Myrna Loy: The Hollywood Wife

Myrna Loy played the wife to many famous actors, in many classic films.

Quite often, movie stars get typecast for a typical role. There is the sex symbol and the cowboy. There is the action star and the ingenue. For Myrna Loy, it was playing the wife to many famous men, in many classic films. In fact, her entire life is associated with many famous men.

She was born Myrna Adele Williams. Named after a train station called Myrna that her dad liked. She grew up in Helena, Montana, which was also Gary Cooper’s home town. When her dad died her mother moved the family to Culver City. She attended Venice High School. To this day, it gives away an annual drama award which they call Myrnas.

After high school, 18 year old Myrna got a job dancing prior to silent film shows at Sid Grauman's Egyptian Movie House. Rudolph Valentino saw a picture of Myrna from her dancing job and got Myrna a test for a part in one of his movies, Cobra. She did not get the part but she did get the acting bug. Eventually she got small roles and in 1925 she changed her name to Myrna Loy. During her silent films she usually played a vamp. In 1929 she played a sexy native girl in the first completely sound movie The Desert Song.

Myrna Loy continued to play bad girls in forgettable films until the turning point in her career in 1934. That year she starred in Manhattan Melodrama with Clark Gable and William Powell. Manhattan Melodrama, became famous as the movie John Dillinger was walking out of when he was shot and killed. 1934 was also the year Myrna Loy and William Powell starred in the first of the popular The Thin Man movies. They would go on to make 6 Thin Man movies and she and Powell would eventually make a whopping 14 films together.

She also made several movies with Clark Gable. Besides Manhattan Melodrama, Loy played Gable's wife in Wife vs. Secretary in 1936. During the release of Parnell in 1937, Loy and her co-star Gable were voted King and Queen of the Movies. 53 newspapers from around the country polled over 20 million people for the results. To make the most of their popularity, they made two movies together the following year Test Pilot and Too Hot to Handle.

During World War II, Loy took 4 years off from film work. She got a divorce from first husband Arthur Hornblow and married John Hertz 6 days after the divorce was final. She did volunteer worked for the war effort. In 1945 she left Hertz and returned to film work with the aptly titled, The Thin Man Goes Home. In 1946 she made one of her proudest movies The Best Years of Our Lives. She gets top billing and again plays her signature wife role, only this time she shows her age playing the mother of a grown daughter.

She teamed up with Cary Grant in The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer in 1947. Their chemistry worked so well that they starred together, again, the following year in Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House playing what else, a house wife. When it came to casting for the role of the wife and mother in the screen adaptation of the popular novel Cheaper By The Dozen it was a no brainer hiring Myrna Loy. She starred in the 1950 film and the 1952 sequel Belles on Their Toes.

Myrna’s movie career slowed down greatly at this point as she found herself being blacklisted by Joe Mcarthy’s communist witch Hunt. Myrna and other Hollywood luminaries formed The Committee for The First Amendment in retaliation to the House Un-American Activities Committee attacks. Around this time she also began working with the United Nations. She would marry twice more; in 1946 to Gene Markey and in 1951 to Howland Sergeant. Being a wife in real life was never as ideal as her roles on screen.

Myrna Loy starred in many classic Hollywood films, and worked with some of the greatest leading men of her time. She set the standard by which a generation of wives were judged. She never received an Academy award for any of her roles, but in 1990 she was awarded one for a lifetime achievement. She died 3 years later.