Myrna Loy (42 page)

Myrna and Arthur, Roosevelt Democrats who opposed communism and dictatorship in any form, worried especially about Britain’s vulnerability to German attack. Arthur, part Polish-Jewish (on his mother’s side) and part British Protestant, felt a “there but for the grace of God go I” sense of identification. He realized that Hitler regarded Britain as an enemy power and that England happened to be located within easy bombing distance of Germany. He knew that Britain was doubly vulnerable because it was allied with Poland in a mutual aid treaty. The Nazi invasion of Poland finally triggered the official start of World War II in September 1939.

Arthur’s London-based father and his Scottish second wife, Nora, had a son, Herbert Hornblow, now a flight lieutenant in the Royal Flying Corps. Herbert was about to depart for America for a visit with Myrna and Arthur when his leave was suddenly cancelled because of the British mobilization for war. Arthur senior managed to escape London’s bombing during the Blitz. He and his wife moved to New Jersey, where he would die of a stroke in 1942.
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Films sympathetic to England had come into fashion in the United States.
Goodbye, Mr. Chips
(produced at MGM’s Denham Studio, near London) and the Bette Davis–Errol Flynn vehicle
The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex
are just two examples, both from the benchmark year the war began in Europe, 1939. Myrna had been considered for the role of Mrs. Chips, but her temporary jump over to 20th Century–Fox prevented it. She went to Fox to appear in another pro-British movie,
The Rains Came
, based on a best-selling novel set in India and written by the Pulitzer Prize–winner Louis Bromfield, a friend of Myrna and Arthur. Its coadapter, Philip Dunne, was one of Hollywood’s liberal stalwarts and a leader of the embattled Screen Writers’ Guild, which Thalberg and Mayer had vehemently opposed.

In the hands of Dunne, his cowriter Julien Josephson, the dynamo 20th Century–Fox producer Darryl F. Zanuck, and the director Clarence Brown,
The Rains Came
became a kind of homage to the fading traditions of the British Empire. A statue of Queen Victoria, prominently placed in the town square of the mythical provincial Indian city of Ranchipur, stands as an enduring, but endangered, symbol of the Britain of bygone days. In the devastating, epic-scale flood of the title, the biggest onslaught of water in a movie since
Noah’s Ark
(for which Zanuck wrote the screenplay back in 1929), the reprobate character Tom Ransome (George Brent) clings to Victoria’s bronze likeness. A holdover from an outworn, decadent, and aristocratic British lifestyle, Ransome clings to the drowning but still erect statue when his boat tips over during the flood; the waterlogged bronze Queen saves his life. The use of symbols in this film is effective but not what one would call subtle.

In the movie’s opening sequence we meet Ransome, an attractive, high-born drinking man and philanderer who can’t manage to finish the portrait he’s been painting. Ransome tells his visitor, Major Rama Safti (Tyrone Power), a handsome, well-educated, high-caste Indian physician, that for him Queen Victoria seems like an old friend. The immobile queen constantly reminds him of the golden days “before the world went to seed,” when people still sang in Vienna and citizens had yet to become preoccupied with war, dictators, and appeasement. The movie is supposed to take place between the two world wars, but it is a decidedly 1939 voice that says, via Ransome, that the current world is “trying to commit suicide.”

Filmed between April and July,
The Rains Came
premiered in September, just two weeks after the official start of World War II in Europe. Fox considered postponing the glittering premiere because of the war but decided to go ahead with it as planned. Seats were at a premium, and gaping fans jostled for glimpses of the gowns worn by Claudette Colbert, Irene Dunne, Joan Bennett, Dorothy Lamour, Lana Turner, and Linda Darnell. Miss Loy wore a white lace Balenciaga gown and carried a white ermine wrap. This was not a night for austerity or self-denial among Hollywood’s elect.
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The Rains Came
is set in Ranchipur, but Zanuck made it clear from day one that he wanted to make a film about the British in India rather than one focused primarily on India itself. At a story conference Zanuck said that an epic about India would seem dated and would surely flop. The producer sought, and received, the approval of the British consul in Los Angeles, as well as that of the Indian Office in London.
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None of the key
Rains Came
roles is played by an Indian or even by an actor from anywhere close to India; the racial situation in Hollywood hadn’t evolved much since the days when Myrna Loy played Azuri covered in brown skin dye. The actors cast as Indians are all Caucasians in brown makeup: Tyrone Power, born in Ohio, came from a theatrical family of Irish extraction. His Major Safti, the “pale copper Apollo,” wears a turban and shimmering Indian robes or medical whites that offset his darkened complexion. The wonderful, diminutive Russian-born actress Maria Ouspenskaya, a veteran of the Moscow Art Theater, portrays the Maharani. Myrna’s onetime costar and pursuer Joseph Schildkraut, born in Vienna, is the prayerful Mr. Bannerjee.

Myrna Loy is Lady Edwina Esketh, the coldly beautiful, amoral wife of a boorish British peer she loathes, a man she married merely for money and status. Lady Esketh simply does as she pleases in her sex life, shrugging off the Seventh Commandment. She seeks excitement and relief from boredom, not true love. Myrna strenuously defended her right to portray an imperfect wife, and to vary the kinds of roles she took on, pointing out to the press that variety should be part of any actor’s portfolio. Spencer Tracy, she reminded people, had started out typed as a gangster and had recently been convincing as a priest, just as Gable, once considered a heavy, sometimes played heroes. “I want to be wicked for a change,” said Myrna after casting decisions were announced.
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Because of the Code, Lady Esketh couldn’t be quite the tramp onscreen that Bromfield depicted in the novel, but she is allowed to be casual about going upstairs for a quick tryst with Ransome, her former lover back in England, when she encounters him at a lavish party at the Maharajah’s palace. Her roll in the hay accomplished, she nonchalantly dons her wrap and goes home with her scowling husband. “I’m pretty much the ruthless, shameful woman that Bromfield made her,” Myrna said of her Lady Esketh.
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Joseph Breen had warned Selznick in 1937 that the Bromfield novel would be an unacceptable basis for a movie because of the prominence of adultery in it. For some not readily apparent reason he allowed Zanuck to go forward with it two years later. Perhaps his reasoning was based on economics: 1938 had been a rough year, and Hollywood badly needed hits.
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Zanuck had by now established himself as one of the savviest and most powerful studio heads in Hollywood. He had formed 20th Century Pictures in 1933, and when that company merged with Fox the following year, he became head of production at 20th Century–Fox. Zanuck seems to have handpicked Myrna to play Lady Esketh, a much-coveted role. Marlene Dietrich was named early on as Zanuck’s choice; Constance Bennett and Kay Francis were also in the running. Greer Garson, the red-haired beauty at MGM newly imported from Britain, dearly wanted the role as well, but Mayer refused to lend her to Fox. The competition for leading lady in
The Rains Came
wasn’t publicized as widely as the race for the role of Scarlett O’Hara in
Gone with the Wind
had been, but it was still much discussed by fans and in the Hollywood press.

Once Myrna was chosen, discussion focused on the startling contrast between Lady Esketh and the roles Myrna Loy had recently played. A number of fans, forgetting that Myrna Loy had cut her teeth as a screen she-devil, wondered if she would be up to the task. “No picture in years has created so much interest in the inner film circles,” Louella Parsons wrote after the premiere at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. Even before releasing
The Rains Came
, 20th Century–Fox was deluged with mail on the subject of casting the female lead. “Fox reported that out of 939 letters received from fans, 822 approved [of] the change of character for Myrna Loy.”
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Maybe Zanuck chose Myrna Loy at least in part because of a 1937 interstudio agreement to swap a few Fox stars with a few of MGM’s. Mayer wanted Tyrone Power for the male lead in
Marie Antoinette
, and he was willing to trade some Metro stars in return. Myrna Loy owed Fox a picture. But that couldn’t be the only reason she got this plum role. Zanuck could, and did, call his own shots. He saw something in Myrna that made him believe she could take on Lady Esketh, a woman combining fire and ice, who may have been modeled on Lady Edwina Mountbatten, rumored to have fallen in love with Nehru in India. Once the cameras started rolling, however, Zanuck goaded Loy nonstop. Myrna, who occasionally socialized with the Zanucks, felt constantly undermined by him; she could never win the boss’s approval on the set and wasn’t sure why. She speculated that Zanuck might have harbored resentment because she did so well after he fired her from Warner Bros. He had made a bad call, and perhaps he was punishing Myrna for it (
BB
, 157). He may also have thought that as an actress in
The Rains Came
she didn’t come across as toxic enough in the beginning of the picture. Zanuck upbraided the screenwriters for making Lady Esketh too sympathetic at the start, too much of a lady. “She should be a bitch and remain so up to the point of the disaster.”
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Making sure Edwina Esketh impressed the audience in the first part of the picture as the unfeeling creature Bromfield created was essential to the story. The change that comes over her after she falls in love with Major Safti had to supply dramatic contrast; there had to be a clear before and after for her transformation to take on meaning. This is the tale of a spoiled, shallow woman deepened by experience, an adventuress who takes an emotional journey toward spirituality, love, and redemption. Her oaf of a husband, who secretly kept a list of as many of her lovers as he could identify, dies in the earthquake, so Edwina no longer can be considered unfaithful to him. More than that, Major Safti’s unselfish caring, for her and for the sick patients he tends, sets an example. She intended merely to ensnare Safti in an affair, but she falls in love with him, the first real love she has known. After plague lays siege to Ranchipur following the earthquake and flood, Lady Esketh volunteers as a nurse in Major Safti’s hospital. She sheds her glamorous gowns, dons a uniform and a mask that covers the lower portion of her face, and empties slop pails. And she does the very thing Louis B. Mayer insisted Myrna Loy must never do in an MGM picture: scrub the floor.

Of course, Lady Esketh must fall victim to the plague and die for her sins, beautifully, with her eyes open. She must leave Major Safti free to take on his future role as the new maharajah, the incarnation of hope for India. Clarence Brown, who had learned as a director of silent films how to help actors convey emotion without words, deftly guided the hospital scenes that rely on exchanged glances between the masked Loy and Tyrone Power. Brown counseled Myrna to ignore Zanuck’s negative comments on her interpretation of Lady Esketh. Myrna had won her director’s respect, and the feeling was mutual. Louis Bromfield, with whom the Hornblows were spending weekends at the beach, also bolstered her self-confidence, assuring Myrna that her Lady Esketh was the best performance of her career (
BB
, 157).

During filming, Hollywood-watchers were advised, “Miss Loy has the Lady Esketh role, eventually mastering it after a protracted bad start in which she is at a painful disadvantage in the sepia camera portraiture.” The sepia is nowhere evident in the 2005 black-and-white Fox Home Entertainment DVD. But Myrna, whose bout with strep throat had delayed production, looks smashing throughout. For much of the picture she wears a Gwen Wakeling–designed backless, halter-neck gown that shows off her beautiful back and shoulders. Her trademark erect, queenly carriage serves her well as Lady Esketh strides with haughty but sensual grace. Her skin is powdered very white to highlight the contrast between her and the movie’s
homme fatal
, Major Safti.
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Tyrone Power, who had recently married a French actress known simply as Annabella, completely captivated Myrna. She and Arthur had hit some rocky shoals in their marriage. Myrna never told her friends exactly what the trouble was, but it is clear that she was no longer confident of her husband’s enduring or exclusive affection. “I felt my world falling to pieces around me.” Myrna did not discuss her marital problems with Power, but he sensed her fragility and treated her with gentleness and sensitivity. “I’m sorry to report that we weren’t lovers,” Myrna said in her autobiography, acknowledging her attraction to him, “but he was married to that damn Frenchwoman” (
BB
, 159). She saw Tyrone Power as a magnetic and spiritual person who once told her that if he could be anything, he’d be the wind, so he could be light and free, and go anywhere. She didn’t mention his devastating good looks, but she didn’t have to. Anyone who had seen Tyrone Power in a movie, or seen just a still photo of him, knew.
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The Rains Came
was a big-budget, full-tilt production with special effects by Fred Sersen that copped the very first Academy Award for Special Effects, competing against
Gone with the Wind
and
The Wizard of Oz
(among other contenders). It also won nominations in Art Direction, Cinematography, Musical Score, Film Editing, and Sound Effects. It delivered all the spectacular disasters a dedicated movie-lover could ask for, not just a deluge of rain but a flood triggered by an earthquake that breaks a dam, as well as a fire and a plague. (The earthquake in
San Francisco
had been a big winner, and the disaster in Samuel Goldwyn’s
The Hurricane
had also scored in 1938.) Fox paid $52,500 just for the rights to the novel, $500,000 for sets, and the cost of production came in slightly under budget at about $2 million. The film made $1.5 million in rentals and garnered mixed reviews. Howard Barnes, in the
New York Herald Tribune
, found it too long and “only sporadically diverting.” But
Daily Variety
praised the brooding atmosphere and named it one of the important films of the season.
The Hollywood Reporter
singled out Myrna Loy’s performance as “one of her finest, and a distinct achievement.” The movie deserves more attention than it gets today.
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