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"A Very Dangerous Period in Our History": Myrna Loy and McCarthyism
From: Columbia University
| By:
Columbia University Oral History Research Office |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
For more than 50 years, Hollywood star Myrna Loy (1905-93) was known as the "Queen of the Movies." Loy (born Myrna Williams) starred in such films as The Thin Man (1934), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) and Mr. Blanding Builds His Dream House (1948). But she was also a political activist. She spoke out against Sen. Joseph McCarthy, and she also served as a US representative to UNESCO. In a 1959 interview with Columbia University's Oral History Research Office, Myrna Loy talks about the politics of Hollywood. |
Question: For some reason, your name always comes up in consideration of political scenes in Hollywood. You are recognized as a liberal? |
Myrna Loy: Yes. That's true. |
Q: What kind of political work did you do? Speeches? |
Loy: Well, no. Actually, I think most of my political activity really started with my interest in the UN, although I had always been politically pretty aware. My family--I don't know, it seems as if, as long as I can remember ... I have a photograph of my father when he was 21 years old; he ran for the legislature and was elected when he was 21. He cast his first vote for himself. I had an aunt who was county treasurer. Although my father didn't continue in politics, it was always a family that talked a great deal about what was going on politically. In Montana, although it was not a very highly populated state, we had people who were fairly interesting in the political world--Senator Clark, and now, of course, Senator Murray. It's very lively, in that respect, and I suppose I was always interested. |
The first president I was really aware of was Wilson. I was about 12, I think. I thought this was a remarkable man. Something about his concept of the League of Nations seemed to me a very interesting and positive thing. Then I was a great follower of Roosevelt. During the war I met Mrs. Roosevelt, and I became involved in the Association for the United Nations. I knew her, and I knew young Mazaryk, who's a very good friend of mine. Then I joined the American Association for the United Nations in 1945, actually when the UN started. Then I went on the United States commission for UNESCO in 1950. I was on that for a while. |
You see, when I became active in the Association for the UN, that was in Hollywood. They asked me if I would go to San Francisco to a UNESCO conference in the spring of 1948. I did. I went up to San Francisco, and there I met all those people on the United States commission--because of course UNESCO is the organization that the US really sponsors, in the sense that they have a UNESCO relations staff at the State Department. So I met all of those people: Luther Evans, who just retired as director general--he was then librarian of the Library of Congress--and George Stoddard, president of the University of Chicago for a while. He's now downtown here, at New York University. |
They asked me if I would be interested in getting a group of people together in Hollywood--because I realize that that's where I belonged, in UNESCO, because that was the agency that was interested in the arts, in mass media, in television, in radio. Not television then, but they were concerned with the press and films. So this was where I really belonged. Just as doctors belong in World Health, this was where I belonged. |
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| Myrna Loy talks about her work with the United Nations. | |
So I did this. I created a committee in Hollywood, very small, Mary McCarthy and two or three other people who had also been at the conference in San Francisco. But it was rather short-lived. At that time, unfortunately, we ran into the dark days. We ran into the days of [Sen. Joseph] McCarthy, and all of the anti-UN feeling, the things that began to grow and be spawned in the dark places. There were a great many people who worked hard and were very interested, but actually, as far as anything happening out there, not too much did. |
Hollywood and Communism
Q: I'm surprised the McCarthy "dark days" would affect your committee. |
Loy: Well, it did, because the anti-UN factions were quite strong out there, and they began to do a great deal of damage. Then, of course, you see, it was all connected with the anti-Communist movement, so called, and there was all this with the writers, the Hollywood purge and all that. Unfortunately, the voices that were the loudest said that if you had anything to do with the UN you must be pro-Communist. It's ludicrous, but nevertheless it happened. You know these groups--you know the groups that work at this game. |
However, that, fortunately, is no longer true now. |
It's taken seven years, but the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is now on the commission. They went on last year, and George Stevens is the representative. |
I went on the commission. I then went to a conference in Paris in '49. I was invited by George Allen, the Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, to come to that conference, and I went there as an observer. |
Then, in '50, in the spring, I went on the commission, and went to the Florence conference as a delegate. I've been to several others since then, and I still do a lot of work for them, although I'm not on the commission anymore. I was only on for three and a half years, but, because it's something that interests me very much, I still do a lot of chores for them. |
It's like anything else--it's new, a new idea. The concept of people in the arts doing anything in the diplomatic world is a new idea. It's beginning to be expected, but it will take a long time. |
Q: Some people are quite strongly against it? |
Loy: Why? Because, after all, for instance, in UNESCO what they need is, they need writers, they need people to write these stories and tell the things that are going on. Very dramatic and exciting things are going on in these underdeveloped countries, in education, in some of the things that are happening. These things need to be dramatized. They need to be told. This has to be done in the theater. This has been the function of art, for all these years. |
Q: Would you talk about the political climate in Hollywood? When you were at Warner Bros., not much was thought about it. |
Loy: I can't say that during that period I was too conscious of what was going on. I'm sure lots of people out there were. It's a very intelligent community, you know; it's been much maligned. There are many people who are very aware. |
Q: I heard there was fear everywhere. |
Loy: Well, that became true, unfortunately. It did become true, because this was a very sad day. This was not true during the days of the big arguments, but later on it became true, because there were factions that were so strong. Actually, the Communist group that existed there was very small. Yes, there were some, but what they were trying to accomplish was very ridiculous. |
However, unfortunately it became the kind of political battle where anyone from the far right who disagreed with you--disagreed with me, for instance, and although I hate the expression "middle-of-the-roader," I considered myself such in this case, as in this sort of atmosphere I was violently anti-right and I was violently anti-left--but because I didn't agree with this fellow over here, I was wrong, and I had to be a Red, I just had to be, and there were no two ways about it. And because I believed that people had a right to believe what they wanted to believe--because I believed in the democratic principle--this was also untenable. |
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| Myrna Loy discusses the McCarthy era. | |
Fortunately, I was strong enough to survive it, but many people didn't. Many people in the same position that I was in did not survive it. They were blackballed, they were blacklisted, they died, they committed suicide. Terrible things happened, just awful. Of course, this did create an atmosphere of fear, so that people stopped joining things, because their livelihood depended on it. That fortunately is not true anymore. |
Q: Did you ever feel that anyone was trying to slant any picture, with what could be interpreted as Communist propaganda? |
Loy: Well, I've never been able to discover anything that looked like that to me. There were men who were writing for films--I mean, some of the people writing for films had perhaps become enchanted with this philosophy at one time or another. There may be examples of it, but if there are, I haven't seen anything that was very frightening, really. I'm no authority on this. I do think there was a lot of money raised--this did happen, this was true--I mean, money was raised and people were used, no question about that. I was used, I know. I know that there were people who were used, for the "cause." |
I found, for instance, that at one time there was this thing in the Hollywood Reporter--I woke up and found it. Matthew Wall had written a piece there in which he'd named a number of people in Hollywood who were, he said, pro-Communist, and I was named among them. I was astonished at this. It was something that came out of the blue. I immediately sued the Hollywood Reporter for a million dollars, and I sued Matthew Wall for a million dollars. |
You know, there was a terrible piece about it, that I was in favor of all the boys that were being shot down in Yugoslavia--wild, crazy thing, absolutely ridiculous--but it was the beginning of this thing. |
It was of course ridiculous. I never went through with the suit. There were retractions, because they knew there was certainly nothing to it. Also, it was just too much emotional turmoil and trouble for me to continue on with it. Perhaps I should have, I don't know. But in any case, because I took a strong stand, it was the best thing to do. However, I found out later--when I began to track it down, where this came from--that some of it came from the people in conservative circles in Washington who knew that I'd visited Mrs. Roosevelt a few times for Greek war relief or something. I was a "pink." |
Then I had joined United Nations. This was part of it. Also, I found, on the other side, on the left side--I had been invited to a meeting at Carnegie Hall of the Slav Congress. It was a celebration of United Nations Day or something, and the UN was meeting in San Francisco, and they asked me if I would come and read the preamble to the charter of the UN, so I did. I went and read this, and I was given a big bunch of red roses, and photographs were taken, and it was all very nice. |
Later on, when I was trying to trace down this other thing, find out where the smoke came from, I found that this picture of me had been put in a Communist pamphlet, in a little booklet that was being distributed all through New England, you see. It was sent to me by a housewife, up in Connecticut, who sent it and asked, "Did you know ...?" This was somebody who apparently understood that maybe this might have had something to do with it. This was used by the Communists; they tied it in with the UN and sent this booklet around. |
So, in this way, one was used. It was all very subtle, you know. There was a wonderful expression that they used out there in those days. They said that you had to be very, very careful, because you might be put up against a cellophane wall and shot at from both sides. This applied to quite a few people I knew. Oh, dear ... No, it's not funny. It isn't funny, when you think of the John Garfields and some of those people who just died of broken hearts. It was just awful, really. That was a very dangerous period in our history, believe me. |
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