Distinctly Montana Magazine

D I S T I N C T L Y M O N T A N A M A G A Z I N E • S P R I N G 2 0 2 1 38 Throughout her career, Myrna Loy wanted to play a character that fit her Western origins, and this desire was continually thwarted. Being typecast as an upper-class sophisticate certainly didn't help (as an early 30s fan magazine put it, "Myrna Loy is caviar, not corned beef and cabbage") but luck and timing figured just as prominently. There was interest in 1936 in having her star alongside Spencer Tracy in the adapta- tion of Conrad Richter's pioneer novel The Sea of Grass, but production was continually delayed and by the time the film was made in 1947, it starred Katherine Hepburn. The closest she came to an actual Western was in the 1949 adaptation of John Steinbeck's The Red Pony, co-starring Robert Mitchum. It was in 1934 that she landed the role that would set the benchmark of her career: heiress Nora Charles in The Thin Man, with William Powell as her private eye husband Nick. The Thin Man proved to be a surprise box office smash, yielding five sequels and establishing a mode of romantic comedy screen partnership other Hollywood properties would strive to emulate (the television series Castle owes a debt to The Thin Man, for example). There is a murder to be solved, yes, but the real pleasure comes from Nick and Nora being impossibly witty, drinking martinis like water, and goofing around with their beloved fox terrier Asta. It's a depiction of marital devotion underscored by partnership and fun; little wonder, then, that Myrna Loy ended up playing steadfast wives for the next two decades. If Loy went from foreign seductress to idealized spouse, Gary Cooper oscillated between cowboy and contemporary American hero, with some variations in between. He won two Oscars, in 1941 for Sergeant York, and in 1952 for High Noon. His character in the former is a real-life decorated World War I soldier, the latter a sheriff abandoned by his townsfolk before facing an outlaw. High Noon was also unique for Cooper, in that its reading as an anti-Blacklist story seemed antithetical to his own political stances. A political conser- vative his entire life, he was one of the founding members of the rightwing Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals (other members included Adolphe Menjou and Walt Disney) and served as a "friendly witness" to the House Un-American Activ- ities Committee in 1947, though he never offered any names. Myrna Loy was on the opposite wing, though no less patriotic. She volun- teered for the American Red Cross during World War II; her expe- riences there influenced arguably her greatest performance, Milly Stephenson in William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). After the war she became a delegate for UNESCO, and later served on the National Committee against Discrim- ination in Housing during the Kennedy administration. Gary Cooper died of cancer in 1961, shortly after shooting wrapped on his final film, The Naked Edge. He was buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City. Myrna Loy died in 1993, at the age of 88; her ashes were interred in Forestvale Cemetery in Helena. The Treasure State served as a wellspring and resting place for a pair of tremendous ca- reers that ran in complimentary tandem while never intersecting. AS AN EARLY 30s FAN MAGAZINE PUT IT, "MYRNA LOY IS CAVIAR, NOT CORNED BEEF AND CABBAGE"

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