American actress whose political views took her into prominence in UNESCO. She received a best actress award at the Brussels World Film Festival for “Best Years of Our Lives,” 1946, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for career achievement, 1983, the Kennedy Center Honor in 1988 and an honorary Oscar in 1991.
The first of two children born into a pioneer family, Myrna began dancing at the age of three. Her dad, a cattleman’s son who became a state representative, died of influenza and was buried 11/11/1918. Her mom moved the children to Los Angeles shortly after so Myrna would benefit from a cultural environment. She left Westgate School for Girls due to short finances and attended Venice High School. Her art teacher had her pose for a statue he sculpted that is still on the campus. She was teaching dancing to children and dancing at Grauman’s theater when she was discovered.
When she began films, thinking Williams too common, she took the name Loy which suited her parts as a Eurasian. She played vamps in over 80 films before coming into her own as the perfect wife, sophisticated and glamorous Nora in the “Thin Man” series of 13 films. The hit series, with William Powell as her foil, completed the first of the sequence in two weeks in 1934. Loy was the first actress to challenge the system, renegotiate a contract and receive equal pay for equal work.
She starred with and was pursued by some of Hollywood’s biggest stars but she remained at home taking care of her mom and brother until she was 27. She was named Queen of Hollywood in 1937. At the beginning of World War II Loy moved to New York to work for the Red Cross, making only one film during the war. In 1947 she sued a magazine for $1 million when she was accused of being a sponsor of a communist front organization but dropped the suit when a retraction was published. The same year she played in “Song of the Thin Man” in exchange for release from her MGM contract.
Secretary of State Dean Acheson appointed Loy to a three year term as U.S. delegate and film advisor to UNESCO on 4/19/1950. In the 1960’s she started acting on stage. Her last film was “Just Tell Me What You Want,” 1980. Copper-haired and with a nose that women asked their plastic surgeons to duplicate, she was considered a beauty. Always interested in politics, a flinty libertarian with an independent spirit, she campaigned for civil rights, democrats and the abolition of the McCarthy hearings. Her autobiography, “Myrna Loy: Being and Becoming,” was published in 1987. She was seen on TV as a character actress in the 1980’s.
Loy married Arthur Hornblow, Jr., the love of her life, on 6/27/1936 after a four year affair and divorced him in Reno, NV on 6/01/1942. On 6/06/1942, five days later, she married John D. Hertz, Jr. of car rental fame. Finding him a neurotic, after he hit her and threatened her, she got a Mexican divorce. She married third husband, Gene Markey, a philandering writer-producer, on 1/03/1946 and divorced him August 1950. Her fourth husband, Howland Sergeant, was a Rhodes scholar whom she married on 6/01/1951. They separated after eight years and she obtained a divorce in Mexico in 1960.
Pregnant by Arthur Hornblow while he was married to his first wife, she had an abortion before they married. She had mastectomies in 1975 and 1979. Loy died after a lengthy illness in New York City on 12/14/1993.
Link to Wikipedia biography