Picture Play Magazine (Mar-Jul 1929)

43 Sne Pays tKe Penalty Because Myrna Loy is distinct unto herself and does not fit into the Hollywood mold of standardized types, her career is a baffling enigma to those who believe in her. By Margaret Reid THERE is a Hollywood mold into which all studio femininity is poured. It is a sort of final test. If any edges stick out, or lap over, they are skillfully pruned by the studio. "Thou shalt conform," is the first commandment around our cinema factories. It is a great executive whimsy that players are hired because they are distinctive, but retained only if they can be made to fit the mold. Generally and basically our actresses all resemble one another. Don't blame them — it's apparently the secret of screen success. To be different is to be outre, also out. To get ahead is to think, act, talk, and look as much as possible like theaccepted Hollywood formula. Therefore shed a sympathetic tear for Myrna Loy. Myrna's plight is dismal indeed, her misfortune twofold. The Loy countenance is too decisive, too immutably strange and medieval, to take on the pretty lines of Hollywood physiognomy. And the Loy personality just as stubbornly resists the corrosive inroads of Hollywood conventions. There is no pigeonhole into which she fits, no category in which she can be placed. Hence movie moguls are quite at sea as to what to do with her. What, I'm asking you, can be done with a face that might have been contrived jointly by Helene Perdriat and El Greco — a boldly, yet finely etched countenance, with long, slanting eyes, broad cheek bones, pointed chin, retrousse nose and voluptuous mouth? The standard pattern of a movie is simple, and there is no segment of it where Myrna looks at home. The tip-tilted nose is ingenue, but then what? The eyes would do for a villainess except that, despite their shape, they are guileless. The mouth suggests a vamp, but there is that pointed chin which is purely elfin. The ensemble is exquisite, I grant you, and interesting far beyond the limits of candy-box prettiness — a face eminently suited to intelligent drama. But this, remember, is the movies, where characters must be tagged to avoid confusion as to their identity. Myrna herself is fully conscious of her difficulty. Until recently her main interest was in getting established, and almost any sort of role serves that purpose, as long as the player's name is on the screen. But now she is beginning to feel uneasy. Her parts have increased in importance until she is a featured player. The roles are bigger, but in the main just as bad as ever. "I've been a contract player for three years," she remarked, "and I still haven't done a picture to which I can point with pride. Two or three incidental parts have been good— the native girl in 'Across the Pacific,' an episode in Victor McLaglen's 'A Girl in Every Port,' which was a little gem of tragedy and had to be cut out, because it killed the laughs, the lady-in-waiting in 'Don Juan,' which was fun to do. Outside of those I hide my head in shame." Four years ago she was dancing in prologues at Grauman's Egyptian Theater. Henry Waxraan, a young photographer, took some portraits of her and found them so interesting that he advised her to try pictures. He showed the studies he had taken to Valentino. "Valentino was preparing a picture at the time, and Natacha sent for me. They took a test and it was quite, quite awful, so I decided I'd better keep away from cameras." But Waxman knew star material when he saw it. After Myrna had been doing extra work for a few months, incidental to her dancing, Waxman was instrumental in bringing her to the attention of the Messrs. Warner. They signed her for five years, a few months ago destroying her old contract and signing her for another five. Why, in view of their blatant waste of her talents, it is difficult to assume. Myrna is troubled by the predicament, but is not unreasonable. "I'm quite aware that I don't look American. Off the screen, with all my freckles, I look a little more what I am — Myrna Williams, born in Montana. But the camera seems to emphasize my peculiarities, so that I am not really convincing as an American. But what of that? America takes up a small space in the field of drama. There is such a wealth of material lying all about us. Literature isn't bounded on the north by the ingenue and on the south by the flapper." She is amply justified in her dissatisfaction. Cont'd on page 112 As Nubi, in "The Squall," Myrna Loy hopes to achieve serious consider ation.