Trivia and Quotes
Quotes
 I was glamorous because of magicians like George Folsey, James Wong Howe, Oliver Marsh, Ray June, and all those other great cinematographers. I trusted those men and the other experts who made us beautiful. The rest of it I didn`t give a damn about. I didn`t fuss about my clothes, my lighting, or anything else, but, believe me, some of them did. [on Barbra Streisand] I think Barbra Streisand is a genius, the creativity she has! And I am very impressed with her as a person. Some years ago I was on the Academy Awards broadcast, she came up to me. I was standing in the wings and Barbra walked across the stage to greet me. Very polite, very nice. You don`t find many young women who extend that kind of gracious courtesy to an older woman. Audrey Hepburn does. And Barbra. I`ve not forgotten how charming she was.
[on Burt Reynolds] It`s the man`s tremendous wit that just keeps coming across. Listen, there is no acting style. Most people just play themselves. Spencer Tracy used to say to me after a scene, "Did I ham that one up?" If I said yes, he`d say, "Okay, let`s do it again." There`s that same honesty in Burt Reynolds. He`s a throwback to the old school.
[on Doris Day] I have nothing but the best to say about Doris Day. She was wonderful to me, really lovely. She sent flowers when I started and remained friendly and attentive. As I`ve said, it`s difficult when you start stepping down. You fight so hard to get to the top and then you realize it`s time to gracefully give in a little. Doris, who was riding high then, never played the prima dona. I appreciated her attitude enormously.
[on Liza Minnelli] I love Liza. She is so original. People speak of her in terms of her mother, but she is herself, very definitely. A good, strong, unique person.
[on Montgomery Clift] Monty was a great talent, whose acting I always admired. He had extraordinary instincts. His observations about the script were always astute and correct. He would have made a great director, which eventually he wanted to be. "Would you ever direct yourself?," I once asked him. "Are you kidding," he replied. "As a director, I simply wouldn`t put up with all that crap from me." Monty was having problems then. He was full of all kinds of problems, many of them imaginary.
[on Rex Harrison] Rex Harrison was in a strange kind of mood in "Midnight Lace" no doubt because his wife Kay Kendall had died. He had very little time for me or anybody else, as far as I could tell; he did his job and that was it.
[on Tyrone Power] A lovely gentleman with a great quality of imagination.
[on William Powell] The later ones [the Thin Man pictures] were very bad indeed, but it was always a joy to work with Bill Powell. He was and is a dear friend, and in the early Thin Man films with Woody Van Dyke, we managed to achieve what for those days was an almost pioneering sense of spontaneity.
"I rushed out of the projection room, ran home and cried for hours. I was really ashamed of myself. It was so awful..." [On her screen test for the film Cobra (1925)]
(referring to her perfect wife typecasting) "Some perfect wife I am. I`ve been married four times, divorced four times, have no children, and can`t boil an egg."
I was a homely kid with freckles that came out every spring and stuck on me till Christmas.
Life, is not a having and a getting, but a being and a becoming.
[Challenging MGM bosses in the 1930s] "Why does every black person in the movies have to play a servant? How about a black person walking up the steps of a court house carrying a briefcase?"
[on Christina Crawford, Joan Crawford`s daughter]: This was a young woman with an incredible attitude. She wanted to be Joan Crawford. I think that is the basis of the book she wrote afterward and everything else. I see what her mind created, the fantasy world she lived in...
[on Clark Gable]: He happened to be an actor, a damned good one, and nobody knew it - least of all Clark. Oh, he wanted to be an actor, but he always deprecated his ability, pretended it didn`t matter. He was a really shy man with a terrible inferiority in there somewhere. Something was missing that kept him from doing the things he could have done.
[On her "Perfect Wife" label {based on he work in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)}] "It was a role no one could live up to, really. No telling where my career would have gone if they hadn`t hung that title on me. Labels limit you, because they limit your possibilities. But that`s how they think in Hollywood."
[On her work with William Powell] "I never enjoyed my work more than when I worked with William Powell. He was a brilliant actor, a delightful companion, a great friend and above all, a true gentleman."
[speaking in the late 60s] "I admire some of the people on the screen today, but most of them look like everybody else. In our days we had individuality. Pictures were more sophisticated. All this nudity is too excessive and it is getting very boring. It will be a shame if it upsets people so much that it brings on the need for censorship. I hate censorship. In the cinema there`s no mystery. No privacy. And no sex either. Most of the sex I`ve seen on the screen looks like an expression of hostility towards sex."
Trivia
Good friend of Princess Marina.
William Powell`s nickname for her was `Minnie`.
At Venice High school, in the middle of a small rose garden, is a larger-than-life-size statue of actress Myrna Loy. And it was made years before Myrna appeared in a single movie. Actually, it isn`t a particularly good likeness of Miss Loy. Standing atop a stone pedestal, back arched, the short-haired figure is semi-nude (wearing only a thin gown which leaves little to the imagination), with one arm raised in a dramatic pose. All three statues were modeled by Venice High students, and the trio are meant to depict the "Mental," "Physical" and "Spiritual." According to the bronze plaque on the east side of the pedestal, the statues were erected in 1921, which means that Myrna Loy (then named Myrna Williams) was only 16 years old when she posed for the "Spiritual" statue - long before she became a celebrity.
Her final public appearence was in 1991 when she received her lifetime achievement award during _63rd Annual Academy Awards, The (1991) (TV)_ . She was unable to travel to Hollywood to accept the award in person, so the Academy arranged a live satellite link to her Manhattan apartment. Anjelica Huston introduced the film tribute presentation to her. When the film finished, there was instantaneous rapturous applause and Huston then said, "Here from her apartment in New York is Miss Loy. Congratulations Myrna." Loy appeared live on a large screen from her beautiful New York apartment smiling, and watching intently on her own television. She watched close up shots of fellow same-year Honorary Award recipient Sophia Loren and other audience members applauding. There was unusually no standing ovation, instead audience members remained seated during the applause, this was by no means a snub. She then responded simply and said, "You`ve made me very happy, thank you very much," to yet further loud applause and then she disappeared from the screen once more.
Her profile was the most requested in the 1930s by women to their plastic surgeons.
In honor of Myrna Loy, a poem was created called, Montana Women, which was read at the celebration of her 86th birthday
Moved to Manhattan in 1960, where she lived until her death in 1993.
Myrna was Co-Chairman of the Advisory Council of the National Committee against discrimination in housing - exposing segregation in federal funded projects.
Outspoken against Adolf Hitler in the War, Myrna appeared on his blacklist.
Received a Honorary Academy Award in the same year as Sophia Loren.
Underwent two mastectomies after being diagnosed with breast cancer twice.
Was supposedly the favorite star of famed outlaw John Dillinger. He came out of hiding to see Manhattan Melodrama (1934), in which she starred, and was gunned down by police upon leaving the theater.
A devout Democrat and feminist, she later dismissed her work in the pre-Civil Rights-era movie Ham and Eggs at the Front (1927) as "shameful".
After graduating from high school in 1923, Myrna got a job dancing in the chorus during the prologue for The Ten Commandments at Grauman`s Chinese Theatre.
Her father, at age 21, the youngest man ever elected to the Montana State Legislature, owned a small cattle ranch.
In 1918, her father died in a flu epidemic, and Myrna, her mom, and brother moved to LA.
In 1936 Myrna was named Queen of the Movies and Clark Gable King in a national poll, winning a crown of tin and purple velvet.
Myrna enrolled at Venice High School -- a school which later named its annual speech and drama awards `Myrnas`.
Recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Kennedy Center in 1988.
She was a favorite of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Jimmy Stewart.
Spent her early years on a ranch and in the town of Helena, Montana, which was also the home of Gary Cooper.
When her father was travelling by train in early 1905, he went through a small station called `Myrna` - he eventually named her after that station.
For five years (1949-54) she served as a film advisor for UNESCO.
Hobbies: Sculpturing and dancing.
In 1937, Myrna had a narrow escape when her horse bolted during the filming of The Rains Came (1939) with Tyrone Power; she was nearly killed.
Loy donned a uniform during the War when she joined the Hollywood Chapter of `Bundles for Bluejackets` -- helping to run a Naval Auxiliary Canteen and going on fund raising tours.
Loy`s last film was also the last for Henry Fonda.
Men-Must-Marry-Myrna Clubs were formed due to her portrayal as The Perfect Wife (The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)).
One of a handful of great movie stars never nominated for an acting Oscar, she received an honorary Academy Award in 1991
She became a founder member of the American Place Theatre, a non-profit theatre set up to help new writers develop.
She served as an advisor to the National Committee Against Discrimination in Housing.
was discovered by Rudolph Valentino`s wife, Natasha Rambova
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