What is a poet? What is a Muse? And where do you buy the outfits? I sometimes wonder if you can always even tell what the outfits are.
Mina Loy, one of the most Poetickal ladies of the twentieth century knew the answer to these questions; but that is not her in the picture. It is Myrna Loy, the celebrated Hollywood beauty, and the two must never be confused with one another.
The main difference between them – aside from the endless amusement I get from another photo, of Mina Loy in an enormous poetical fur coat, standing between her great champion Ezra Pound and another lady even stouter than me – is the story in my family that Myrna Loy, the celebrated Hollywood beauty, fancied my grandfather.
Yes!
Well, why not. He was six feet tall, with dark dashing eyes and a ready wit, as well as a very distinguished speaking voice and good bone structure. In his capacity as a celebrated lecturer on the humorous lecture circuit in the twenties and early thirties, he attended a dinner. I guess he was the speaker. He had given a speech, and it will have been funny yet erudite, and possibly have gone down rather well among his however-much-a-plate audience.
Myrna Loy was the guest of honour. The man in charge of the event – the president of the local chapter of the Elks, or whatever it was – was sat at the head of a long banquet table, and there was a place of honour next to him for Myrna Loy to sit, so he could talk to her during the courses, and photographers waiting to take a picture of him doing that for the local papers… But to his chagrin and extreme irritation (I have heard), Myrna would only sit next to the tall Welsh preacher. She insisted that her place be moved to the place next to my grandfather and there she sat for the evening. I gather Grandfather was a bit of a flirt; she’ll have liked that, then.
Anyway, to give you another idea, here is Myrna in a pinny.
And this is my grandmother in a pinny, admittedly a good couple of decades later. I don’t have a picture of her in a pinny in the twenties; she hadn’t exactly reached that stage yet.
And here’s Mina, being poetic. You can see she’s not really our type.
3 Comments
May 30, 2008 at 12:35 pm
I first came across Mina Loy through Jonathan Williams, who’d published a collection of hers in his Jargon Books imprint. She was exactly the kind of – dare I say it? – fascinating oddball he loved.
But who is that boxer?
May 30, 2008 at 1:00 pm
Sorry Charles, I should have said. That’s my great-uncle Jimmy; we don’t talk much about him.
May 30, 2008 at 1:14 pm
You should. You really should.