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FAMED ACTRESS MYRNA LOY LIVED IN PALMS, NOT CULVER CITY
Her home was on Delmas Terrace in Los Angeles

Myrna Loy, who appeared in 138 movies but is now popularly best known for her role in The Thin Man series, did not live in Culver City as was stated in her 1987 autobiography, but in Palms, The Sun has determined.

Her book, co-authored with James Kotsilibas-Davis, stated that after her father died in 1918, Myrna and her mother moved from Montana to California.

"We bought a house on Delmas Terrace in Culver City, a hamlet between Hollywood and the Pacific Ocean," were her ghost-written words.

But The Sun found that that house, where she lived from 1918 to about 1923, was actually north of Venice Blvd., and she was living there when she dropped out of Venice High School to go work as a dancer for Sid Grauman.

The photo shows Myrna Williams, as she was then, at the age of 15, shortly after she moved to Palms. The next year she posed for a statue that stood for decades in front of Venice High. (More about that here.)

See Myrna Loy's film credits in the
International Movie Data Base.

Most of Delmas Terrace is in Los Angeles, but some of it is indeed in Culver City (the Brotman Hospital and Washington Mutual), so The Sun's editor took a drive up Overland Ave. to the Latter-Day Saints genealogical library on Santa Monica Blvd. to do a little digging. The result:

Neither Myrna nor her mother could be found in the 1920 census, but there was a record for James Flood, who, according to Myrna's autobiography, was a director at Warner Brothers who "lived just across the street from us." The census showed Flood's address as 7154 Delmas Terrace (the present 3729). Directly across the street lay No. 7157 (the present 3728 — the Lido Apartment Homes). The McConnell family lived next door to the Floods at 7152 (3733). (See the map below to make sense of all this, and see James Flood's movie-making record here if you are interested.)

Source: 1920 California census, A.D. 62, District 136, Screen 15.

In this 1924 map from Sanborn, Venice Blvd. is to the south (left). Today's street numbers are posted in RED. There were only 12 houses on the block when Myrna Loy lived on the east side of the street (bottom of the map). Most of the single-family homes that later filled this block have been replaced by apartment bldgs., but some of the smaller houses have survived.

The census-taker surveyed this street on Saturday, Jan. 10, 1920, and listed:

At 7136 (3751*): Delphin Nelson and his wife, Adalyn, both 24, homeowners. He was an office manager in the motion-picture industry.

At 7152 (3733):: Joe McConnell (the minister mentioned above), 59; Mary, 58; and Lulu, 33. They rented their home, possibly from the Presbyterian Church down the street. Also with them was S. McClennand, a 46-year-old woman listed as a "roomer." She was not employed.

At 7154: (3729): James J. Flood, 30, his wife, Lucial, 23, and their children, Margarette, 4, and James Jr., 3. He was listed as "asst. producer, motion pictures."

The census-taker returned on Monday, Jan. 12, to survey:

7137 (3750): C. Foreman Barras, 72, a renter, with his wife, Leydia P., 65; He was a general contractor in the building industry.

The other homes on this street were not surveyed.

The houses at 3751 and 3718 (*) are still standing.

Film director James Flood, whose first film (as an assistant) was Guile of Women in 1920, also lived on Delmas Terrace when he was just starting out. He last directed in 1952, when he did two episodes for the TV show Racket Squad. Born in 1895, Flood died in 1953.

He directed Myrna Loy in the hour-long silent comedy Why Girls Go Back Home in 1926, where she had a minor role. Nine years later he directed her again, when she starred with Cary Grant in Wings in the Dark, which was, according to the New York Times, "a pleasantly performed and skillfully filmed melodrama of the peacetime airways which is hampered by an addle-pated narrative."

From All Movie Guide via the New York Times Web site:

"Beginning his film career as an assistant to D.W. Griffith in 1912, James Flood graduated to full director at Fox studios 11 years later. Transferring to Warner Bros. in the mid-1920s, Flood specialized in such pseudo-Lubitsch frivolities as Satan in Sables (1926) and The Lady in Ermine (1927). . . .

"Flood's career went into a slight eclipse in the sound era when he became a principal director at low-budget Tiffany Studios. James Flood remained a busy if undistinguished "B"-picture dispenser until his retirement in 1947."

(Click the underlined phrases to jump to more information about these films and film people.)