Old Hollywood Stars Who Were Forced to Live a Double Life

Long before The Thin Man made her Hollywood’s perfect sophisticated wife, Myrna Loy spent years playing women from cultures that were not her own. The Montana-born actress was repeatedly covered in heavy makeup and presented as a mysterious foreign beauty or dangerous seductress.

Studios cast Loy as Chinese, Japanese, Eurasian, Arab, and other vaguely “exotic” characters, including the cruel Fah Lo See in The Mask of Fu Manchu. MGM later discarded that identity completely, rebuilding her as witty, elegant Nora Charles and an ideal American wife.