Why Myrna Loy Never Got an Oscar Nomination | Always Second Best Actress

i read a lot of profiles about actresses and i'm hard pressed to think of one who is as uniformly adored as myrna loy every single article about her runs through a list of highly complimentary descriptors like witty refined sophisticated intelligent beautiful they run through her box office receipts some of the highest for women in the 1930s they highlight her popularity hollywood coronation clark gable and manolova crown king and queen of the street and they praise her gift for riparte in films now considered classics a waiter will you serve the nuts i mean will you serve the guests the nuts so in myrtle oil we find a popular critically acclaimed actress whose films made a ton of money this of course only makes it all the more frustrating that she never won a single competitive award during her heyday as an actress and not only this but she was never even nominated for an oscar as someone who loves myrna loy i truly don't know what else there is to say but what the hell now i recently started a series called always second best actress in which i take a look at the careers of women who were frequently nominated for oscars but for whatever reason never actually won one although i suppose with myrna it's actually more like sixth the best actress it's time we take a look at her career and try to figure out what was going on and why voters were apparently for lack of a better word dumb so today i'm going to do just that in this video i'll take a look at what made her so appealing her very odd early phase and the films that have cemented her place in film history before we get started i want to thank the sponsor of this video babel babel is a language learning resource that teaches real world practical conversations in 10 minute interactive lessons so the world is slowly opening back up again kind of proceed with caution and the requisite guidelines thank you and if you're like me you're excited to start traveling again completely not unique of me but i love paris more specifically i love touring the theaters there there's one called 21 which is apparently owned by isabel who bear that i'm absolutely obsessed with one time i was there to see who's afraid of virginia woolf and i was trying to buy the ticket and fumbling through my order and the woman taking the tickets said quiapo virginia woolf and i was like um wee like it took me so off guard to hear it in french and then to quickly have to translate it in my head and that's when i knew okay i need to get better at listening using babble is the perfect way to achieve that and to improve yourself in 2022 it's super easy to use and is made by real life language teachers not algorithms or ai so it feels much more intuitive and in depth they don't give you any weird sentences that exist just to teach you words you're never going to use instead you're guided through lessons with situations you might actually experience in real life like in this lesson you can follow a conversation in which two friends discuss a new mystery series you practice listening to them speak while also working on those pesky gendered endings like fabulous versus fabulous sequoia mysterious i also like that you can book classes with actual teachers like this one speculate on the future of cinema um hello perfect okay babel offers multiple ways to learn lessons podcasts games videos even live classes as i just mentioned so there are tons of opportunities to learn languages culture people history and more click the link below or scan the qr code to get 65 off your subscription babel also now offers a 20-day money-back guarantee so there's nothing to lose by just trying it out for yourself click the link in my description and start speaking a new language today [Music] some actresses reach hollywood and chew to the top of the industry right away some start out in roles carefully curated by studio executives to expect big things down the line but as new movie magazine put it in 1934 myrna lloyd's castle of success is not built upon the sands of good breaks it rests solidly on a rock of endeavour it was no case of one good part in urine with myrna yeah it took a while for myrna loya to become the actress we so fondly remember today due in no small part to the severely wrong course her career took early on let's get some facts out of the way first myrna loy was a redhead of welsh descent who was born in helena montana at around 13 years old she and her mother moved to los angeles she became interested in performance became a dancer and was discovered by silent superstar rudolph valentino and his wife costume designer natasha rembova they saw pictures she'd taken and thought she might have the right look for a film they were producing she didn't get that role but she became a chorus girl at mgm along with baby joan crawford and continued working with rambova taking pictures like these those caught the attention of warner brothers and she signed a contract there and immediately was given a type now i specifically mentioned that myrna loy was a redhead of welsh descent to help emphasize how fundamentally inexplicable it is that everyone in hollywood apparently looked at this woman and thought hmm i feel like she should play asian women so from 1925 to around 1932 myrna loy was known to hollywood as an exotic starring in what were known as heavies which were most often men or women from foreign lands with different morals and different social customs she was often though not always in brown or yellow face given dialogue in garbled or stylized english and generally played characters written with almost no depth or emotional nuance they were usually asian or half asian but really she played just about everything meant to be seen as the other a mexican singer in rogue of the rio grande a gypsy in the squall an indian princess in the black watch a moroccan spy and renegades you name it her films with mgm are probably the most famous of hers from this era 13 women in which she plays a half asian woman who uses horoscopes to convince the white women who bullied her at school to kill themselves and the mask of fu manchu in which she plays the daughter of boris karloff she calls this movie the last straw in her book because she thought the script was sadomasochistic which fair her exoticism became so ingrained in her persona as a star that one article from photoplay even went so far as to say that her montana background was hard to accept yet while the press painted her as exotic it also went out of its way to emphasize her actual whiteness in real life time and time again profiles of her begin with something egregiously racist you'd expect myrna to smell of cheap incense eat chop zooey and smoke perfume cigarettes from long jade holders or you'd expect to see a sinuous sort of person with long heavy earrings and oriental beads but actually she's just a girl from montana she's dangerous but only on the screen she plays characters vested with a langurous colorful appeal but she's just an ingenue sweet and unassuming to the nth degree the fans would need to see her in real life only once to know that she is not oriental it's as if they were permitting the public to find her acceptable or non-threatening because she was white and in spite of who she played on screen mirna was not happy about this one it seems she understood that these roles were wrong on the obvious racist level in her book she calls 13 women a racist concoction and often describes her films in these terms she says of the black watch i played an indian princess but they made her the descendant of alexander the great to establish her aryan credentials so she could get the british officer victor mclaughlin isn't that incredible talk about racism myrna was actively involved in anti-racism work her entire life which we'll get to so this should not be read as an actor saving face in a memoir she privately pushed to get out of these roles but at this point in her career had virtually no power to refuse work apart from the obvious racial implications this vamp type was also dead wrong for her as an actress today we of course have the benefit of hindsight and know how mirna would eventually master the lightness and frivolity of romantic comedies so it's extremely painful to watch her languidly deliver some overly dramatic dialogue as if she were some mystical figure these films hold her at a distance the exact opposite of what her later more successful films would do it simply does not compute on any level so by 1929 she was publicly voicing her disappointment telling picture play i've been a contract player for three years and i still haven't done a picture to which i can point with pride two or three incidental parts have been good outside of those i just hide my head in shame she continued the principle satisfaction in acting is taking a word picture of a person and making it live and breathe most of the roles i've had have been so appallingly inconsistent so painfully fictitious that nothing can be done with them she was as she put it doomed to the heavies these roles placed her very far from anything the industry would remotely consider prestige instead she occupied a space somewhere between horror and fantasy committing crimes and acting alongside horror legends like boris karloff and bella lugosi but also basically playing a sex object something for a white man to experience on an adventure she didn't love it she clearly had the potential to do something else she just have to push for it on her own [Music] after warner brothers essentially told mirna that they were running out of exotic stories to put her in she signed a contract with mgm now as you can imagine they really had no intention of building her into anything other than the exotic she already was yet slowly but surely she received small parts in films that could inch her closer and closer to finding her niche for example she played countess valentine in the musical love me tonight which finally gave audiences a glimpse at her comedic chops can't we ever get a footman under 40 in this place then gradually larger roles that highlighted her urban sophistication and films like when ladies meet the animal kingdom and penthouse eventually mgm caught on that she was actually a great asset and started to give her more prominent leading lady roles i wouldn't say that up until about 1934 that she was a major a-list star but she was definitely well known like you could easily follow her as a fan she was at least famous enough that she became gangster john dillinger's favorite actress he apparently liked her so much that he came out of hiding to see her in the film manhattan melodrama which did not end well for him but things really took off in 1934 with the release of the thin man william powell and myrna loy play the infamous nick and norah charles nick is a retired private detective who is lured back into the field when an old friend goes missing as the bodies pile up nora becomes increasingly invested in the case and the police begin to rely on nick's powers of observation to bring the mystery to a close the thin man is a whodunit technically but i don't think solving the murder is what actually holds anyone's attention when they're watching it no the thin man is all about nick and nora and you spend every minute they're not on screen waiting for them to show up again typically in american cinema you see marriage discussed in two ways one you spend your entire life aiming for it but we cut to the credits before we actually see married life in action or two you're already married and it's so awful that the take is something like this nick and norah presented a third option which is that husband and wife can actually love each other janine basinger writes in her book a woman's view they are the ideal representation of a male and female relationship because they never bore each other they travel everywhere they have plenty of money and they dress very very well they sex each other up in discreet ways and from time to time nick allows nora to be one of the boys what stands out to me watching the two of them is how supremely confident they are in each other's affections take this scene for example nick is comforting a young woman who wants to turn herself in for a murder she didn't commit when nora walks in just to see him embracing her it's not hard to imagine this becoming fodder for some joke about jealousy or cause for paranoia in another movie but not for nick and nora nora just offers her a drink don't be silly here take this drink their relationship is built on trust which means this would never pose a threat and they can trade little jokes about each other without ever worrying that their partner actually meant to hurt them there are certain elements that make nick nora appealing on paper they're rich in the middle of the great depression they don't have kids they constantly party but i'd argue that the real draw is decidedly less tangible it's the chemistry between william powell and myrna loy given how little casting directors seem to pay attention to chemistry between leads these days it is a pleasing shock to the system to watch them interact with each other mgm was smart enough to recognize this and immediately invested in pairing the duo as often as possible they eventually made 14 films together including six thin man movies which i'll talk about more in a minute so five sequels clearly the thin man was a huge hit with both audiences and critics who like me adored william powell and myrnaloy's chemistry so what did this success do for mirna specifically by the time she starred in the thin man she'd already made 80 films and as i mentioned mgm didn't have a super specific track for her in mind beyond ongeneu at this point mare actually didn't even want her to star in the thin man and only agreed to let her do so if director w s van dijk could make the film in three weeks so she'd be available to make stamble quest another exotic-ish role van dyke agreed and made the thin man in just 16 days folks insane so in a sense the thin man was sort of a happy accident for both her and mgm and was remarkably clarifying in terms of her future at the studio gone were the days of myrna the exotic now instead of taking for granted that i guess she looked asian the press started saying hmm isn't it silly that she was stuck in those roles all those years now she was natural straightforward gay not that gay and most importantly thoroughly american now the thin man not only erased her old persona but firmly established a new one the name she'd been known by until literally the day she died the perfect wife suddenly that phrase was everywhere accompanied by such statements as short story writers whenever they want to portray a female character as the type any man could cherish the rest of his life make clear that she is the counterpart of myrna loy and there has never been a wife with the capacity for understanding that myrna has brought to the screen for what it's worth she also thought this branding was rather silly and i get it because that nickname sounds deeply antiquated right like uncomfortably stepford adjacent as if she were some robot who defers to her husband's every whim and barely has a personality of her own but that's not what myrnloy's characters are like at all so what does the perfect wife or really perfect love interest as she's not always married in films what does that actually mean in this case there are some common threads that link most of her performances from the mid-1930s to the late 1940s together she almost never plays a working girl she's almost always rich dressed well very sophisticated and at the same time she was branded as real or ordinary not as looking down on people from some untouchable pedestal or as someone who embodied otherworldly glamour she has a mind of her own which could read as stubborn but was usually excused because her retorts are so invariably witty she's never over emotional in fact myrna loy's performance style is rather subdued for this time period described as a minimalist comedian by the washington post she specialized in under her breath quips and subtle facial expressions and is probably as close to deadpan as you're likely to get in the mainstream cinema of this era this was intentional on her part she writes in her memoir it seems that instinctively i've done this kind of underplaying a good deal in my work that brand of acting impressed me since first seeing stage actress elenora duza in his review of the thin man in the new york times mordant hall wrote that mirna frowns charmingly and i think that's probably the best description i've read of how she could wield these simple expressions to great effect so let's use this scene as an example nora gets nick an air gun for christmas and he decides to shoot at the balloons on their christmas tree nora lounges back in her chair simply watching this take place clearly annoyed that he is being childish well i hope you're satisfied but you can tell from her face alone that if she really wanted to stop this behavior she would but she doesn't this nonsense is exactly what attracted her to him in the first place that she plays along is a central tenet of her films with william powell a lot of their dialogue is like improv in that they both seem to follow the yes and principle he'll say something demonstrably false or ridiculous and she'll accept it then build on it for comic effect who is she oh darling i hope i wouldn't have to answer that well dorothy is really my daughter you see it was spring in venice and i was so young i didn't know what i was doing we're all like that on my father's side by the way how is your father's side oh it's much better than yours or take this example in 1941's love crazy william's character has just left an anniversary gift for her she spots it he starts a riff and she plays along that's funny that wasn't here when i came in maybe some man just put it there oh i don't think so it would have to be a man who knew exactly what i want with powell she is alert responsive and at her best when she's matching him verbal punch for verbal punch oh wait now drinks please into the kitchen son and thaw optimize grandma what large classes you have it's important to remember though that the perfect wife isn't a one-size-fits-all role what makes a perfect wife for william powell isn't exactly the same as what makes a perfect wife for carrie grant or melvin douglas janine basinger writes in i do and i don't a history of marriage at the movies that myrna loy knew how to get into her co-star's groove and be the yin to her partner's yang if her own screen personality had been more dominant and less laid back she could perhaps not have found her stardom she was born to be the other half but without losing her own presence in the frame she could establish equality with very little so we know how she could adapt to fit the william powell mold but watch how she is with spencer tracy in whiplash we'll find your money on that table oh well i certainly want to thank you again sister two thousand bucks is a lot of dough in any language you could have run out of me very easily maybe i thought of doing that why didn't you you're half as tough as that cop painted you trying to dip you would be dangerous business she's tougher to the point naturalistic it's a spencer tracy performance and here with clark gable in test pilot all right all right i'll pay for it don't worry about that listen swellhead you're on private property and very uninvited how'd you like to get that junk over the fence before i stick a bull on you she's aggressive and spunky hard-headed it's a clark gable performance she's the yin to her partner's yang because she can give exactly what she receives she adapts which elevates the sense of equality within the pairing and genuinely makes it easy to root for the couple so i guess in summary when you see a perfect wife roll of myrnas you aren't left thinking oh there she goes again trampled on by some man it's more like you watch her movies and you think honestly yeah would marry i get it come oscar season the thin man received four nominations picture director actor and adapted screenplay nothing for myrna there was a small uproar on her behalf but her snub was vastly overshadowed by someone else's a tidal wave of angry letters flooded fan magazines when it was announced that betty davis failed to receive a nomination for her performance in of human bondage the response was so overwhelming that the academy literally changed its voting procedures to allow for write-in candidates on oscar ballots the write-in campaign for betty was ultimately unsuccessful with claudette colbert taking home the prize but the momentum behind her propelled her to victory the next year i made a whole video about this ordeal which i'll link below regardless myrna's popularity soared and she became one of the biggest stars of the decade she became president roosevelt's favorite star men must marry myrna clubs popped up across the country she won a nationwide popularity poll voted on by 55 papers all over the us and in 1937 was voted queen of the movies alongside her king clark gable she also landed in the top 10 biggest money-making stars of 1937 as in her movies earned more money than other stars films so with her popularity peaking and her movies making money it begs the question [Music] now given that myrna's studio mgm was far and away the most successful studio at the academy awards in the 1930s it's rather astounding that she was never even nominated for any of these roles you'd think that they would have or could have marshaled their resources and at least have gotten her one as a little treat and yet no so given the context we've been discussing why might she have gone so thoroughly ignored here are a couple reasons i thought of a she's not really the true lead in her films she's the perfect wife aka partner so she doesn't really get a herbert marshall or a george brent to just kind of exist next to her while she carries her picture her roles ask her to play in tandem with a partner and are rarely told specifically from her perspective as for example jezebel does for betty davis or to each his own does for olivia de havilland i should note though that this is the case for a lot of best actress winners claudette colbert and louise reiner are relevant examples here b she's not flashy as i mentioned earlier mirnaloy isn't exactly a big performer although i think this quality of her acting has helped her performances age quite well it also likely disadvantaged her when it came to audiences appreciating her skill one article from the 80s seems to acknowledge this but you were so cool and relaxed you made it look so easy says springer not that it was easy you made it look easy that's my problem lois says still laughing in other words if you're not doing a lot you must not be doing anything particularly difficult audiences of course still have this bias and will probably have it for the rest of eternity which brings us to c she was primarily a comic actress you sure i can't help you with that no no you might get all sweaty and die comedy has traditionally fared poorly at the academy awards for what it's worth this is what mirna herself attributes her lack of nominations to in her book they seldom give it to comedians this is ironic because the closest she ever got to winning was the year a comic performance won a role by the way that she actually rejected she is on to something though there is a huge difference between being a fan favorite as comedians usually are and being considered an actor of artistic merit if you compare the tiny movement that emerged in support of her performance in the thin man to the support betty received for her performance and of human bondage their performances are spoken about in completely different terms with myrna it's personal allegiance oh i love her i think i'll just go out and buy her a gold statue myself versus betty who transformed took risks achieved something artistically d internal politics in the 1930s and 40s an actress home studio was instrumental in determining his or her success at the academy awards unsurprisingly this was an extraordinarily political process and louis b mayer was especially guilty of picking favorites that in hindsight haven't really stood the test of time greta garbo possibly the greatest movie star of all time never won anything under contract at mgm like myrna joan crawford didn't get any nominations at mgm either and had to leave for warner brothers to get attention but then at the same time you have louise reiner winning two best actress oscars in a row and even if you enjoy her work you have to admit that that level of recognition doesn't really match her impact on american cinema or culture so it's worth asking what was myrna-loya's relationship to mgm and how did it affect how she was treated myrna loy seemed to simply tolerate stardom more than most stars i've read about she could articulate the ways in which she understood film to be a business so her attitude towards stardom seems kind of informed by being able to see through it all so to speak she clearly defined her boundaries and was smart enough to distinguish where she could take risks versus where she should play along she was shy but not garbo shy a good sport but not obsessed with being a perfect star like joan crawford and while she didn't aim to loudly dismantle the system once she had star power the way betty davis or olivia de javelin did she'd push back if she felt she was being exploited looking at her imdb page you may notice that she only made two films in 1935 way less than in 1934 and 36. after her success with a thin man she finally had the star power to play her hand at mgm she explained to her memoir they always assured you that your contract would be adjusted if you achieved stardom well i had and it hadn't been when i asked for more money or better working conditions such as the right to have the occasional holiday they passed me from one executive to the other by that time my contract gave me around fifteen hundred dollars a week half of what they paid bill powell and a fraction of what other stars received and i had to make more pictures than any of them i wanted what bill was getting that's all so she's simply up and left playing hooky in new york and paris in her absence mgm loudly advertised her replacements rosalind russell the new myrna loy in rendezvous and in her breakout role louise reiner in escapade both alongside who else but william powell eventually mgm caved and included a hefty bonus so she returned she wasn't really punished for this and her biggest years as i mentioned were ahead of her but her limits were clear like one time she just left for a while to spend time with her new husband and mgm was like hello and she basically said um i have a life so her relationship with mgm was mostly good but also they didn't anoint her their choice actress of the decade either that would be louise reiner who won her first oscar for being in a myrna lloyd william powell vehicle the great ziegfeld and there was one other film that mirnaloy could conceivably have won an oscar for [Music] it's obvious to say but world war ii had a massive effect on hollywood what movies were about who made them and what audiences wanted to see it changed myrna's priorities as well she had already been very active in political groups before the war and was so loudly anti-fascist that her films were actually banned in nazi germany for what it's worth i also suspect this was a sticking point at mgm which was a notoriously conservative studio and really dragged its feet when it came to pulling its product out of germany in the 1930s during the war she essentially launched herself full time into public service primarily with the red cross where she was put in charge of all entertainment for the army and navy hospitals on the east coast for the next five years she dedicated her life to this returning to mgm only to make the thin man goes home in 1944 around this time her position at mgm unsurprisingly began to shift she understood how little mgm valued the longevity of its stars and sensing change in the air decided it was time to go she explains in her memoir i wanted to get out before they finished me off they used to do that in the studios they'd either get very careless or do it deliberately somebody new comes along and they get all excited and all their interest goes there they were pushing another redhead greer garson and deservedly so but they were also bringing in stars who did my sort of thing claudette colbert catherine hepburn irene dunn and giving them roles that should have been offered to me admittedly my wartime hiatus had probably diminished my market value and created some animosity at the top nick shank for instance kept telling them at the studio that i didn't want to work she also talks about how the studio had formed a rigid idea of her capabilities by that point and wasn't interested in experimenting with her in more mature roles the essentially comic treatment of marriage and murder belonged to a more cynical satiated pre-war era the noble self-sacrificing miniverse and curies had supplanted the flippant sophisticated charles's the whole world's sense of values had changed and i wanted to go along with it luckily the perfect role would come along for the perfect wife this time through producer sam goldwyn the best years of our lives follows three veterans returning to civilian life after world war ii myrna loy plays millie the wife of al a former army sergeant who struggles to adapt to his old office job at a bank and copes by drinking it's not exactly a unique point to make but director william wyler really went off here unlike his film mrs minniver which was made during america's entry into the war the best years of our lives painted a much less rousing picture of the american mindset touching on everything from fear of the atomic bomb post-war consumerism ptsd and even labor unrest while not about unpacking these issues specifically it captures the total anxiety of this incredibly delicate time in american history it was apparently exactly what audiences needed to see the best years of our lives was not only the highest grossing film of 1946 but also the highest grossing film of the 1940s if greer garson as mrs miniver was the maternal symbol of the home front during the war then myrna loy as millie stevenson was the maternal symbol of the homefront post-war millie expanded the idea of the perfect wife to encompass the emotional maturity made necessary by the war the perfect wife in this context is not only sophisticated and witty but she's also vulnerable resilient composed in the face of conflict she balances the thrill of having her husband at home again as well as the stress of not knowing exactly what he needs to recover but once again despite the film cleaning up at the academy awards myrna did not receive a nomination for her work none of the women from the best years of our lives did which if i'm being honest i think there should probably be more outrage about theresa wright's lack of a nomination here here though i think myrna's role is almost too small to believably claim she's a lead despite the fact that she had top billing but in this era a star of her caliber would not have been nominated in supporting the only other possible reason i could imagine would be political in october 1946 the hollywood reporter published an article listing her as part of the communist fifth column in america a staunch liberal but never a communist she sued the hollywood reporter for 1 million dollars for libel in response they filed a front-page retraction stating that a thorough investigation had cleared her name of all accusations the timing of this would work but i don't really think this incident really affected anything she was quick to react firmly and pretty much avoided any further issues with the government or entertainment industry on this issue this is kind of tangential but i think it's worth mentioning that politics and activism played a huge part in the rest of her life and if you read her memoir you get a sense that she might have actually valued that work much more than her acting i definitely recommend reading that book because you can get a glimpse of the work she did with the united nations her fight on behalf of black and brown communities against housing discrimination and on various presidential campaigns and listen if you think i don't like ronald reagan you haven't heard miss myrna go off a not insignificant portion of this book is literally mirna dragging that man for his behavior during the red scare for cutting funding to public programs and for warmongering it's filled with such bangers as ronald reagan has lived up to my expectations which were not very great a whole rant about how he destroyed everything eleanor roosevelt ever did and this fun little piece from an article although over the past eight years the white house seems to have become the latter day annex to the movie studios of the 40s and 50s loy says you haven't seen me there have you but the cherry on top is that shortly after the release of this book she received a kennedy center honor which forced that man to then give her a standing ovation incredible i don't know a better person i don't know a better person anyway the best years of our lives was probably the last realistic shot she had at an oscar after that she continued with some romantic comedies particularly with carrie grant what's up bachelor and the bobby soxer but slowly transitioned into stage and television instead in 1990 the academy finally awarded mirnaloy with an honorary award at the ceremony imagine that wow and i think angelica houston's introduction that evening sums up nicely what i've been trying to say throughout this video some actresses take us by storm some like the lady we pay tribute to with an honorary oscar steal quietly into our hearts mirna loy had a sweet way with a sharp line and she could communicate more with a delicately raised eyebrow than most performers can with a raised voice myrna lloyd was subtle but consistent she may not have been the flashiest performer but she's a fun person to spend time with so to speak in her films and in her personal writing i've left some links for you in the description below if you'd like to check out her work here on youtube and some streaming options as well [Music] hmm [Music]

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Length: 37min 14sec (2234 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 26 2022