Myrna Loy, our Star of the Month this September, always found it ironic, as well as highly amusing, that she would become known far and wide as the definitive example of "the perfect wife." "Some perfect wife I am," she often said. "I've been married four times, divorced four times, have no children and can't boil an egg." But on screen there was no one who defined the ideal of an American wife and mother better than she did from the time she played Mrs. Nick Charles and helped William Powell stir his first martini in 1934's Thin Man. She continued as a movie Mrs. to Cary Grant's Mr. Blandings and played the mother of Clifton Webb's brood of children in Cheaper by the Dozen during her matriarchal reign.

When producer Samuel Goldwyn needed "the perfect wife" for World War II veteran Fredric March to come home to in 1946's The Best Years of Our Lives, it was Myrna he tapped for the part. So eager was Goldwyn to sign her, he agreed to give her first billing ahead of everyone else in the film's sizeable cast despite the fact hers was, in essence, a supporting role. (Mr. Goldwyn, I might add, gave her a hefty paycheck as well.) She was not always so maternal in films, of course.

Early on, Myrna was a victim of the opposite kind of typecasting, continually playing vampish vixens who were neither married nor perfect and this month, as part of our 45-movie salute to this incredible and enduring star, we'll give you some saucy examples - including Myrna on September 9 as a highly hormoned Gypsy named Nubi in a hoot of a film called The Squall and on September 22 when she plays a sadistic Oriental vamp who loves to watch a good flogging now and then in The Mask of Fu Manchu. (That same day she's also a sinister half-caste who tries to kill a dozen of her sorority sisters in 1932's Thirteen Women.) But we also have many examples of the Myrna Loy that audiences loved best: the wise, steadfast, upbeat, one-in-a-million modern woman that all the fellows - Gable, Tracy, Grant, Bob Taylor, Bob Montgomery and other movie heartthrobs - loved best and respected most.

We'll also be showing 13 of the films she made with her most consistent costar Mr. Powell, including all six of their Thin Man movies, as well as capers with such unusual costars as boxing champ Max Baer, the irrepressible Jimmy Durante and a deadly Boris Karloff. Hers was, indeed, a glowing career and a long one (over 70 years) and she once said she had only one regret about it - not getting to work with Gary Cooper. She had a special reason for wanting it to happen. She and Coop had grown up together in Helena, Montana (he was born in 1901, she in 1905) and, as kids, they lived about a block apart and often went sledding together. She had a crush on him then and, she said, it never lessened. The same might be said about our crush on the former Myrna Adele Williams of Helena. We don't expect our enthusiasm for her to ever lessen, either, and we'll give you 45 good reasons why throughout the month ahead.

by Robert Osborne