Myrna Loy (33 page)

As hilarious as it is nonsensical,
Libeled Lady
nearly broke the bank, cleaning up both at the box office and in the reviews it generated. Praising its crackling dialogue and situations that “reek with lowdown and slapstick,”
Variety
pronounced it “a sockeroo of a comedy” and a “till ringer.” Edwin Schallert in the
Los Angeles Times
named it “one of the maddest, merriest and best of the year.” Years later, when it was being revived in New York, Vincent Canby held up
Libeled Lady
as one of the great screwball comedies and an example of studio system filmmaking at its best, a collaborative effort showcasing the teamwork of superb professionals. He praised the breakneck pace, the lightness of touch, and the warmth and sheer joyousness of the scenes Powell and Loy share. “There is probably nothing else in movies to equal the élan of their courtship scenes, except those of Astaire and Rogers.” Katharine Hepburn, who knew a thing or two about fast-paced screwball comedy, privately called
Libeled Lady
the “funniest damn thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
²¹

Powell’s stellar turn in
Libeled Lady
got no nod when Oscar time rolled around in March of 1937. He was competing with himself this banner year, and his brilliant performance as a hobo turned butler in
My Man Godfrey
, a Universal film, stole the nomination. Warner Bros.’ Paul Muni would end up receiving the Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of Louis Pasteur. MGM and Warner Bros. pictures tended to monopolize the Academy Awards, simply because those two studios had the most voting members.

At the Biltmore Hotel’s Academy Awards banquet Powell waited and watched, sharing a table with three other Hollywood luminaries. His date was Jean Harlow, but on this glittering night he was double dating with his ex-wife, and recent costar, Carole Lombard. How civilized. She too had been nominated and would be chosen Best Actress for her standout zany turn in
My Man Godfrey
. Lombard’s current lover and future husband, Clark Gable, still not divorced from wife Ria, completed the foursome. Although MGM, as usual, walked off with multiple trophies,
Libeled Lady
, nominated for Best Picture, didn’t win. Chaplin’s
Modern Times
wasn’t so much as mentioned, although it was a top-grossing film of 1936.

The movie chosen Best Picture of 1936 was
The Great Ziegfeld
, which to some critics, both when it first made the rounds and later, seemed more remarkable for its “legs and tinsel” extravagance than for its excellence. The choice now stands out as a prime example of Academy fallibility.
Ziegfeld
includes seven go-for-broke production numbers and twenty-three songs. Graham Greene, at the time a reviewer for the British
Spectator
, tagged it “this huge inflated glass-blown object.” He likened the interminable film, which clocks in at three hours, to the feat of a flagpole sitter who makes you wonder how he manages to stay aloft.
²²

Greene got it right.
The Great Ziegfeld
provides a case study in the way Metro could confuse quantity with quality. In its ads MGM boasted of the “countless beauties, trained lions, ponies, dogs and other animals” on hand and bragged, “So BIG that only MGM could handle it.” One of the top box-office winners of the decade (it brought in $4,673,000 worldwide), and one of MGM’s most lavishly mounted musicals,
The Great Ziegfeld
suffers from elephantiasis. A total of 250 tailors and seamstresses spent six months sewing the costumes Adrian designed for it; they used fifty pounds of silver sequins and twelve yards of white ostrich plumes. The revolving stage built for one mammoth production number, “A Pretty Girl Is like a Melody,” required multiple tons of steel to support 182 bedecked dancers.
The Great Ziegfeld
was MGM’s first “special” to be “road-showed” since 1933’s
Dinner at Eight
. A road show involved opening a movie in major cities and prime movie palaces, at boosted ticket prices comparable to those for live theater productions.
²³

Ziegfeld
cost more than $2 million to produce and took nearly two years to plan. Universal first owned the rights to the story, and began production, but when costs spiraled beyond what Universal could afford, MGM paid its competitor $300,000 and took over. The blockbuster employed about a thousand people, was in production for more than two months, and expended sixteen reels of film, after cutting. In keeping with the post–
Grand Hotel
MGM tradition of packing several stars into one movie, it put three names on the marquee: William Powell, Myrna Loy, and Luise Rainer. Thanks in part to Powell’s generosity, Rainer had made enough of a splash in
Escapade
to now rank as a star. Fannie Brice, Frank Morgan, and Virginia Bruce got second billing. But along with the movie-star names, the additional names of former “Ziegfeld Follies” Broadway revue luminaries joined the credits, with singer and comedienne Fannie Brice heading the list. Eddie Cantor was played by his former understudy, not by Cantor himself (too costly). A stand-in played Will Rogers, too; the real Rogers had been killed in a plane crash in August 1935.

Myrna Loy was chosen to play Ziegfeld’s second wife, the actress Billie Burke, fairly late in the day, more than a year after the June 1935 announcement that William Powell would portray Ziegfeld. Powell had been busy costarring with other actresses, for instance Rainer, Rosalind Russell, and Jean Arthur, while Myrna took her unscheduled vacation in Europe, and MGM, now eager to reinstate the Powell-Loy team as preeminent, promoted
The Great Ziegfeld
as another Powell-Loy vehicle. In fact, Loy isn’t a full-fledged costar; she doesn’t appear at all until the latter portion of
The Great Ziegfeld
. This was the first picture for which MGM signed her, though not the first released, following her return to the studio after going absent without leave from the set of
Escapade
.

According to
Variety
, Ziegfeld’s widow, Billie Burke, who partially owned the rights to the Ziegfeld story, and who today is probably best remembered as Glinda the Good Witch in
The Wizard ofOz
, had a hand in picking Myrna to portray her younger self, although Billie Burke’s biographer reveals that Miriam Hopkins would have been her first choice. MGM thought Loy should be grateful. Being chosen for this relatively small role in a very expensive, much-hyped A picture was meant to fulfill the “promise on [the] studio’s part that Miss Loy would be given better assignments.” Presumably Miss Burke preferred not to play her younger self.
²⁴

Although MGM awarded Loy top billing alongside Powell, Luise Rainer stole most of the distaff thunder and would receive her first Oscar for her performance as Ziegfeld’s first wife, Anna Held, the French chanteuse with the hourglass figure. The award came mainly in response to just one of Rainer’s scenes, the celebrated “Hello, Flo” telephone call congratulating Ziegfeld on his second marriage. Rainer pulled out all the stops performing this overwrought one-sided conversation, which she later said she based on a production she’d seen of Cocteau’s
La voix humaine
. Rainer’s emotional tour de force involved tipping off the audience, allowing them to measure the distance between Anna Held’s inner torment and the polite, cover-up words she speaks into the receiver to her ex-husband. Over the phone, her voice filled with repressed tears, she insists that she’s happy, “never better,” but we know she’s heartbroken. She throws herself, face down, on a bed and collapses in sobs the moment after she hangs up the phone.
²⁵

It couldn’t have been easy for Myrna, whose rise to stardom came in small, slow steps stretched over a decade, to see the newcomer Rainer ascend to such widely publicized acclaim in just her second Hollywood film, also her second opposite Powell. Myrna was too discreet to reveal in public the envy or frustration she must have felt.

The critics judged Myrna Loy less sparkling than usual in
The Great Ziegfeld
. “Miss Loy is a stately Billie Burke, and somewhat lacking, we fear, in Miss Burke’s effervescence and gaiety,” Frank Nugent wrote in the
New York Times
. Cecilia Ager, usually a Loy enthusiast, found her Billie Burke pretty, but “stilted, like her rigidly waxed and set blond wig.” Harrison Carroll in the
Los Angeles Herald Express
acknowledged the hurdles Loy faced in trying to portray a living woman who was widely known and still active as a Metro actress. He praised Loy for not attempting to imitate Burke’s mannerisms.
²⁶

Myrna’s lack of sizzle didn’t stem from deficient acting on her part but rather from the mushy script written by William Anthony McGuire, a former assistant to Ziegfeld. (McGuire also was the original producer of
The Great Ziegfeld
, before Universal pulled out and MGM’s Hunt Stromberg took the reins.) The screenplay’s Billie Burke is sympathetic, yes, but no showstopper. She’s a gentle nurturer, not a sassy showbiz headliner. The actual Billie Burke, a redhead, emerged out of a circus family into Broadway stardom. In the movie Burke marries Ziegfeld when he’s getting on in years and his career is beginning to slip. She’s much younger than he and at her professional peak. Ziegfeld’s eventual decline involves a drop in his professional status when the Follies no longer dominates Broadway. He faces financial ruin after the crash of 1929, and a slackening of his masculine zip. As a younger man, the lady-killer Ziegfeld borrowed, spent, and invested money recklessly, constantly teetering on the brink of ruin but always managing to land on his feet, in triumph, with a string of hits lighting up the Broadway sky and a gorgeous woman more than willing to provide arm candy. Famous for “Glorifying the American Girl,” he can seduce any ambitious dancer or singer he wants; the Follies lovelies, and would-be Follies lovelies, vie for his attention and favor.

While married to Anna Held, he dallies with another Ziegfeld star, Audrey Dane, played by Virginia Bruce and modeled on Lillian Lorraine, Ziegfeld’s side-dish lover during his marriage to Anna Held. Anna (Luise Rainer) discovers Flo alone with Bruce, stretched out on a chaise longue, and explodes, “Flo! You should at least close the door!” One of the Anna Held songs Rainer sings earlier is “It’s Delightful to Be Married,” but being married to Flo Ziegfeld turns out to be less than a joy ride. Ziegfeld’s philandering prompts an indulgent implied wink from the screenwriter, not a cluck of disapproval. Breen allowed it. But old age will provide a measure of comeuppance for the bounder.

As Powell plays him, the elderly Ziegfeld’s belief in himself falters in his twilight days. He sits at home, ailing and passive, looking out at the Broadway skyline emblazoned with his famous name: a reminder of headier days. The actual Ziegfeld wasn’t even in New York during his last years. In the movie his devoted valet, Sidney (Ernest Cossart), waits on him and humors him. Flo now survives on memories of past glories, illusions about the future, and the earnings of Billie Burke. Her role, like that of the valet, is to try to prop him up. There’s not much room for effervescence here. Burke and Ziegfeld have a daughter, Patricia, but Dad, shorn of his moxie, is Billie’s biggest baby. When Flo goes broke, Billie volunteers to sell the diamond tiara he gave her for Christmas, along with the rest of the jewels he’s bestowed. She’s being generous, but at the same time, such gestures of largesse wrest command. Trying to inject courage, she gently nudges, “Flo, I’m disappointed in you. I didn’t think you’d ever lose confidence in yourself.” He’s lost more than his self-confidence, though. This movie’s ending is all about Ziegfeld’s loss of potency, directly linked to his lost ability to rake in money.

Billie Burke played Myrna Loy’s older, unmarried sister in another extravagant Metro biopic released the following year, this one far less successful at the box office than
The Great Ziegfeld. Parnell
starred Clark Gable as the Irish patriot Charles Stewart Parnell and Myrna Loy as the married woman he loved, Katie O’Shea. Based on a Broadway play,
Parnell
purports to tell the story of the late nineteenth-century Irish home rule champion and member of Parliament brought down by the malice of Parnell’s one-time political ally, caddish Captain Willie O’Shea, husband of Katie and also a member of Parliament. Katie, though separated from her husband, wasn’t yet divorced when she began living with Parnell in the grand home near London that she shared with her wealthy aunt. After Willie O’Shea sued Katie for divorce, naming Parnell as corespondent, Parnell’s Irish political career abruptly tanked, and his cause was defeated in Parliament. Blamed for Parnell’s fall, the fiery Katie was vilified in Ireland, especially by Irish Catholics. Parnell and Katie finally married, but Parnell, a broken man, had a weak heart and died young. This is a rough outline of the real story, but the movie pretends that Katie O’Shea and Parnell never had to sneak around and never got married after the divorce. It portrays both Katie O’Shea and Parnell as romantics, sentimental softies. It also leaves out their three illegitimate children, one of whom came over from England as an adviser for
Parnell
.

PLATE 1. David T. and Ann Williams, paternal grandparents of Myrna Loy, ca. 1880. Montana Historical Society.

PLATE 2. Aunt Lu Wilder, maternal grandmother Isabella Johnson, and Della Johnson in Helena, ca. 1900. Montana Historical Society.

PLATE 3. Myrna Adele Williams, 1905. Montana Historical Society.