Myrna Loy biography: Cheers to Nora Charles

In Hollywood’s Golden Age, Myrna Loy was a lovely paradox – a champagne-tippling sophisticate on-screen in her many roles opposite the dapper William Powell and a budding humanitarian off-screen with values that belied glittery show-business extravagance.

In “Myrna Loy: The Only Good Girl in Hollywood” (University of California Press, $34.95), biographer, poet and memoirist Emily W. Leider puts together an engaging and heartening portrait of the classic movie star who never let the glamour of her impossibly glamorous profession go to her head.

Always down-to-earth and sensible, although graced with exotic looks that led to her discovery by Rudolph Valentino during the silent era, Loy enjoyed an extraordinary career in movies that spanned six decades and that eventually lead her to a post-acting career as goodwill ambassador for the Red Cross, the United Nations and UNESCO.

Born in 1905 to a middle-class family in Montana, Loy lost her father to an influenza epidemic in 1918 and moved with her mother to Culver City, Calif. There, she took dance and ballet lessons, training that Leider says instilled in Loy a lifelong sense of grace and timing that became hallmarks of her acting style.

Soon, Loy landed a place in the chorus line at Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre and found bit parts in several movies. Her discovery in the 1920s by Valentino and her exotic looks led to her various casting as the daughter of Fu Manchu, a gypsy seductress and a Mexican spitfire.