*Includes pictures
*Includes a bibliography for further reading
"My first scene with Bill, a night shot on the back lot, happened before we'd even met. Woody was apparently too busy for introductions. My instructions were to run out of a building, through a crowd, and into a strange car. When Woody called 'Action, ' I opened the car door, jumped in, and landed smack on William Powell's lap. He looked up nonchalantly: 'Miss Loy, I presume?' I said, 'Mr. Powell?' And that's how I met the man who would be my partner in fourteen films." - Myrna Loy
It is something of a cliché to say that an actor's life was like a movie he or she might have starred in, but in the case of Myrna Loy, the cliché is true. It is easy to picture her as a little girl, riding the range with her rancher father, sitting around the table and participating charmingly in family discussions of current events. It is not hard to imagine the camera panning to her first and then second visits to Hollywood, her backlot tour, and starry-eyed decision to become an actress. There would have to be some drama, which the story of her father's untimely death would provide, along with some sort of deathbed promise made to him to care for the rest of the family. Her mother would be brave but resolute as she moved her young family to California. The lighting on set would brighten and the tempo of the background would pick up as she walked down the Los Angeles streets.
Perhaps the camera would spin to show the passage of time, as the now adult Myrna got a job as a dancer and was then "discovered." There would have to be a scene of her signing her new surname, Loy, to her MGM contract, likely as several cigar smoking men looked on. Later the audience would see her fight off casting couch advances, earning her the reputation as the only good girl in Hollywood even as she was cast again and again in sultry, vampish roles. She would endure these with a positive attitude while always being on the lookout for something better.
Then, her big break would come. The camera would show her first comical meeting with William Powell and then a spinning scene of ticket after ticket being sold to their new picture, The Thin Man. Her star obviously on the rise, ominous music would suddenly play, followed by booming cannons and falling bombs. A newspaper would flash on screen, "Pearl Harbor Bombed." Then the audience would see her stride determinedly into the movie studio offices and announce to those above