New York Times, December 15, 1993
Los Angeles Times, December 15, 1993
Myrna Loy, the urbane actress who personified a liberated wife of intelligence and wry good humor in some of the best American movie comedies of the 1930's and 40's, died yesterday at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan. She was 88.
She died in surgery after a long illness, said Sherlee Lantz, a longtime friend of Miss Loy.
With a pert face, crinkly smile and velvet voice, the auburn-haired actress was universally called the "perfect wife." Spunky, unflappable and appropriately cool or warm, she was the ideal marital partner of the dapper William Powell in the 1934 hit comedy-mystery "The Thin Man." They followed "The Thin Man" with five popular sequels and seven other films.
Performing with zest and bantering affection, they were the nifty Nick and Nora Charles created by Dashiell Hammett in his novel "The Thin Man." Their breezy films, peppered with outlandish clues and outrageous characters, were among the most enduring of Hollywood's larger-than-life big-studio comedies that won millions of new fans over the decades. Turned Into Ideal Mother
Eventually, the ideal wife became the ideal mother in such successes as "The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946) and "Cheaper by the Dozen" (1950). Miss Loy then settled into character roles in occasional films and stage and television plays. In 1973 she made her Broadway debut in a revival of Clare Boothe Luce's vitriolic comedy "The Women," again as a shrewd mother.
In 1981, Miss Loy and Henry Fonda were a graying couple perceptively reminiscing about their half-century marriage in a television movie, "Summer Solstice." Their performances prompted John J. O'Connor of The New York Times to write that "Mr. Fonda and Miss Loy demonstrate splendidly why they remain stars."
Of Welsh descent, the actress was born Myrna Williams on Aug. 2, 1905, on her father's cattle ranch near Helena, Mont. Her father, David Williams, called her Myrna, after the name of a railroad water stop that caught his fancy. Her mother, Della, was a singer. Started in a Chorus Line
From her father, a state legislator who was an advocate of President Woodrow Wilson's crusade to establish the League of Nations, she gained a sense of public service that lasted a lifetime.
The actress interrupted her career for Red Cross volunteer work throughout World War II.
Soon after, she joined the United States delegation to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, serving as a peripatetic film adviser for five years.
Her father died in the influenza epidemic of 1918, and Mrs. Williams moved her daughter and son, David, to Los Angeles, where Myrna attended Venice High School and occasionally taught dancing. At the age of 18, she joined the chorus line in the stage show at Grauman's Chinese Theater.
She began getting bit parts in movies. A poet friend suggested the catchy name Loy, and it stuck. The teenager was quickly typecast as an exotic temptress, invariably Oriental and often villainous. Slinking and gyrating, she was trapped for nearly a decade in the stereotype in such films as "The Desert Song," "The Squall" and "The Black Watch," all released in 1929. 'The Thin Man,' a 'Quickie'
The most bizarre of these 60 or so oddities were two 1932 melodramas -- "The Mask of Fu Manchu," in which Miss Loy reluctantly portrayed the sadistic daughter of the archvillain Boris Karloff, and "Thirteen Women" in which, as a skulking Javanese half-caste, she plotted to do in 12 sorority sisters.
Occasionally, Miss Loy escaped the cliche. She gained notice for her acting as a predatory countess in the 1932 musical fantasy "Love Me Tonight," which starred Maurice Chevalier; as the materialistic wife of Leslie Howard in "The Animal Kingdom" in 1932, and as the love interest in a 1934 gangster thriller, "Manhattan Melodrama," starring Clark Gable and Mr. Powell.
A few months later, Myrna Loy became a household name and a full-fledged star. W. S. Van Dyke, one of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's most versatile directors, persuaded studio executives to let him feature Miss Loy with Mr. Powell in a low-budget "B" movie, to be called "The Thin Man." The director shot the film in 21 days, and the "quickie" was a hit. In Well-Known Comedies
Later, when she was billed as the "Queen of the Movies" and Gable was called the "King," the two were teamed in such madcap adventures as "Wife Versus Secretary," "Test Pilot" and "Too Hot to Handle."
At the start of World War II, Miss Loy left Hollywood and did full-time volunteer work, serving for four years as an assistant head of Red Cross welfare activities in New York. She also arranged for entertainment in 50 military hospitals and put in long stints at stage-door canteens.
After the war, she portrayed the compassionate, loving wife of Fredric March in "The Best Years of Our Lives," the much-honored 1946 film about servicemen returning from combat. The performance won her the Brussels World Film Festival prize for the best performance by an actress.
A political liberal, Miss Loy joined with other Hollywood figures in the late 40s in challenging what they deplored as the witch-hunting proceedings of the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
Of her postwar film work for Unesco, the actress said, "One little incident to battle prejudice, dropped into the middle of an entertaining film, is worth all the documentaries ever made."
Miss Loy was a longtime friend of Eleanor Roosevelt and other leading Democrats and regularly campaigned for the party's Presidential candidates. She was also an adviser and former officer of the National Committee Against Discrimination in Housing. Started on Stage in 1960
She did not appear on the stage until 1960, at first in summer stock, because, she said, "I felt I had a lot to learn." She starred with Claude Dauphin in the comedy "The Marriage-Go-Round" and played the mother in a national tour of Neil Simon's "Barefoot in the Park."
In 1980, the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures presented her with its first David Wark Griffith award "in grateful recognition of her outstanding contribution to the art of screen acting."
Miss Loy was married four times, to Arthur Hornblow Jr., a movie producer; John D. Hertz Jr., an auto-rental and advertising executive; Gene Markey, a producer-screenwriter, and Howland H. Sargeant, a producer and, at the time, Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs. The marriages ended in divorce. Miss Loy had no children.
In later decades, Miss Loy lived in a book-lined terrace apartment in upper Manhattan overlooking the East River. She aided many civic causes, selecting her public-service committees as judiciously as her roles. Tribute at Carnegie Hall
In 1985, Hollywood movie stars and fans packed Carnegie Hall for a tribute to Miss Loy, who appeared in the audience looking frail but glamorous in a spangled gown. Lauren Bacall, the master of ceremonies, said she admired Miss Loy "as a person, an actress and a face, but also as a woman aware of what went on in the country and the world."
"She's not a frivolous human being," Miss Bacall added. "And she's a great wit, which I'm a sucker for."
Miss Loy won her only Oscar, an honorary one, in 1991, more than six decades after she began her film career. Speaking via satellite hookup from her Manhattan apartment the night of the Academy Awards ceremony, she offered the audience only nine words to describe her feelings. "You've made me very happy," she said. "Thank you very much." Some of the Best Years of Her Life
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