I’ve been watching and writing about what are known as The Thin Man movies with William Powell and Myrna Loy.

I’ve already written about the first two movies, and you can find those recaps/reviews/thoughts here and here.

Today I am writing about the third movie in the series, Another Thin Man.

If you have not seen the first two movies, there is a spoiler in this one, just to warn you.

You’ve been warned. Are you ready?

You sure? Time to look away if you don’t want to know….

….

….

…..

Okay. You’ll have to know now if you haven’t already left.

In this movie, we have an addition to our mystery-solving team —  Nick Jr.

That’s right. Nick and Nora Charles have had a baby since the last movie and what a cute baby he is.

He isn’t a central part of the somewhat confusing plot of this movie, but he is an adorable addition. You would actually suspect there would be a baby in this one if you saw the end of the last movie when Nora was knitting baby booties.

Somewhat convoluted plots seem to be the norm for The Thin Man movies, but let’s be honest, we aren’t just here for the mystery — we are here for the Nick and Nora banter and one-liners.

We are here for scenes like one where Nick finds Nora at a night club with men all around her, gently makes his way to her, and says, “Now, Mommy, you know you can’t be out until the doctor says it’s okay for you to leave quarantine.”

That clears the room fast, and the couple is left to compare notes with each other on their investigation.

Let’s go back a bit and give an overview of the movie.

Nick (William Powell) and Nora (Myrna Loy) accept an invitation to visit a family friend who also helps with Nora’s money (she’s an heiress if you remember from the previous movies), Col. Burr MacFay (C. Aubrey Smith – who I have been seeing in a lot of old movies I’ve been watching lately). MacFay is convinced his neighbor, Phil Church, who he worked with before, and is a known criminal, is trying to kill him.

No one else in the family is sure about this but MacFay calls Nick and Nora in the middle of the night practically begging them to help him find out.

While they are there, the dog of MacFay’s daughter is murdered brutally (that was dark) and a knife is thrown at Nick when he tries to talk to Phil Church (Sheldon Leonard).

It was also quite odd that when they were driving in to the estate, Nick saw a stabbed, “dead” body along the road, but when he stopped to investigate the body was gone and the chauffer ran off into the woods.

Skipping ahead, without spoiling too much, I can tell you that MacFay is murdered and right afterward Church disappears.

This leaves Nick and Nora to help the police investigate if Church actually murdered him or if someone else did.

Everyone else involved with the first two movies returned for this one, even the creator of Nick and Nora, noir crime writer Dashiell Hammet, who helped with the screenplay again this time, but was kicked off the last movie for drinking too much.

The two married, Oscar-winning writers who tried to kill the series by writing a baby in —  Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich —  even came back, but this was their last movie in the series, which Myrna Loy said negatively affected the last three movies.

“Do you know I never saw them at Metro?” she wrote in her autobiography. “It’s terrible, really, but unless they sent for the writers to get us out of a hole, we seldom saw them on the set….I didn’t meet the Hacketts until I moved to New York in the fifties. We became friends, I’m happy to say, and Albert facetiously explained one day why they didn’t write the last three Thin Man pictures: ‘Finally I just threw up on my typewriter. I couldn’t do it again; I couldn’t write another one.’ Perhaps we all should have concurred; those last three never really touched the previous ones.”

Director Woody VanDyke returned as well.

The movie almost wasn’t made, however, due to a health scare with its leading man, William Powell, as well as the sudden, unexpected death of his fiancé, Jean Harlow, right before filming.

Powell was treated for cancer in 1938. Jean passed away in 1937. It was a more tired and depressed Powell who returned for the movie, even though his cancer treatments were successful. According to TCM.com, the cast and crew did their best to lift his spirits.

“Powell was given a standing ovation by the cast and crew on his first day on the set of Another Thin Man,” an article by Lang Thompson shares. “According to author Charles Francisco in the biography, Gentleman: The William Powell Story, “Powell, looking remarkably fit and tanned, seemed embarrassed by the attention. He held up his hands and the familiar grin began to play at the corners of his mouth as he tried to think of something funny to say. The applause stopped, and Bill found that he couldn’t speak. Myrna Loy rushed over to him and gave him a kiss and a big hug.”

To help with Powell’s recovery, VanDyke, usually known as a no-nonsense guy, cut shooting hours down to six hours a day and let Powell rest whenever he needed.

Powell’s illness kept him from being able to take the role of Maxim de Winter in Hitchock’s Rebecca. The role went to Laurence Olivier instead. Personally, I believe Olivier was a better fit.

Another Thin Man ended up being one of the highest-grossing films of 1939.

Up next in our series will be Shadow of the Thin Man from 1941. We will see if Myrna was right about the last three not being as good as the first three, with Hackett and Goodrich not on board.

You can read my impressions of the other movies I have watched here.

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Sources:

https://theblondeatthefilm.com/2017/08/09/another-thin-man/

https://www.tcm.com/articles/27611/another-thin-man

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