William Powell, Skippy/Asta, and Myrna Loy
“Another Thin Man” screens at 1:30 p.m. Saturday, July 5, 2014 in the Durwood Film Vault of the Kansas City Central Library, 14W. 10th St. Admission is free. It’s part of the year-long film series Hollywood’s Greatest Year, featuring movies released in 1939.
One of the first things you realize watching 1939’s “Another Thin Man” — the third of six popular film mysteries starring William Powell and Myrna Loy as crime-solving couple Nick and Nora Charles – is that the mystery hardly matters.
A domineering, rich old man (C. Aubrey Smith) has been getting death threats. Soon enough, he’s murdered. The list of possible killers is extensive – a Cuban gangster, the housekeeper, members of the man’s own family – and the plot so twisty you need a flow chart to keep up with it.
Don’t worry if it doesn’t track all that well. Watch the Thin Man films for their sophisticated humor and the superb banter between stars Powell and Loy.
The original “Thin Man” back in 1934, based on a Dashiell Hammett novel, was one of the year’s biggest successes, with Oscar nominations for best film, best director (W.S. VanDyke), best actor (Powell), and best adapted screenplay.
The M-G-M brass were happy to keep giving the public what it wanted. And what it wanted was more Nick and Nora.
Thanks to Nora’s family money, private eye Nick is free to take only those cases that interest him. He spends most of his time pouring and drinking cocktails, leading to some hilarious sight gags and memorable lines, such as Nora’s announcement that “We had had a lovely trip. Nick was sober in Kansas City.”
The thing is, the more Nick drinks, the more charming and perceptive he becomes. According to the late Roger Ebert, Powell “is to dialogue as Fred Astaire is to dance. His delivery is so droll and insinuating, so knowing and innocent at the same time, that it hardly matters what he’s saying.”
Butler's Cinema Scene 