Behind the legend

Last time I shared a bit about myself and gave you a glimpse into my current research (and passion) project: a biography of Myrna Loy. 

So why Myrna Loy?

The last (and only) biography of Myrna covered the last 33 years of her life in 23 pages, and those last 33 years are when she increased her focus on working for the public good through involvement in NCADH and in political campaigns. 

As a movie star, her own memoirs focused a lot on her screen career, so it is no surprise that the previous biography (which relied heavily on this memoir) also paid attention to that portion of her career much more than any other. Both are excellent primers for learning about Myrna and, in particular, I find her memoirs to be one of the best I’ve ever read. 

But by tapping into primary sources not previously researched, I am hoping to tell a more comprehensive story about her entire life, including her work off screen. In the course of my research, I even uncovered a piece of lost media — an episode of The DuPont Show with June Allyson in which Myrna appeared — that was deep in the archives of the Hagley Museum & Library. Thankfully, they digitized the extant copy of the episode from the film reel and it is now available for anyone to watch. 

What is most exciting to me is that there are Myrna Loy materials in UMN Libraries’ collections that are also one-of-a-kind. I won’t spoil anything, but I’ve been told that “it was a miracle” that one of the things I uncovered was found — and I can’t wait to share it with you. 

As an author, I’m used to archival research, although my prior subjects didn’t have such a wealth of material spread over the globe. Among my previous work is a dual biography of my great-great and great-grandmothers, for which I relied on research at UMN Libraries to give context to their lives. After that, I wrote a book examining the first twenty years of Linda Ronstadt’s solo career, which really helped me cut my teeth on writing about someone in the public eye. Rounding out my bibliography are books covering the music of Stevie Nicks and a massive volume on the first volume of Alpha Flight, Marvel’s Canadian superhero team. 

I am delighted to bring all of my experience to bear as I delve into the incredible life of Myrna Loy.