Myrna Loy — Myrna, Are You Real? (1926) 🇺🇸
Loy — Myrna Loy — what impressions does it conjure, that name? Chinese? Yes — lotus blossoms, and a lissome figure falling breathlessly upon a heap of silken cushions, little ivory fingers begging wailing notes from a moon-faced lute, to the lilt of a singsong chant.
The Chinese-boy movie fans of these modernized American Chinatowns write her love letters, which amuse her vastly. One walked six miles to a location, with a sandwich lunch in his pocket, to adore her and to ask, with many bows, for her photograph.
The gleam went out of his slanting eyes, and the eagerness which glowed on his saffron face was masked again by his racial reserve when she smiled at him and said, with a hint of a mocking laugh, "I am American, of Welsh extraction."
Myrna Loy — American, of Welsh blood. Pause to consider that.
To me her name suggests almond cakes and litchi nuts and tea sweetened with jasmine — tiny pagodas with bells in their tiptops — bead curtains and wee stands of bamboo and teakwood — lilied words and golden boys and a silver pool guarded by swaying reeds.
This seductive name was conferred upon her by a poet. A poet struggling, as poets always are, for ideals and self-expression, but playing a bit, meanwhile — because even poets must eat — in a shoestring movie that was later to be hailed as impressionistic art — Von Sternberg's "The Salvation Hunters."
Myrna had ambitions to be a great dramatic actress and adored Duse and copied Bernhardt's gestures. But with a commonplace name? Horrors! All must be artistically prepared for her plunge into the cinematic ocean.
Myrna she had been christened, but Loy was woven out of the vague dreams that wandered one day through the poet's mind, as he and she sat on a rocky headland beyond a populated beach and talked of idle fancies. While her eyes strayed out to query the fathomless mystery of the cobalt sea, he suddenly announced her name — "Loy." It kindled her imagination, so she accepted it.
There are several Myrna Loys, all of whom contribute to the facile screen personality on which Warner Brothers are building a house of many hopes.
There is Myrna the Oriental, with somnolent gray-green eyes latticed in lazy appraisal, vouchsafing you her slumberous attention, Myrna of the full lips puckered into sensuous curve, Myrna sleepily beguiling. The suggestive carving of her pose is seen, young and a trifle crude. I rather think she fancies herself an embryonic volcano whose smoldering rumble she dimly hears in the distance. And yet, perhaps it is instinctive, genuine. It is not for me to say — because I do not know — whether Myrna the eccentric is a figment of her imagination being molded into form, or whether she is but groping her way to an expression of a naturally strange character. But intriguing she undoubtedly is.
Away from studios and costumes and interviews, there is Myrna the young sophisticate, with brown short hair, cut irregularly in pert wisps over her forehead, in sideburns on her cheeks. This Myrna has a whimsicality, a mere crinkle of amusement. But broad humor, never. One gathers that she fancies she knows the world — and maybe she does.
And there is Myrna the Filipino maid in "Across the Pacific," wreathing her sapling self into poems of articulate movement on a moonlit beach. The Love Girl is just that, ahunger for life, athrob with primitive, surges, restless with the volcanic nature of her race. She lives in a fiber hut and serves with the spices of Southern love both insurrectos and Americanos.
To one of the soldiers of Funston's filibusters, who have been sent to the Philippines to capture the rebellious Aguinaldo and to quell the strife in the islands won by the United States in the Spanish-American War, the Love Girl gives her heart. Duty demands that he learn from her secrets possessed by the "Sons of the Triangle" — so branded in allegiance to Aguinaldo — for whom she is a spy. Duty places him in an ignominious position before his golden-haired American fiancée. And loyalty to her own people eventually arouses the Love Girl. So each double crosses the other.
The American uniform wins, of course. And the Love Girl, with only a proud shrug for the loss of her love and the humiliation of defeat, is marched away under guard. Her parting gift to the man is a superbly disdainful glance. It has in it the contempt of the woman scorned and the fatality of the native sense. A pride, too. She has played the game, guided by her instincts, her only compass, and she has lost. But she leaves the weeping to the pale flower who wilts under the scorching Southern sun. Fiercely, she gives and takes, drinks with gusto the draughts that life hands her, and to the victor she throws a mocking shrug.
The role is many-faceted in its demands, encompassing chameleon emotions, with a sympathy skillfully woven into it by a cleverly constructed scenario.
A young artiste of varied but still nebulous talents, is Myrna. For a while, one amuses. When it bores, with equal facility she turns to another. From her mother, a pianiste, she inherits a passionate love of music which perhaps influences her Thespian and Terpsichorean trends, both offsprings of the melodic art. As a voungster in Helena, Montana, she startled the conventional neighborhood by her dramatic posings before mirrors, by her little feet that never plodded but always danced. Enrolment in Ruth St. Denis' dancing school developed her talent and her particular bent for eccentric impersonations.
Her dancing is that of momentary whim and inspiration. To a slow, pulsating rhythm, she moves about, weaving slim arms and fluttering hands into exquisite Grecian postures, her eyes sleepy with that reverie which goes through and beyond their apparent focus.
What does she dance? Oh, whatever her vagrant thoughts conjure. Allegorical scenes — in a contrary mood, a wild and gay peasant stamping — a jerky polka — a Spanish fandango of electric animation — a Bacchanalian frenzy.
Mostly, her dances are nameless children of her imagination, rhythmic cadences of languid gestures, a flowing motion of grace. Flexed muscles relax into a pliant and elastic quiver that ripples nimbly down her slim body, the while her arms, curved into an arc over her low-bowed head, fall slowly like outspread, drooping wings.
Another hobby is sculpturing. Dreaming of the strange emotional creatures she will some day create for the camera, her tapering white fingers model clay into odd little figurines.
Dancing in prologues at Grauman's Egyptian Theater brought her in contact with Hollywood and she became picture-wise.
It was along about that time that she met the poet who called her "Loy." Thus named to her liking, Myrna took the next step. Knowing that only unusual photographs would attract attention, she went to Henry Waxman, the photographer, who has a gift for highlighting startling features in exotic poses and for bringing out traits of character against either a black or a blank background. He photographed her.
One of these pictures later won her her contract with Warners. Though Waxman had introduced her to Mrs. Rudolph Valentino and she had been given a part in "What Price Beauty," she had not progressed. Then canny Jimmy Flood, the director, who had seen Myrna and been impressed by her, slipped one day into Jack Warner's office and' laid a likeness of Myrna on his desk. Jack took one look at the picture and summoned Myrna. After a few minor parts, she was given her role in Across the Pacific — her first important one. The cast boasts of Monte Blue and Jane Winton as leads, but Myrna has a large slice of the billing.
Myrna, I wonder, are you real — this slumberous, intriguing, different you? Or have I been duped by a very clever actress of ordinary personality? Wrong though I may prove to be, I think this eccentric you is natural, exaggerated perhaps ever so little.
At least, I am sure of one thing, Myrna — you are unforgetable.
As a half-caste girl in Across the Pacific, right, Myrna Loy has a real role at last, one that is well suited to her strange, imaginative temperament. In the story opposite, Myrtle Gebhart draws a vivid portrait of Myrna’s exotic personality.
Collection: Picture Play Magazine, November 1926