Myrna Loy elsewhere

Today happens to be the birth anniversary of Myrna Loy, who was born August 2, 1905. TCM isn't honoring her today in Summer Under the Stars; today's star is Julie Christie. I've posted several of the posters from Loy movies recently, but those are from the movies of 1934 and beyond when she had become not only a star, but one of everybody's favorite wives (and later, mother). Loy's earlier career is interesting.

For some reason, Loy was the one actress in pre-Code Hollywood who kept getting cast in exotic ethnic roles. There are movies like Stamboul Quest where she played a Mata Hari-like character, or the 1929 movie The Squall, where Loy plays a Gypsy. One of her most frequent ethnic mismatches was being cast as an East Asian. I was looking for a picture of her in the movie Thirteen Women, where she plays one such character, and found an interesting blog post from 2006 that's got several pictures of Loy in yellowface.

Hollywood has thankfully moved on from yellowface, but Loy's pre-code movies are almost always worth watching.