Book examines Myrna Loy’s life as a paradox

In Hollywood’s Golden Age, Myrna Loy was a lovely paradox — a champagne-tippling sophisticate on-screen in her many roles opposite the dapper William Powell and a budding humanitarian off-screen with values that belied glittery showbusiness extravagance.

In “Myrna Loy: The Only Good Girl in Hollywood” (University of California Press, $34.95), biographer, poet and memoirist Emily W. Leider puts together an engaging and heartening portrait of the classic movie star who never let the glamour of her impossibly glamorous profession go to her head.

Always down-to-earth and sensible, although graced with exotic looks that led to her discovery by Rudolph Valentino during the silent era, Loy enjoyed an extraordinary career in movies that spanned six decades and that eventually led her to a post-acting career as goodwill ambassador for the Red Cross, the United Nations and UNESCO.

Born in 1905 to a middleclass family in Montana, Loy lost her father to an influenza epidemic in 1918 and moved with her mother to Culver City, Calif. There, she took dance and ballet lessons, training that Leider says instilled in Loy a lifelong sense of grace and timing that became hallmarks of her acting style.

Soon, Loy landed a place in the chorus line at Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre and found bit parts in several movies. Her discovery in the 1920s by Valentino and her exotic looks led to her various casting as the daughter of Fu Manchu, a gypsy seductress and a Mexican spitfire.

But once she signed with MGM and was teamed with William Powell (they would eventually do 14 movies together — six of them in “The Thin Man” series), Loy’s career kicked into high gear. As Nora Charles, the better half to Powell’s debonair, often tipsy detective Nick Charles, Loy set the standard — and a lasting screen image — as the perfect partner: good sport, stylish wife and a gal who could match her witty husband quip for quip and drink for drink.

Leider offers anecdotes giving insights into many of Loy’s finest roles (“The Best Years of Our Lives,” “Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House,” “The Bachelor and the Bobby-soxer”), her friendships with stars such as Joan Crawford, Cary Grant, Jean Harlow, Montgomery Clift and Clark Gable (Cable, the author relates, once made a pass at Loy and she pushed him into a hedge) and her collaborations with filmmakers such as David O. Selznick, Samuel Goldwyn and William Wyler.

But Loy didn’t allow herself to be defined by her stardom. Later in her life, she indulged her passion for activism and her notion of artists as ambassadors of peace. She served on the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO and worked for other charitable causes and told friends that she got “more emotional satisfaction” from her charitable work than from her acting career. Loy died at age 88 in 1993; three years earlier she’d been awarded an honorary Oscar for career achievement. Read more from Dennis King at www.projectionsmovieblog.com.