Happy Birthday to Myrna Loy

Today is the birthday of one of my favorite actresses of all time – Myrna Loy. My plan was to mark the occasion by re-watching The Thin Man, but, after a half hour or so of jumping around the web, reading about her life, I’ve decided to watch this 1973 interview with her instead. I don’t suspect that many in the audience will want to join me, but I thought that I’d mention it, just in case there were any other fans of hers out there. I’m only a few minutes into it, but it’s pretty fascinating stuff… I’d never know, for instance, that her father had died in Spanish flu epidemic of 1918.

And, before anyone mentions it, yes, I know that she started her career in yellowface, portraying “exotic” asian women in films like The Mask of Fu Manchu, where she played the sadistic, sex-crazed daughter of Boris Karloff, who, like her, was made-up to look Chinese. I’m not sure to which film she was referring, but I’ve heard that, later in life, she called one of them a “racist piece of trash.”

One more thing… I didn’t know until this evening how she landed the role of Nora Charles in The Thin Man. The following comes from Wikipedia:

Director W. S. Van Dyke chose Loy after he detected a wit and sense of humor that her previous films had not revealed. At a Hollywood party, he pushed her into a swimming pool to test her reaction, and felt that her aplomb in handling the situation was exactly what he envisioned for Nora.

I guess she’s lucky it was a comedy and not an action film that Van Dyke was making. I’d hate to thing of her being shoved in front of a train, or some such thing.