Myrna Loy

Shop by the Stars aisle featuring Myrna Loy (1905-1993) vintage movie cards, still photos, ephemera, and other collectibles.

Born Myrna Adele Williams in Helena, MT, she'd rise from playing vamps and villainesses to become Hollywood's "perfect wife" and the Queen of the Movies. Her family relocated to California after her father's death, and Myrna took work giving dance lessons to children. She was also in the chorus line of the live prologues performed before the movies at Grauman's Egyptian Theatre, where she drew notice from Rudolph Valentino and wife Natacha Rambova. Myrna didn't get the first role she tested for with them, but did debut as an extra in Pretty Ladies (1925) before Rambova cast her in What Price Beauty? (1925). Loy transitioned to talkies, but she had already appeared in nearly 80 films by the time she was first seen alongside William Powell in Manhattan Melodrama (1934), also starring another frequent co-star, Clark Gable. Loy appeared with Powell in a total of fourteen films including their next one, The Thin Man (1934), the first of six films in a series running through 1947. During World War II Loy took an administrative position with the Red Cross in New York—The Thin Man Goes Home (1944) would be her only feature released between 1942-45. After the war Loy played Fredric March's wife in Academy Award winning Best Picture The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), appeared opposite Cary Grant in The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947) and Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948), was family matriarch in Cheaper by the Dozen (1950), and returned for its sequel Belles on Their Toes (1952). She made the first of a few TV appearances beginning in the fifties, and continued to appear in the occasional film. Loy made her stage debut in summer stock in 1961 with her first and only Broadway appearance coming in a brief 1973 revival of The Women. Later film appearances included Airport 1975 (1974) and The End (1978), and she co-starred opposite Henry Fonda in the TV Movie Summer Solstice (1981). 1987 saw publication of Myrna Loy: Being and Becoming, one of the very best Hollywood autobiographies. Somehow never nominated for a competitive Oscar, Myrna Loy received an Honorary Academy Award in 1991.

Birthday: August 2

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