soon afterward, Loy's mother needed a hysterectomy and insisted Los Angeles was a safer place to have it done, so Loy, Loy's brother David, and she moved to Ocean Park, where Loy began to take dancing lessons. After the family returned to Montana, Loy continued her dancing lessons, and at the age of 12, Myrna Williams made her stage debut performing a dance she had choreographed based on "The Blue Bird" from the Rose Dream operetta at Helena's Marlow Theater.
When Loy was 13, her father died during the 1918 flu pandemic in November of that year. Loy's mother permanently relocated the family to California, where they settled in Culver City, outside Los Angeles. Loy attended the exclusive Westlake School for Girls while continuing to study dance in downtown Los Angeles. When her teachers objected to her extracurricular participation in theatrical arts, her mother enrolled her in Venice High School, and at 15, she began appearing in local stage productions.
In 1921, Loy posed for Venice High School sculpture teacher Harry Fielding Winebrenner as "Inspiration"; the full-length figure was central in his allegorical sculpture group Fountain of Education. Completed in 1922, the sculpture group was installed 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 presented a "vision of purity, grace, youthful vigor, and aspiration" that was singled out in a Los Angeles Times story that included a photo of the "Inspiration" figure along with 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 group and transported aboard the battleship Nevada for a Memorial Day pageant in which "Miss Myrna Williams" participated. Fountain of Education can be seen in the opening scenes of the 1978 film Grease. After decades of exposure to the elements and vandalism, the original concrete statue was removed from display in 2002, and replaced in 2010 by a bronze duplicate paid for through an alumni-led fundraising campaign.
Loy left school at 18 to begin to help with the family's finances. She obtained work at Grauman's Egyptian Theatre, where she performed in what were called prologues, elaborate musical sequences that were related to and served as preliminary entertainment before the feature film. During this period, Loy saw Eleonora Duse in the play Thy Will Be Done, and the simple acting techniques she employed made such an impact on Loy that she tried to emulate them throughout her career.
While Loy was dancing in prologues at Grauman's Egyptian Theatre, portrait photographer Henry Waxman took several pictures of her that were noticed by Rudolph Valentino when the actor went to Waxman's studio for a sitting. Valentino was looking for a leading lady for Cobra, the first independent project his wife Natacha Rambova and he were producing. Loy tested for the role, which went to Gertrude Olmstead, instead, but soon after that, she was hired as an extra for Pretty Ladies (1925), in which fellow newcomer Joan Crawford and she were among a bevy of chorus girls dangling from an elaborate chandelier. The two of them would share a life-long friendship that lasted until Crawford's death.
Rambova hired Loy for a small but showy role opposite Nita Naldi in What Price Beauty?, a film she was producing. Shot in May 1925, the film remained unreleased for three years, but stills of Loy in her exotic makeup and costume appeared in Motion Picture and led to a contract with Warner Bros. There, her surname was changed from Williams to Loy. The idea for the new name apparently came from screenwriter Peter Ruric, also known as crime novelist Paul Cain, who may have been inspired by the name of British poet Mina Loy.
Loy's silent film roles were mainly as a vamp or femme fatale, and she frequently portrayed characters of Asian or Eurasian background in films such as Across the Pacific (1926), A Girl in Every Port (1928), The Crimson City (1928), The Black Watch (1929), and The Desert Song (1929), which she later recalled "kind of solidified my exotic non-American image." In 1930, she appeared in The Great Divide. It took years for her to overcome this typecasting, and as late as 1932, she was cast as a villainous Eurasian in Thirteen Women (1932) and opposite Boris Karloff as the depraved, sadistic daughter of the title character in The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932).