Myrna Loy Quotes

Life, is not a having and a getting, but a being and a becoming

Life is not a having and a getting, but a being and a becoming.

After these walk-ons, she would banter with announcer Ken Niles and perhaps indulge in more stargazing. In her memoir, radio actress Mary Jane Higby recalls working the show. The “underpaid radio actors” soon took to calling themselves “the Gay Ad-Libbers.” They “would circle the microphone, trying to simulate people having a marvelous time. ‘What fun to be here!’ they would cry. ‘My, doesn’t Myrna Loy look gorgeous! Whoops, there’s Bette Davis!

We always used to celebrate together at the end of a picture. Clark insisted on it. Maybe we’d include the director, maybe not. It was just a kind of ritual that the two of us had. We would share a bottle of champagne while he read poetry to me, usually the sonnets of Shakespeare. He loved poetry, and read beautifully, with great sensitivity, but he wouldn’t dare let anyone else know it. He was afraid people would think him weak or effeminite and not the tough guy who liked to fish and hunt. I was the only one he trusted. He never wanted me to tell about this, and here I am giving him away, but I never mentioned it while he was alive.

The group that evening turned out to be almost a who’s who of Hollywood royalty, many of whom were Brits and all of whom could not have been kinder to this new kid on the block. Some of the people I remember meeting were: Greer Garson; Ronald Colman; David Niven, who had also been under contract to Goldwyn, and who was the best raconteur I have ever met; Myrna Loy; Ray Milland, with whom I later worked in The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing; and James Mason, who never seemed to be in the moment. It was as if he was off in his own secret places. Meeting him confirmed what I’d always suspected: he would have been terrific as Rupert in Rope.

I haven’t said it yet, but it seemed implied, that cinema for me was the American one, current Hollywood productions. “My” period goes roughly from The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (Henry Hathaway, 1935) with Gary Cooper and Mutiny on the Bounty (Frank Lloyd, 1935) with Charles Laughton and Clark Gable, to the death of Jean Harlow (which I relived many years later like the death of Marilyn Monroe, in an era more aware of the neurotic power of every symbol), with lots of comedies in between, the mystery-romances with Myrna Loy and William Powell and the dog Asta, the musicals of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, the crime pictures of Chinese detective Charlie Chan and the horror films of Boris Karloff. I didn’t remember the names of the directors as well as the names of the actors, except for a few like Frank Capra, Gregory La Cava, and Frank Borzage, who represented the poor rather than the millionaires, usually with Spencer Tracy: they were the good-natured directors from the Roosevelt era; I learned this later; back then I consumed everything without distinguishing between them too much. American cinema in that moment consisted of a collection of actors’ faces without equal before or after (at least it seemed that way to me) and the adventures were simple mechanisms to get these faces together (sweethearts, character actors, extras) in different combinations.

She had curled every strand of her hair with rags, attempting something along the lines of Myrna Loy as the Countess Valentine, but what she saw in the mirror was more like Countess Valentine’s crazy old uncle. “You

Since the beginning of cinema, Chinese and Chinese American screen characters in Hollywood have evolved from yellow-faced and exoticized caricatures such as Myrna Loy’s portrayal of the daughter of Fu Manchu in the 1932 film, "The Mask of Fu Manchu," to complex and multifaceted representations like those in the 2019 film, “The Farewell," with a cast headed by Awkwafina. That progress didn’t happen overnight, which is an important through line in "Hollywood Chinese," and the recent snubbing of Oscar recognition for ‘The Farewell’ serves as a reminder that there is still work to be done in order to achieve a truly equitable film industry.

Did William Powell take Myrna Loy to a Dunkin’ Donut shop?” “He didn’t know enough,” I said. I raised my coffee cup toward her.