Missoulian file Myrna Loy was born in Radersburg, but found her fame in Hollywood.

75. Myrna Loy

By BETH WOHLBERG of the Missoulian

Myrna Loy never received a coveted Oscar for her acting. Throughout her six decades as an actress, she was never nominated.

But the lack of this prestigious award only tells what most in Hollywood know – Loy made acting look too easy. Her skill and sophistication on the screen and in the theater actually disguised her efforts.

Her work was not without recognition or appreciation though. In 1980, Loy was awarded the first David Wark Griffith Award for her spectacular contribution to the advancement of motion pictures, silent and with sound, by the National Board of Review.

At age 79, nine years before her death, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences threw an all-star gala to honor Loy for her accomplishments as an actor. Attended by hundreds – a full house at Carnegie Hall – the event featured two hours of film clips and tributes.

Known best as Nora Charles, the perfect wife in the "Thin Man" series of movies, Loy continually captured the devotion of movie lovers around the world.

She was born Myrna Williams in 1905 in Radersburg. Her father, a state legislator in the early 1900s, named her "Myrna" after he saw a small town with that name on a side junction on the railway. She lived there until she moved to Helena with her family at age 7.

Her family moved to Los Angeles in 1918 after her father died in the flu epidemic. Hollywood suited Loy perfectly. She decided at age 11, after watching celebrities Dorothy Davenport and Jack Pickford at Universal Studios in Hollywood, to become an actor.

She actually started out her career as a dancer, teaching dance on the side, but soon she moved to bit parts in movies. She was a chorus girl in "Pretty Ladies" in 1925, an admirer of the prince in the 1925 "Satan in Sables," and a chorus girl again in "Sporting Life" the same year.

Around the time she acted in "Pretty Ladies," Loy changed her name because she thought Williams was too common. She is remembered as saying, "Williams sounded rather pedestrian for a young girl of 20 whom people thought looked exotic."

It wasn't until W.S. Van Dyke cast her in "The Thin Man" in 1934 that her popularity soared. The public loved Loy's image as a bubbly, yet sophisticated, perfect wife. A total of six "Thin Man" movies were released by MGM. Loy and William Powell, considered a dynamic match, were teamed together in a total of 14 movies, from 1934 to 1947.

By 1936, Loy was practically pulling people to the movies – she was the No. 1 feminine box office attraction. That same year, columnist Ed Sullivan took a poll, deeming Loy as "Queen of the Movies."

Her popularity also extended to other actors. In 1937, Jimmy Stewart said there should be a law against any man who doesn't marry Myrna Loy.

"She was the studio's top female star at this time, the only one of those ladies consistently making the top ten box-office lists in the late thirties," wrote James Kotsilibas-Davis in the 1987 book, "Myrna Loy: Being and Becoming." "No other actress touched post-Depression Americans the way she did."

Other popular hits starring Loy include "The Rains Came" in 1939 and "The Best Years of Our Lives," which won the 1946 Academy Award for best motion picture.

Essentially, Loy was Montana's first lady of films. To this day, she is one of only a few well-known actresses from Montana, and her influence is demonstrated by the presence of the Myrna Loy Center, built in Helena in 1991, to present live events and films.

Her film career spanned seven decades, with a final hurrah in 1980 with "Just Tell Me What You Want." She logged more than 120 films in her long career, more than almost any other actor.

But her life off screen was as interesting and successful as on screen. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, Loy left pictures to serve with the Red Cross. When she returned to movies, she didn't abandon her social work; she was appointed a U.S. representative on UNESCO, where she served for many years.

She was married four times, but avoided the scandals that plagued her contemporaries. Biographers have attributed her discreet lifestyle to the values from her small-town, Western origin. She maintained a disciplined life, with a level head, that allowed her to avoid the "gossip" columns of the newspapers.

Others in her field couldn't help but mention her poise and discipline: Sidney Lumet, director of "Just Tell Me What You Want," said of Loy: "Myrna is like all the great ones ... Both as a woman and as a performer, she has an incredible personal dignity."