The Criterion Channel is showcasing the actress Myrna Loy (1905-1993) in its August line-up.

One of the most popular and lauded performers of the 1930s and 40s, Ms. Loy was famous as the co-star of “The Thin Man” films with William Powell, characters who solved crimes in the well-dressed and liquored penthouses of Manhattan.

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She was adept at underplaying comedy, always alluding to something funnier and sexier without drowning in it. Her personality was built upon allusion and intelligence. Along with “The King” Clark Gable, she was voted “The Queen of Hollywood” in the late 1930s.

Married and divorced four times, she never had any children.

But in 1938, as these astonishing photographs (by Maynard Parker) show, she was married to Mr. Arthur Hornblow, Jr. and they lived on a spectacular estate in Beverly Hills, CA with vast lime orchards, tennis court, swimming pool and a rustic, but refined, California country estate with wood siding, shaded porches and many flowers, trees, and vistas of the undeveloped mountains.

Everything about this property sparkles with the graciousness and rarified perfection of well-tended Southern California affluence. They swam, they played tennis, they drank cocktails in the wood paneled library. They might have flown with Howard Hughes to Catalina Island or gone fishing on a boat that docked in Baja California. They danced, they played music, they acted in movies, and their lives, off set and on, were theatrical, and moved, often intoxicated, with emotion, and grace.

In these photos are two opposing qualities that complement each other: restraint and opulence. This large house is well-proportioned, charming, whimsical and cozy. 

Nobody lives like this now. Nobody, even the richest, has a library of books. Nobody has servants working in the house or gardeners tending to acres of lime trees. Nobody opens their windows to ventilate their rooms. All of it, phony or real, has been torn down, and today we can only go online and drool. 

Photos are from The Huntington Library.

Architectural Digest 10, no. 1, 1938, 43–49.  Martha B. Darbyshire, “‘Lime Orchard’: The California Estate of Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Hornblow, Jr.,” Country Life & The Sportsman 75, March 1939, 45–47.  Better Homes and Gardens, September 1940, 29.