#stamboul quest

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Myrna Loy

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Seen in 2022:

Stamboul Quest (Sam Wood), 1934

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Stamboul Quest (Sam Wood, 1934)

Cast: Myrna Loy, George Brent, Lionel Atwill, C. Henry Gordon, Rudolph Anders, Mischa Auer. Screenplay: Herman J. Mankiewicz, based on a story by Leo Birinsky. Cinematography: James Wong Howe. Art direction: Cedric Gibbons. Film editing: Hugh Wynn. Music: William Axt. 

Stamboul Quest is a middling spy-vs.-spy romance based very loosely (i.e., hardly at all) on the career of the World War I German spy known as “Fräulein Doktor” (real name Elsbeth Schragmüller). The film makes a nod to the better-known German spy Mata Hari, herself the titular subject of a 1931 MGM film directed by George Fitzmaurice and starring Greta Garbo and Ramon Novarro. Mostly Stamboul Quest is an excuse for Myrna Loy to slink about in various alluring states of dress and undress. There is, for example, a scene in which Fräulein Doktor (aka Helena Bohlen) takes a bath with the door open between her and the spymaster Herr von Sturm (Lionel Atwill), and a key moment in the plot turns on Helena's slipping down one shoulder of her evening gown to allow the Turkish spy Ali Bey (C. Henry Gordon) to write a message in invisible ink on her naked back. Loy does all of this nonsense with grace and wit. Unfortunately, she's matched romantically in the movie with George Brent as an American studying medicine at Leipzig. Brent was unaccountably borrowed from Warner Bros. for the film even though MGM had a stable of contract leading men that included Clark Gable and Loy's frequent co-star William Powell. As a leading man, Brent was never much more than a foil for powerhouse leading ladies like Bette Davis or Barbara Stanwyck, and it's awfully hard to see why Fräulein Doktor should fall in love so swiftly and thoroughly with him. Stamboul Quest is a sort of bridge in Loy's career from the earlier roles in which she was cast as a femme fatale, often with exotic origins, and the years in which she took on the image of a witty, sophisticated wife or girlfriend, often paired with Powell, as in The Thin Man (W.S. Van Dyke, 1934) and its string of sequels. 

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Myrna Loy in a still from Stamboul Quest (1934)

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new-to-me #615 - Stamboul Quest

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Stamboul Quest (1934)

Stamboul Quest by #SamWood starring #MyrnaLoy, "Loy is iconic, divine and has all the range for the part,"

SAM WOOD Bil’s rating (out of 5): BBB USA, 1934. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Story by Leo Birinsky, Screenplay by Herman J. Mankiewicz. Cinematography by James Wong Howe. Produced by Bernard H. Hyman, Sam Wood. Music by William Axt. Production Design by Cedric Gibbons. Costume Design by Dolly Tree. Film Editing by Hugh Wynn. Myrna Loy sits in the courtyard of a convent looking breathtaking in a white…

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Myrna Loy in Stamboul Quest (1934)

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stamboul quest (us, wood 34)

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Myrna Loy, in a stunning hat!

            - publicity for Stamboul Quest, 1934

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Spies and Seductive Togs

Makeover with Myrna Loy, or Stamboul Quest, 1934

Myrna Loy doesn’t wear a great number of outfits in this movie about a German spy, Loy, who falls for an American medical student during World War I played by George Brent. But what she does wear is great. She first appears as a peasant taken into custody, see the last photo in the checked shirt. She is made frumpy and as ugly as Loy can get with her ears stuck out at the top.

But when it comes time to seduce, watch out. Loy must figure out if Brent is really a medical student who just happened to be waiting at the dentist’s when the dentist was arrested for espionage, or is he a spy too? She wears the amazing number at top with huge hat, sequinned on the outside, and the evening dress held up by rhinestone straps in order to lure him. But she gets more than she expected when he falls in love with her. She is off to Stamboul, or Istanbul, by train for another mission when he ends up following her. I give you closeups of her dressmaker hat with her traveling outfit so you can appreciate how much clever draping went into hats in the 1930s. This one made me want to start playing with velvet immediately. Dolly Tree did the outfits.

Brent is great as the “fresh” (i.e. smart-mouthed) young American who happens to be brave and competent as well. But what happens to spies who fall love? Dangerous doings.

You can find it on TCM.com http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/3181/Stamboul-Quest/

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Myrna Loy - Stamboul Quest (1934)

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Myrna Loy in Stamboul Quest (1934)

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Stamboul Quest (1934)

So, Stamboul Quest, with Myrna Loy and George Brent. This is really one of those times when I would have preferred a sad-but-fitting ending to a happy-and-unfeasible one. Because there was a certain point toward the end where, if they’d just stopped right there and ended the movie, it would have been really effective and it would have reverberated and stuck with you, the idea of the war and espionage completely screwing innocent people over, and how there’s really no room for love in the whole bloody mess, and so on. But no. They rather ruined it with a happy ending that felt tacked-on and rather hard to believe. 

But oh well–until the end, it was actually a tight little suspense movie–it always kept me on my toes (I was never entirely sure of Myrna Loy’s loyalties, and there was a time when I wasn’t quite sure what the hell was going on with George Brent–and, by the way, was sort of let down to find that he was just a really, really clingy guy) and there were some pretty neat scenes of espionage. Also, this is one of the few movies where Myrna Loy’s hair is actually pinned up, showing her ears. She wrote that she always disliked her ears (they sort of stuck out), and you don’t see a lot of photos in which they’re really visible. There are two scenes in this movie where her hair is up, and for some reason it’s almost rather jarring. Maybe it’s just me. Still, she’s really awesome in this movie. 

IMDb tells me that she made this shortly after she made The Thin Man (The Prizefighter and the Lady, which I think had established her as a bankable star, had been made the year before), or maybe around the same time, so she was just starting to transition from the Exotic Vixen roles to the Perfect Wife ones, I suppose. Here’s she’s decidedly still the Morally Ambiguous Woman, but she’s still endearing and likable. So, yeah, Myrna Loy. I do love Myrna Loy.

(Also, George Brent is good in this. Better than in The Painted Veil. And I do believe I saw Mischa Auer as a Turkish soldier. Let me check on IMDb…yep, yes I did. So there’s that.)

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This was a request for my segment on my channel called Classic Movie Thursday where I review, well, classic movies. Stamboul Quest is one of my fave Myrna Loy films. She’s so fabulous. 

If you guys have any suggestions on what movies I should watch and review, either old or new, send me a message through this blog or through the links to my other socials in the description of the video. 

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Myrna Loy in Stamboul Quest (1934)

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George Brent and Myrna Loy in Sam Wood’s STAMBOUL QUEST (1934) #DailyMyrna