November 20: Myrna Loy Lecture and Book Signing Event

Sunday, November 20 - 3:00 PM   MYRNA LOY EVENT
Co-Presented with the Art Deco Society of Los Angeles: 

“Thoroughly Modern Myrna” 
Emily W. Leider, author of Myrna Loy: The Only Good Girl in Hollywood, gives an illustrated talk (45 min.) on the life of actress Myrna Loy who was discovered on the stage of the Egyptian Theatre in a Sid Grauman live stage show preceding a film.
Myrna Loy's screen career began in 1925, when she was given her first screen test by Rudolph Valentino and Natacha Rambova.  It continued until her last film in 1981.  Just as she didn't like to live in one place for too long, this truly modern woman kept changing the way she presented herself.

Leider will take a look at Loy's evolving appearance and physical surroundings, on screen and off, paying most attention to the Myrna Loy of the 1920s, when she began performing as a prologue dancer at Grauman's Egyptian Theatre, and the 1930s, when her slim, graceful figure complemented the taste for all things streamlined. Illustrated with slides and movie clips, Leider's talk will touch on the work of MGM set designer Cedric Gibbons and costume designers Dolly Tree and Adrian. Leider will talk some about MGM's high gloss, high contract black-and-white aesthetic, and will discuss the influence on Myrna Loy of her teacher, modern dancer Ruth St. Denis. The flapper craze, Orientalism, Egypto-mania, and changing American ideals of female beauty will all be part of the story.
 
Followed by…
 
MANHATTAN MELODRAMA, 1934, Warner Bros., 93 min. Dirs. W.S. Van Dyke, George Cukor (uncredited). Hard gambler and racketeer Edward "Blackie" Gallagher (Clark Gable) and bookish district attorney and would-be governor Jim Wade (William Powell) are lifelong friends, who were once orphans. When Blackie's girlfriend, Eleanor (Myrna Loy), leaves him for the more sensible Jim, there are no ill feelings between the friends, but when Blackie kills the D.A. running opposite Jim for the election of governor, Jim must face the most difficult case of his career: convicting his best friend of murder. The first of 14 onscreen pairings between Loy and Powell, and made in the same year as their most famous film, THE THIN MAN. Look for Mickey Rooney in one of his earliest roles, playing Blackie as a child. Infamous as the film John Dillinger was exiting when he was gunned down at the Biograph Theater in Chicago.
 
Book signing of Emily W. Leider's Myrna Loy: The Only Good Girl in Hollywood (2011, University of California Press) after the lecture. Leider has also written biographies Dark Lover: The Life and Death of Rudolph Valentino and Becoming Mae West. 

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