In 1936 Myrna Loy was voted “Queen of the Movies” by twenty million fans. She was only thirty-one and highly successful, having already appeared in over eighty movies, opposite celebrities such as Clark Gable, William Powell, Spencer Tracy and Cary Grant. Pop culture had helped to boost her notoriety as well; just two years earlier, newspapers reported that she was John Dillinger’s favorite actress after he was shot dead exiting a screening of her film Manhattan Melodrama. Myrna Loy would go on to marry and divorce four times, act in a total of 139 motion pictures, and write an autobiography about her life in the film industry. But long before Myrna Loy was the famous “Queen of the Movies,” she was Myrna Adelle Williams, a rancher’s daughter from Montana.
Myrna “Loy” was born in Helena to David and Adelle Williams in 1905. Both of Loy’s parents were accomplished individuals; Mrs. Williams had studied music in Chicago and Mr. Williams was a banker, real estate developer and the youngest man to be elected into Montana state legislature (as of 1913). Together they operated a ranch in Broadwater County, where Loy was raised until 1912, when Mrs. Williams nearly died from pneumonia and Mr. Williams insisted that she and Loy move to California for a time. Loy’s mother saw great potential in California and tried to convince her husband to move there to no avail. Eventually, Loy and her mother left California for home, only to return soon after with Mrs. Williams in need of a hysterectomy. Loy took dance lessons while in California and continued to practice upon returning to Montana again. Her first performance was at Helena’s Marlow Theater at age twelve.
A year later, Loy’s father died of illness and the Williams family permanently relocated to California. Loy continued to pursue theatrical arts and her mother supported her whenever she could.
To help with her family’s finances, Loy dropped out of school at eighteen and began performing in elaborate musical sequences that were used for the prologues of feature films. From there, her recognition allowed her to work her way into motion pictures as an extra in musicals and later, small roles in silent film.
Early on in her silent film career, Myrna Loy was typecast as a femme fatale – a dangerous and seductive woman – or worse, she was associated with musical roles which were quickly losing their popularity. Fortunately, Loy got a major break in the least likely way – being shoved into a swimming pool. Director W.S. Van Dyke detected a sense of humor in Loy that she had not been able to show off on the big screen. Van Dyke thought she would be great for the part of a playful wife in his upcoming film and rather than ask Loy to audition he pushed her into a swimming pool at a Hollywood party to test her reaction. Loy responded in the way that Van Dyke had envisioned and she was hired to play the part of Nora Charles in The Thin Man, one of the most successful films of 1934.
Getting the break that she desperately deserved, Myrna Loy quickly became one of America’s favorite starlets and was deemed “Queen of the Movies” in 1936. She acted until 1982, when she appeared as a guest spot on the sitcom Love, Sydney. Her last appearance in any medium was in 1991, when she received an Honorary Academy Award for all that she had done in film. She passed away two years later in New York City at the age of eighty-eight and her ashes were returned to the place of her birth.
Besides a gravestone at Forestvale Cemetery, Helena’s appreciation of Myrna Loy can be found in traces throughout the city. Most notably, the Myrna Loy Center for the Performing and Media
Arts works to support new Montana artists. The center officially opened in 1991 and has since sponsored over 650 live performances, won numerous awards, and even received national recognition for their arts program. With the center’s help, performing and media arts remain an active part of Helena’s culture. Myrna Loy’s legacy lives on in those who teach and practice the arts that made her Montana’s First Lady of Film.