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Breckenridge Avenue, a few blocks from the Williams’s new home. Myrna often spent weekends with her grandmother, whose front hall display of programs from touring plays starring the likes of Minnie Maddern Fiske or John Drew attested to her fondness for going to the theater ( BB , 8). Also within walking distance was the grand Italian Renaissance state capitol, with its figure of the Goddess of Liberty astride the burnished copper dome and Charles Russell mural within, depicting Indians encountering Lewis and Clark. To this stately structure Myrna’s father had reported for duty in the legislature in 1903, when he helped plan Montana’s observance of the Lewis and Clark Centennial. Now, seven years later, David worked out of the less lofty Pittsburgh building, where the 1910 Polk’s Helena Directory announced his occupation with one word, “Lands.” His business card elaborated: “Specializing in small farms on easy payments.” 3
    Helena had survived several disastrous fires and many economic ups and downs. The economy slumped with the lowering of silver prices in 1893; banks failed. With the coming of the twentieth century, prosperity returned as gold mining geared up in nearby Marysville, and Helena residents could find work constructing Canyon Ferry or helping to build two Missouri River dams in the area. The Williams family arrived as an upswing in population began, statewide. Electrical power plants and telephone lines began to sprout. Land values rose. David F. Williams, who soon began selling insurance and brokering loans, as well as offering farmland and other real estate, had chosen a potentially lucrative line of work. 4
    Della became pregnant soon after the move to Helena, and a son, another David F. (which in his case stood for Frederick, as in uncle Fred Johnson), came into the world in May 1911. Little David, a towhead, at once became his mother’s darling, though he didn’t share his sister’s sunny disposition. Della spoiled him throughout his life, and Myrna did too, eventually. Initially, however, at least according to one account, she refused to even look at her newborn brother. A photograph of the boy with his six-year-old sister shows him with a dour expression and Myrna wearing a smile that appears less than spontaneous. But despite this she looks fetching. Even then, the camera loved Myrna. She could be shy around strangers but never around a camera. In every image of her with little David, both children are beautifully groomed and expensively dressed, like manikins in a store window. In one photo Myrna wears a sailor hat with a striped border and a pleated skirt over a long jacket that appears hand-sewn; David, who looks about a year old here, has on knit rompers, matching hat, and lace-up boots. 5
    When he was old enough to draw and mold figures, David displayed artistic talent and started his young adult life wanting to become a sculptor. As soon as he was old enough, Della set him up with lessons in art, which Myrna also studied. A nun at the local convent served as the teacher ( BB , 16).
    Myrna had an excellent eye, a good sense of form and design, and a talent for working with her hands. Guided by the art-teacher nun, she enjoyed both molding clay and drawing and would later excel both at homey crafts like knitting and at practical tasks like changing flat tires and fixing gadgets in need of repair. She studied piano, too, and learned two pieces for a student recital that she could still play in adulthood. She attended Central Elementary School, where English, history, and geography were her favorite subjects and arithmetic her bane. Gary Cooper, just a year older than she and then known as Frank, at times attended the same school, but Myrna didn’t recall knowing him there. He claimed he remembered her pigtails and freckles, as well as her mother once bestowing on him a jar of apple jelly when he came by the Fifth Avenue house. Myrna would go sledding past the substantial home of