Philip French's screen legends

No 17, Myrna Loy 1905-93

Born Myrna Adele Williams in Montana, she was the daughter of a banker who became the state's youngest legislator. He died when she was 13 and her mother took the family to Los Angeles, where Myrna got the acting bug, was spotted by Rudolph Valentino's wife in the chorus line at Grauman's Chinese Theatre and entered movies. From the silent era into the early talkies, from Ben-Hur (1925) to The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932), she played exotic femmes fatales - gypsy, Indian, Javanese, Chinese temptresses.

Then in 1934, she shifted from heartbreakers to homemakers. In her 78th screen appearance, she starred with William Powell, downing martinis and swapping wisecracks as Nick and Nora Charles, the society sleuth and his rich wife in The Thin Man (1934). From then on, she became 'the perfect wife' for moviegoers around the world. The hard-boiled author of The Thin Man, Dashiell Hammett, based Nick and Nora on himself (a former Pinkerton agent) and his hard-drinking lover, Lillian Hellman. The great screenwriting partnership of Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett made them ideal versions of themselves. Powell and Loy became the definitive Nick and Nora and appeared in 13 films together. Loy's biographer, Kania Kay wrote of her 'making marriage exciting and enticing'. She also starred frequently with Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy and Cary Grant. She never slept with her co-stars.

In 1938, a nationwide poll declared Gable and Loy 'the King and Queen of Hollywood' and it's said that the profile American women most frequently demanded of plastic surgeons was Loy's firm nose ending with a neat little bob. Comedy was her forte, her timing immaculate, and perhaps her finest film is the romantic comedy Libeled Lady (1936, pictured left, with Spencer Tracy), co-starring Powell, Tracy and Jean Harlow.

But her greatest performance came in William Wyler's The Best Years of our Lives (1946), about returning war veterans. Her scenes with husband Fredric March - putting him to bed after a drunken reunion, discussing the nature of what makes a marriage survive with their daughter - constitute a masterclass in screen acting.

Her father was a frontier radical and throughout her career she was committed to liberal causes, never retreating from the political, racial and feminist issues she embraced. She served with the Red Cross during the Second World War and afterwards with the UN and Unesco, and supported Roosevelt, Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy. She returned to the cinema only sporadically after mid-century, playing distinguished matrons and wearing the nifty hats that had become her trademark.

Loy addressing studio chiefs in the Thirties 'Why does every black person have to be a servant? How about a black person walking up the steps of a courthouse carrying a briefcase?'

Loy's greatest fan In 1934, America's 'Public Enemy Number One' John Dillinger was lured from his hideout to see her in Manhattan Melodrama at Chicago's Biograph cinema and was shot by FBI agents in the cinema foyer.

Loy on herself 'Some perfect wife I am... I've been married four times, divorced four times ... have no children and can't boil an egg.'

Burt Reynolds, who starred with and directed her in The End (1978) 'The world has always been more important to Myrna than her career. She could always see beyond Hollywood and its city limits.'

On DVD The Complete Thin Man Collection (Warner); The Best Years of our Lives (MGM)

Next week: James Cagney