Myrna Loy Read Online Free Page A

her Johnson grandfather, Myrna identified most with her grandmothers. “They’ve always been heroic figures to me,” she said, “my two grandmothers, coming from protected childhoods in Wales and Scotland to a strange land, fighting like hell to make civilized environments for their men and children” ( BB , 7).
    Twice widowed by the age of forty-five, Grandmother Isabella Giles Wilder Johnson was the only one of Myrna’s grandparents that she actually got to know, the other three having died before she came into the world. Grandmother Johnson rarely complained. “She never took anything as a hardship. She had a lusty, fearless joy in life, and hardships were a part of life and you took them standing up.” Born in Largs, Scotland, Isabella had set out on a sailing vessel from Scotland in her teens. She traveled with an aunt, leaving behind her bereft mother and many siblings. In America Isabella married at age seventeen, but her first husband died in Iowa, where they had been living. She arrived in Radersburg as a widow with a four-year-old son, James Wilder ( BB , 6–7). No doubt she hoped to be able to support James with what she gleaned from the diggings in Montana gold country. When she joined a wagon train to cross the plains, she brought along her cut glass and French china. Soon after arriving in Radersburg, she married the Swedish carpenter John Johnson, who with his partner, Sederburg, built them a house. The Johnsons would have three children, of whom Della was the youngest. 12
    Compared to Europe and the eastern states, the western mining frontier offered women greater independence, more social flexibility, and an opportunity to speak out. For a woman to work outside the home was not unusual in Montana. Myrna’s Johnson aunt, LuLu Belle, became county treasurer, and Myrna grew up hearing spirited political talk around the dinner table. That an aunt sought and won public office is not surprising. The Williams family lived in a state that would follow the leads of other western states—Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Washington, California, Kansas, and Arizona—in granting women the vote in 1914, six years before the Nineteenth Amendment enfranchised women nationally. Montana in 1917 elected Jeanette Rankin the first U.S. congresswoman. Myrna Loy always attributed her own political activism to the atmosphere in her home and home state. As she saw it, the scant number of Montana citizens made each voice count for more. 13
    Della’s uppity spirit was a source of strife, contributing to a contentious marriage that survived several separations. David’s quarrel with her about her picture on the magazine cover was neither the first nor the last of its kind. Though Della and David knew one another from childhood, they saw the world differently and often took opposite sides in an argument. He was a Republican, she a lifelong Democrat. The pleasure-loving, musical Della, an accomplished pianist, studied at the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago and, before marrying, had considered a career as a concert artist, but she said, “I had to abandon all thoughts of realizing that ambition when I married.” She continued to enjoy performing on the piano and organ. 14
    David, though he shed his Presbyterian parents’ unbending religious faith, clung to their straitlaced morality. He had little feeling for the performing arts and considered a woman’s public display a step toward the gutter. Della, whose father carved and painted wood figures and crafted cedar furniture, identified with artists, while David favored practical, remunerative, and traditionally masculine pursuits: ranching, selling land and cattle, appraising farms for a bank, serving the community via his lodge. At his father’s ranch during his younger days he wore a ten-gallon hat, rode horses, chowed down with cowhands, drove cattle, and roped steers. He lacked the long, lean good looks of his fellow Montanan, and future Hollywood cowboy, Gary