Loy, Myrna (redirected from Myrna Williams)

Loy, Myrna

 orig. Myrna Williams

(born Aug. 2, 1905, Radersburg, Mont., U.S.—died Dec. 14, 1993, New York, N.Y.) U.S. film actress. She played bit parts in Hollywood movies before being cast as the exotic mistress in the 1925 production of Ben-Hur, which established her early film persona as a foreign vamp. She earned praise as the wittily sophisticated Nora Charles in The Thin Man (1934) and its sequels and in other movies such as The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948), Cheaper by the Dozen (1950), and Lonelyhearts (1958). Dubbed the “Queen of Hollywood” during her heyday, she evinced equality in a male-dominated world, and her combination of beauty and brains made male audiences regard her as the ideal mate. She worked for the American Red Cross in World War II and later for UNESCO.

---

Loy, Myrna (b. Myrna Williams) (1905–93) actress; born in Raidersburg, Mont. She began her film career as an exotic vamp, but her gift for comedy emerged in The Thin Man (1934). By 1936 she was the top feminine box-office draw, and she was awarded an honorary Oscar in 1991. Offscreen she was never associated with the world of Hollywood glamour and scandal, but she did have a lively social conscience and during the McCarthy era she was among the few actors who protested the treatment of actors by the House Committee on Un-American Activities.