Myrna Loy (41 page)

“World events dwarfed the rigors of picture-making in 1938,” Myrna recalled (
BB
, 155). Her two aviation movies made that year each had a military subtext reflecting a preoccupation with preparing for war.
Test Pilot
, which begins with an onscreen note of thanks to the U.S. Army Air Corps for its assistance, also assures the public via a slide that American military secrets have been protected and that no foreign power could glean secure information about current bomber plane technology by watching the movie.

A newsreel cameraman’s filming of the December 1937 Japanese Navy attack on the USS
Panay
while it was anchored in the Yangtze River probably inspired the Sino-Japanese war sequence (about faked newsreels) in
Too Hot to Handle
. The man who cowrote the screenplay, the former Fox Movietone newsreel photographer and editor Laurence Stallings, had covered the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1936. He’d served in France as a marine, decades back, and lost a leg as a result of an injury during World War I. An autobiographical novel he wrote was adapted for the screen as the famous war film
The Big Parade
. His colleague Len Hammond, who wrote the story for
Too Hot to Handle
, had also worked for Fox Movietone News. The movie broached farce, but it grew out of the experiences of men who had actually carried newsreel cameras into war zones and maybe even staged a few events filmed as news, the way Gable’s character does. References to the Italian invasion that were part of the original script had to be cut, for fear of offending Italy.
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As so often happens when Hollywood tries to copy a previous hit,
Too Hot to Handle
fared less well than
Test Pilot
at the box office during its first run. This isn’t the movie’s fault. Because of the crisis in Europe, foreign markets for American films were drying up, and the overseas receipts for
Too Hot to Handle
came in at only half what
Test Pilot
had pulled in. Hitler warned that he planned to confiscate the earnings of Jews, or of companies owned by Jews, that were deposited in German banks, prompting retrenchment among American film companies doing business there; MGM numbered among them. Despite all of these developments
Too Hot to Handle
still made it to third place on the list of MGM box-office winners for 1938.
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At the same time that these movies were courting an audience, the threat of war in Europe kept Americans pinned to their radios. A deep-voiced CBS reporter named Edward R. Murrow, posted in London for live coverage of the worsening European situation as Germany continued to annex neighboring territories, drew huge numbers of American listeners. In
Variety
the gagman Joe Laurie Jr. commented in his column, “That near-war [over Hitler’s carving up of Czechoslovakia] sure ruined my business. Everybody and his brother stayed home to listen to the radio. Nearly everybody’s opinion was, ‘Let’s keep out of it,’ but I don’t know if they meant the war or my theater.”
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Soon after the notorious Munich appeasement agreement between Britain and Germany, the Nazis broke the accord by occupying the Sudetenland, previously part of the small democracy of Czechoslovakia. These events took place in the fall of 1938, just as
Too Hot to Handle
was arriving in theaters. The question of the day was: if German expansionism violates international law, what should be the stance of the United States? Hollywood gave the matter its own spin. American studios with German offices were advised that their cash in Berlin banks might be confiscated. The trade press conjectured that “if the crisis comes to a head, the studios could see a loss of 30–40% of world revenues.”
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Until the Japanese invasion of Pearl Harbor, neutrality was the official U.S. policy under President Roosevelt, but some citizens, businesses, and organized groups in Hollywood and elsewhere took stands that were far from neutral. The political and moral divisions that would fracture the movie colony after the war were already taking shape, and at Hollywood dinner parties, not previously noted for serious conversation about international matters, world politics became the topic of the day. In earlier times, Dorothy Parker cracked, “the only ‘ism’ in which Hollywood believed was plagiarism.” Not anymore.
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“The town has become cause-conscious,” ran an article in
Photoplay
called “Hollywood Wakes Up.” Gary Cooper, part of the right-wing, ultrapatriotic Hollywood Hussars, practiced marching and drilling in uniform, and Victor McLaglen joined a similar ultraconservative paramilitary group. Ginger Rogers and Adolph Menjou, according to Myrna, sided with the isolationists. But the right-wingers were a minority. Liberals dominated the movie colony, with a sprinkling of communists, most of those screenwriters. There was a sizable group of anti–New Dealers, prominent among them Louis B. Mayer and the Metro screenwriter John Lee Mahin, coauthor of the
Too Hot to Handle
screenplay.
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Jewish moguls and other Jewish employees pulled weight in the American film industry, and Hitler’s anti-Semitic attacks gripped Los Angeles, which was rapidly filling up with Jewish refugees from Europe. Because she had many Jewish friends, dating back to her enduring childhood bond with Betty Berger Black, Myrna identified with Jews. “I have very few WASP friends; most of my friends are Jewish,” she told a biographer of half-Jewish Melvyn Douglas, “or half-Jewish, anyway. So, to me, it’s my second language.”
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When Germany invaded Czechoslovakia, destroying its democracy and turning it into a puppet state, Jan Masaryk, who had been the Czech ambassador to Great Britain, had to give up his diplomatic post, but he stayed in London as foreign minister of the Czech government in exile and made broadcasts for the BBC that were carried in the United States. In California Myrna heard Masaryk say over the radio, after the Munich accord sold out the Czechs, that the German takeover signaled the beginning of a terrible war. Upset and deeply moved, she immediately cabled her support to Masaryk, who answered with a return cable, addressed simply to “Myrna Loy, Hollywood, California.” His telegram consisted of just two words: “Bless You” (
BB
, 156). Myrna treasured this acknowledgment that her words mattered to him. She would become good friends with Masaryk, a son of the former Czech president Tomas Masaryk. Jan had an American mother, spoke fluent English, and had spent time in the States.

Because Myrna Loy was an internationally famous American movie actress, the London press got wind of the exchange of telegrams with Masaryk, which infuriated the Third Reich. On a trip to Europe with Arthur in the summer of 1939, just months before Britain and France declared war on Germany, Myrna learned that as payback for her support of Masaryk and her implied criticism of Hitler’s policies, her films had been banned in Germany. She considered this ban a badge of honor. As she put it, “Why should I be entertaining the Third Reich?” (
BB
, 160).

MGM saw things differently. Arthur Loew, one of the twin sons of onetime Metro Pictures owner Marcus Loew, chaired overseas operations of MGM’s parent company, Loew’s, Inc. He wrote a letter to Myrna, warning her to stop mixing her career with politics. Myrna couldn’t believe her eyes. Loew was Jewish. She had spoken out against Hitler, the persecutor of the Jews, and her Jewish bosses were trying to muzzle her. Louis B. Mayer himself admonished her not to make public statements against Hitler because the studio had receipts in Germany that it wanted to claim. Germany would ban American films entirely by August of 1940. By the time Myrna broke from Metro in 1945, she had a long list of grievances against the studio; this attempt at silencing her may have topped the list.

When she and Arthur returned from Europe, Arthur took great pains overseeing the safe handling of the bottles of rare French wine he had acquired in France. Myrna had graver matters on her mind. She told a reporter that sailing back to the United States on the
Normandie
had given her the creeps, because two French warships convoyed the luxurious French ocean liner.
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Her support for Masaryk, and the response to it, changed Myrna. Though she grew up at ease with spirited conversation about politics, during her twenties and early thirties she had focused so totally on her career that she had room for little else but Arthur and their life together. Now she had taken her first steps on a worldwide stage. She knew that henceforth, what she said and did about national and international events might have an impact on others. She would never go back to a life of political disengagement.

In Hollywood, as a person with a moral compass during the buildup to World War II, she found she had lots of company. Aghast at Germany’s government-sanctioned anti-Semitism, Warner Bros.’ studio chief, Jack Warner, a son of Polish Jews, was the one Hollywood mogul who took a vigorous stand against the Nazis. He folded the Warner Bros. office in Berlin way back in 1934, after Hitler had been in power just a year. Jack Warner also bucked Hays Office policy and German objections by encouraging production of
Confessions of a Nazi Spy
, which depicted Nazi spies as a threat to the United States.
Confessions of a Nazi Spy
, directed by the émigré Anatole Litvak, costarred Edward G. Robinson, an outspoken critic of the Nazis. Joseph Breen considered the film an unfair representation of Hitler and a violation of good business practice, since it would alienate Germany and its supporters.
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At MGM Louis B. Mayer put profit above principle and kept doing business in Nazi Germany for as long as he could, until 1940. Backed by the Hays Office, which did its best to block or defang anti-Nazi films, Paramount and Fox took the same business-first position.

Outside the studios, the movie colony had raised more than $35,000 for the Spanish Loyalist cause, much of it when Ernest Hemingway came to town in 1937 to show
The Spanish Earth
, a documentary about the Spanish Civil War that he helped write and narrate. During Hemingway’s fund-raising visit to filmland, he turned up on the set of
Double Wedding
but according to Myrna was more enthused that day about sharing a bottle of hooch with William Powell than he was about beating the drum for his cause (
BB
, 149). Hemingway, fresh from his stay in civil war–torn Spain, worked harder against Franco on other occasions. At a private dinner at Robert Montgomery’s house he raised $1,000 from each of the ten guests for ambulances for the Loyalists.
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The Hollywood pro-Loyalists, led by Dashiell Hammett, formed a Motion Picture Artists Committee to Aid Republican Spain, which arranged several screenings of
The Spanish Earth
, one of them at the home of Fredric March and Florence Eldridge. Anna May Wong, Luise Rainer, Melvyn Douglas, Dorothy Parker, and Lewis Milestone all lent their names to the Spanish Loyalist cause. They were all people Myrna Loy knew and in several cases had worked with. Myrna didn’t make her own views on the Spanish Civil War public, but it’s evident that she steered clear of alliances with the far left.
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Another group, the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, formed under the leadership of the MGM screenwriter Donald Ogden Stewart. Myrna eventually told the Justice Department that she didn’t belong to it. In an affidavit she signed in 1955, she told the FBI that when she was solicited to become a member, she stated that she’d only join if the name of the group were changed to “Hollywood Anti-Nazi and Anti-Communist League,” a position she shared with the writer Rupert Hughes. During the various Red scares that focused a magnifying lens on Hollywood, the Anti-Nazi League and the Motion Picture Artists Committee came under fire for being infiltrated by communists. Donald Ogden Stewart, the Yale-educated author of smart comedies about rich blue bloods (such as
Rebound
), had indeed taken a sharp turn to the left and proudly proclaimed himself a communist. But in 1937 the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League had broad support, even if it wasn’t broad enough for Myrna. Studio executives Jack Warner and Carl Laemmle sat on the board, along with the communist writer John Howard Lawson. Fritz Lang, the émigré director, and Myrna’s fellow actors Melvyn Douglas, Paul Muni, Gloria Stuart, and Fredric March were among those active in the organization. According to Gloria Stuart, who participated in the group’s founding, its backers also included Ernst Lubitsch and Oscar Hammerstein II.
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The Anti-Nazi League organized a huge rally at the Shrine Auditorium early in 1937, the fifth anniversary of Hitler’s rise to power. Eddie Cantor, John Ford, and Dorothy Parker spoke; an estimated ten thousand people attended, and many would-be attendees were turned away because the auditorium could seat no more people. But support for the Anti-Nazi League was by no means unanimous. As early as August 1938, the Texas Democrat Martin Dies, a senator who then chaired the House Committee on Un-American Activities, would brand the members of the Anti-Nazi League as dupes of the communists.

Myrna did join fifty-five other celebrities in signing a petition, circulated by her ardently pro–New Deal and anti–Third Reich friend Melvyn Douglas, urging President Roosevelt to embargo all German-made goods. Henry Fonda, Joan Crawford, and George Brent were among the other signers. Because the petition had been drawn up in Washington in 1939 at the Fifth Congress for Peace and Democracy, later considered a subversive and communist group, Myrna’s signature and the petition would be duly noted by the Department of Justice and used against her during the 1940s Red scare.
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