Classic Movie Impressions: After The Thin Man

February 4, 2026February 3, 2026 / Lisa R. Howeler / 5 Comments

Today I am continuing reviews of The Thin Man movie with Myrna Loy and William Powell.

This time around, we have the second movie, After The Thin Man. W.S. Van Dyke returned to direct the second film.

We start this sequel right where we left off at the end of the first movie.

In that movie, we ended with Nick and Nora Charles heading back to California from New York City where Nick solved a case in his old stomping grounds.

A little recap, on who Nick and Nora are. Nick is a former private detective who married Nora, an heiress. She inherited a bunch of money from her family so he now manages that money for her and has retired from being a PI.

Nora wants Nick to get back into being a private investigator again so she pushes him into helping out the family of a former client in the first movie.

The movie opens with Nick and Nora still on the train back from New York. When they get off the train, journalists are waiting for them and want to know all about the case Nick solved. Nick and Nora are exhausted, though, so they just want to get home and take a nap.

The only problem with this is that when they get back to their house a party is going on. Their staff is holding a party to welcome them home.

Even before the party is over, they still want sleep but they aren’t going to get it because Nora’s Aunt Katherine calls and asks them to come to a New Year’s Eve party at her house that night.

We soon learn that Nora’s cousin Selma needs help finding her missing husband, who is also a philandering jerk.

In this movie, we see a lot more of Nora’s family and find out that not only are they totally crazy, but they also don’t like Nick. At all.

Nick is very “common” to them and Nora’s aunt especially looks down on him.

There is a hilarious scene toward the beginning of the movie that underscores this perfectly and even had my teenager – who only watched that scene — laughing.

Nick and Nora arrive at the aunt’s house and there are a bunch of other elderly relatives there who become horrified when Katherine says Nora is coming with her husband.

“Oh my! Not him! You said you’d never invite him again!” one woman says with a gasp.

When the butler announces their arrival, Katherine reminds everyone to be nice and one woman says, “I really feel for poor Nora.”

Outside the door, Nick is grumbling and mumbling next to Nora.

Nora asks, “What are you muttering to yourself?”

Nick replies, “I’m trying to get all the bad words out of my system.”

There are so many funny moments in this one, but there is also a very intriguing, and somewhat dark mystery. You will realize how dark the mystery is when you reach the end of the movie.

This movie is also one of Jimmy Stewart’s earliest movies. He plays a close friend of Nora’s cousin. It’s interesting to see him so young and he really stretches his skills in this one, foreshadowing his future as a leading man.

Asta, the Charles’ dog, plays a bigger role in this one. The movie starts with him finding out his dog wife has cheated on him with the neighbor dog and has puppies by him. Yes…it’s a bit of an awkward bit, but Asta chases the neighbor dog back home a couple of times during the movie.

Asta’s real name was Skippy, by the way, which I mentioned in my post about The Thin Man. The dog also appeared in Bringing Up Baby with Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn and The Awful Truth with Cary Grant and Irene Dunn.

He was sometimes called Asta instead of Skippy in public appearances and in movie credits.

Skippy, a Wire Fox Terrier, portrayed Asta for the first three movies. Other Wire Fox Terriers trained by his trainers appeared in the other three movies.

Sometimes sequels to movies aren’t as good as the first one but that’s not the case for this one.

“After the Thin Man belongs on a short list of great sequels that, while recycling elements that made the original popular and worthy of a sequel in the first place, also expands on that foundation,” said Brian Eggert from Deep Focus Reviews.

Of Myrna and William Eggert wrote: “The two exude limitless chemistry and sophistication in their sharing of countless private jokes, endearing flirtations, blissful irresponsibility, deftly comic asides, and, of course, their ever-partying lifestyle, lubricated by regular doses of alcohol.”

Dashiell Hammett, who wrote the book the first movie was based on, was asked back to help husband and wife writers Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich work on the screenplay.

Sadly, he’d started drinking in between the first and second movies and started making demands that every secondary character from the first movie be called back for the second.

That couldn’t be done since the production was moved from New York to San Francisco.

Tension then began to develop between him and the studio and he was fired.

TCM.com shares this story about Hammett and Myrna: “In her book Being and Becoming, co-written with James Kotsilibas-Davis, Loy recalls a memorable evening with the famous detective writer: “Hammett was an attractive kind of angular man, compelling and rather like the operatives of his stories. He told me that he’d fashioned Nora after his friend Lillian Hellman, which I found interesting….As we talked that evening, Dash drank heavily and began turning a little green. He went on and on about Lillian, while aiming overt passes at me, lunging and pawing, with my lover beside us….Dash could be intransigent, but, by God, they got him downstairs and sent him home in a studio car. That was a great disappointment to me, because I really wanted to talk to the man. I never got the chance again — Metro let him go soon after that. Apparently, he couldn’t handle the job.”

I thought it was weird that despite being nominated for an Oscar for writing the first movie, Hackett and Goodrich wanted to kill Nick and Nora off at the end of After The Thin Man so they wouldn’t have to write another movie in the series.

When the studio rejected this, they did something else at the end of the movie that they thought would kill the series. I won’t share what so if you haven’t seen the movie, you will be surprised.

Suffice it to say, their attempt to sabotage the series failed. The next movie, Another Thin Man, came out in 1939.

Getting Myrna and William for the sequel was a bit of a challenge because Myrna’s worth was higher by then. She’d been named Queen of the Movies since the last movie and after being paid half of what William was in the first movie she asked for a salary closer to his.

Because Myrna and William had already had four previous movie successes beyond The Thin Man movie, MGM gave her what she wanted.

Sources:

https://www.tcm.com/articles/27608/after-the-thin-man

https://crimereads.com/thin-man-movies/

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2005/08/the-movie-review-the-thin-man/69449/

https://www.deepfocusreview.com/reviews/after-the-thin-man/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skippy_(dog)

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Winter of Cagney: The Public Enemy (1931)

January 30, 2026February 3, 2026 / Lisa R. Howeler / 5 Comments

I’m watching James Cagney movies this winter and up this week is The Public Enemy (1931), which was moved up in my list because I could not find Angles with Dirty Faces streaming anywhere! I was very disappointed because I really wanted to see it. I am going to look for that and Man of Many Faces (which I also could not find streaming) on BluRay or DVD so I can watch them sometime in February.

The Public Enemy is a bit of somber movie, more so than the previous movies I watched.

It appears to be a life lesson for would-be hoodlums, based on the warning at the beginning and end of the movie. The producers wanted everyone to be sure to know they weren’t glorifying criminals by making this movie, but instead warning people of what happens when they become one.

I strive not to place spoilers in my posts about the movies I watch but I will say this movie indeed showed the rough life that criminals have, usually self-inflicted.

The movie starts when our main characters — Tommy Powers (Cagney) and his friend Matt Doyle (Edward Woods) — are young boys.

They’ve already started a life of crime by sneaking into the movies and stealing buckets of beer. They steal little items and become pickpockets, and as they grow, the crimes grow with them.

The two go from being a couple of stooges for various crime bosses to leading the way in some major criminal actions, including creating a monopoly on beer production.

This was Cagney’s fifth movie and is said by film buffs to have catapulted him into a string of gangster roles he later worked hard to get out of.

This movie included one of his most infamous scenes – shoving a grapefruit in the face of his girlfriend – to show how far he’d fallen and how unfeeling he’d become. More about that a little later.

Tommy Power is the second son in the family and lives in his older brother’s shadow.

He and his brother are raised by their mother. I don’t know if we are told what happens to his father, but his father does whip him in the beginning for stealing skates and says he doesn’t care if he goes to jail.

This movie is honestly just so well done. You really need to take your time to watch it and catch some of the subtleties in the scenes.

There is one scene where Tommy and Matt go to talk to Putty Nose, a gang leader who once convinced them to a do a job for him, promising nothing would go wrong.

I’m warning you now that there are spoilers ahead —

The job went wrong and Putty Nose disappeared. Tommy and Matt have been looking to get revenge on the guy for years and now they’re big shots in the crime world.

They track Putty Nose down and he starts begging for his life. Tommy and Matt are just standing there in nice dress clothes, fanc wool winter coats, and bowler hats, stone-faced for the most part, while Putty Nose begs the not to kill him. This is after Matt’s wedding, I should add.

The guy reminds them he knew them when they were kids and asks if they remember a song he used to play for them that they loved. He goes to the piano and starts playing, and Tommy has this friendly smile while he walks over to stand behind Putty Nose while he plays. Tommy keeps smiling and nodding and then slowly pulls a gun from the inside of his jacket while the camera pans away to Matt standing by the door.

There’s a gunshot and then —something I didn’t notice but my son did — you hear Putty Nose try to finish the song through a gurgling noise. Yikes. Then there is the sound of his body sliding across the piano keys and then to the floor.

It’s all off-camera, and it almost makes it more impactful because the camera is focused not Putty Nose dying but on how Matt’s expression changes from emotionless to ever-so-slightly dazed and horrified.

A few seconds after we hear the thud of the body hitting the floor, Tommy walks back into frame and says, “I’m going to go give Gwen a call. She’s probably home by now,” while he opens the door to leave.

He doesn’t look back, he doesn’t comment on what just happened. There is no remorse at all. It’s like he just stepped on a bug on the sidewalk while walking down the street, and he’s on to the rest of his life now.

Cagney pulls the scene off just brilliantly.

Like he pulls it off the whole movie. He makes the viewer both hate and love Tommy — feel sorry for him and not feel sorry for him at all.

Tommy makes his own bed, and he has to lie in it — literally at one point.

He is a man who wants it all and wants to be important, but, in the end, can’t hold on to anything that is important to him.

Jean Harlow is in this one as well, and I know she was supposed to be a big star back then, but my husband walked in and said, “She was so overrated,” and I based on this performance, I would have to agree.

I was not blown away by her, even though the scene with her was interesting because she sat on a settee, half on Cagney’s lap, while telling him what kind of man she thought he was and running her fingers along his neck and pressing his face into her cleavage. It was a very sensual scene for a movie made in the 1930s. From what I read, she wasn’t wearing bras under her dresses either.

According to an article written by Rob Nixon on TCM.com, Cagney once asked her, “How do you keep those things up?” in reference to her breasts.

“I ice them,” Harlow said, and then left to just what she’d said she did.

This was definitely a movie made before the strict film codes went into effect.

I was surprised to learn during my research that Cagney almost didn’t get the role of Tommy Power. Instead, he was initially cast as the quieter Matt Doyle, and Woods was cast as Tommy.

“But director William Wellman had seen Cagney’s tough performance in Doorway to Hell (1930),” Nixon wrote in his article. “And after three days of shooting – and much urging by screenwriters John Bright and Kubec Glasmon – he realized a big casting mistake had been made. Luckily, producer Darryl Zanuck allowed the two actors to switch roles, otherwise film audiences would have been robbed of one of the most ferocious and iconic performances of the decade, perhaps of all Hollywood history.”

This movie was not free of injuries for the actors.

One of the most famous scenes in the movie is where Tommy shoves a grapefruit in the face of his girlfriend when he’s mad at her. This was based on a real-life incident of a Chicago gangster named Earl Weiss who once slammed an omelet into his “jabbering” girlfriend’s face.

It was decided this was too messy, so it was suggested a grapefruit be used.

“What happened next depends on who tells the story,” Nixon wrote on TCM.com. “[Actress] Mae Clarke said Cagney was only supposed to yell at her in the scene and that the actor surprised her with his impulsive use of the breakfast food. Cagney claimed the grapefruit had been decided on beforehand but that it was supposed to brush past her at an angle that would only appear to be a bona fide attack. Whatever the truth, when the time came to get the shot, Cagney smashed the grapefruit directly (and painfully, the actress said) into her face, and Clarke’s very real look of horror and surprise was recorded for posterity.”

Cagney faced his own pain, though, when Donald Cook, who played his brother, hit him for real during one scene, knocking him across the room and causing Cagney to lose a tooth. Cagney theorized that Clarke had put him up to it as revenge but he never proved it and production moved on without any more incidents, despite the fact — I can’t even believe I’m reading this — that real bullets were used in some of the shooting scenes.

The movie was based on Bright and Glasmon’s novel Beer and Blood. Yes, I would love to find it! They were nominated for an Oscar for their screenplay for the movie.

There were some really great lines in the movie, one of them being when Tommy’s brother comes back from war and accuses Tommy of running a business of “blood and booze.”

Tommy shoots back: “Your hands ain’t so clean. You killed and liked it. You didn’t get them medals for holding hands with them Germans.”

Have you ever seen this movie? If so, what did you think of it?

Here is my revised list for the rest of the Winter of Cagney:

Yankee Doodle Dandy

Taxi

The Strawberry Blonde

Mister Roberts

The Public Enemy

Love Me or Leave Me

White Heat

Man of A Thousand Faces

Angels With Dirty Faces

Bonus: The Seven Little Foys

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Public_Enemy

https://www.tcm.com/articles/31288/the-public-enemy

Winter of Cagney: Mister Roberts

January 23, 2026 / Lisa R. Howeler / 9 Comments

This winter I am watching James Cagney movies for a “Winter of Cagney” marathon through the months of January and February.

Up this week is Mister Roberts, a 1955 film that couldn’t see to figure out its’ identity. I was told it was supposed to be a comedy/drama ,but I felt a lot of it was more of a drama with a few comedic moments tossed in.

I also wasn’t bowled over by Cagney’s presence in this one. He seemed more like a caricature of himself or his previous characters and that may be because of the fraught relationship he and much of the cast had with the director, John Ford. More on that later.

Just because I wasn’t overly impressed with the movie, doesn’t mean I hated it or it was all bad. Not at all. In fact, it had some nice messages along the way and it was mildly entertaining. It simply wasn’t my favorite Cagney movie of the few I have watched so far.

The movie was based on the Broadway play which was based on a novel by Thomas Heggen.

Heggen and Joshua Logan wrote the stage play, which debuted in 1948 and was very successful with Henry Fonda in the role of Mister Roberts, which he also played in the movie.

This was a movie where Cagney was a secondary character with Fonda as the main star.

William Powell and Jack Lemon rounded out the cast.

This movie takes place toward the end of World War II on a United States Navy cargo ship called the Reluctant that is stationed in the backwater areas of the Pacific Ocean. The ship is affectionately and not-so-affectionately also called The Bucket by the crew.

The ship has not seen any military or war action and this is infuriating to the executive officer/cargo chief, Lieutenant (junior grade) Douglas A. “Doug” Roberts (Henry Fonda).

He spends most of his time trying to shield the depressed crew from the unpopular and task master captain, Lieutenant Commander Morton, played by Cagney while also filing transfers to get him off the ship and into the war.

He hates the idea that he and the men of the ship are sitting in the middle of the ocean, not seeing any action while Morton simply shouts orders and waters his ridiculous palm tree that he keeps in a small pot on a balcony near his office. Morton refers the transfers to higher ups because regulations require him to but he always advises the transfer requests to be ignored so they are.

Ensign Frank Thurlowe Pulver spends most of his time on ship hiding in his bunk to avoid the captain but repeatedly says he will one day light a fire cracker “under the old man’s bunk” to get back at him for always being mean to the crew. Instead of ever doing anything bold, though, Pulver wilts under Morton’s shouts.

William Powell appears in his last feature film as the doctor on board the ship and spends much of his time dealing with crew members who make up illnesses so they don’t have to keep working under Morton’s rule.

Roberts feels the men need some rest and relaxation and leave but Morton always refuses to give it to them.

Roberts finally finds a way to get orders for some R&R time behind Morton’s back, but when Morton finds out what’s going on he’s furious and tells Roberts the only way they can have the leave is if Roberts agrees to stop filing transfer requests and starts doing everything Morton tells him to.

The idea behind this one is a good one, but I wasn’t really feeling Cagney in the role. It almost felt like he was relegated to this secondary part, even though some critics praised his portrayal of the mentally-off captain.

One thing that probably didn’t help this movie was the fact that the director, John Ford, started the filming out with aggression and was replaced halfway through due to an argument with Fonda where Ford punched Fonda in the face, as well as emergency gallbladder surgery for Ford.

Ford’s tension with the actors may be why there was so much underlying tension throughout the movie.

Ford couldn’t even get along with Cagney, and let him know they probably wouldn’t get along right from the beginning.

When Ford met Cagney at the airport, the director told the actor they would probably “tangle asses.” Cagney said he was shocked by the comment.

“I would have kicked his brains out,” Cagney said later. “He was so g******* mean to everybody. He was truly a nasty old man.”

The next day, Cagney was slightly late on set, and Ford was furious. Cagney allegedly interrupted Ford’s ranting by saying, “When I started this picture, you said that we would tangle asses before this was over. I’m ready now – are you?”

Ford reportedly walked away and he and Cagney had no further issues. Good thing too since Cagney had once been a champion boxer in the Bronx before becoming an actor.

Ford was replaced by Mervyn Leroy.

Joshua Logan also helped to direct, bringing his experience of having directed the original production on Broadway, but was uncredited in the film.

I was not overly impressed with Lemmon in this movie, so I was really shocked to read that he won a best supporting actor Oscar for his role.

According to the Warner Bros Fandom site, Lemmon and Cagney became close friends during filming.

“During the production of the film, Lemmon began a long-term friendship with Cagney which continued until Cagney’s death in 1986,” an article on the site reads. “Prior to his appearance in his first film, years before Mister Roberts, he started in live television. In one particular performance, Lemmon decided to play his character differently. He decided to play the character left-handed, which was opposite to his own way of movement. With much practice, he pulled off the performance without anyone noticing the change. This change even fooled Lemmon’s wife at the time. A few years went by and Lemmon met Cagney on their way to Midway Island to film Mister Roberts. They introduced themselves, and Cagney chimed in, “Are you still fooling people into believing you’re left handed?” They had a great laugh and a strong friendship was born.”

I wouldn’t really say I would skip this movie when watching Cagney movies, but, for me, I’ve seen better.

This was his last movie with Warner Bros, which is the studio where he’d spent most of his career.

A bit of trivia or facts about the film:

Henry Fonda was not the first choice for the role of Mister Roberts, even though he had played the role on Broadway. The producers felt that he had been away from film for too long (eight years) and wouldn’t be a box office draw, but also that he was too old for the role. The character was supposed to be in his 20s but Fonda was 55 at the time of the film.
Spencer Tracy turned down the role of Morton.
Ford used his Navy connections to find one of the old cargo scows to use for the story’s setting and boat; cast and crew were all sent to Midway Island for exterior shooting.
Though Ford apologized to Fonda for swinging at him, Fonda never looked at his former friend the same way again and they never worked together again.
The movie was 1955’s third highest box office hit.
The next year Ford made what many consider his greatest movie, The Searchers.
The movie was remade for TV in 1984 with Kevin Bacon as Mister Roberts

Up next week I am watching Angels With Dirty Faces, one of Cagney’s early movies with Humphrey Bogart.

If you would like to follow along with my Winter of Cagney and watch some of the movies yourself, here is my schedule for the winter:

Yankee Doodle Dandy

Taxi

The Strawberry Blonde

Mister Roberts

Angels With Dirty Faces

Public Enemy

Love Me or Leave Me

White Heat

Man of A Thousand Faces

Bonus: The Seven Little Foys

Sources:

Website: https://warnerbros.fandom.com/wiki/Mister_Roberts_(1955_film)

Website: https://www.tcm.com/articles/72472/mister-roberts-1955

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Classic Movie Impression: The Thin Man (1934)

January 19, 2026February 3, 2026 / Lisa R. Howeler / 10 Comments

For the next month or so I will be sharing posts here and there about The Thin Man movies with William Powell and Myrna Loy.

The series is my favorite movie series of all time. The six movies kick off with The Thin Man (1934).

The Thin Man will be 91 years old this year and, to me and many others, it still holds up.

This cozy mystery masterpiece has hit the Top 100 movies list from a variety of film organizations and critics over the years and for good reason. My family owns the DVD set of all six movies so we can watch any of the movies any time we want.

If you haven’t seen this movie or the five sequels involving witty, often intoxicated, private detective, Nick Charles (William Powell), and his equally witty and mouthy wife, Nora Charles (Myrna Loy), then you’re missing out.

Each of the six movies is full of mystery, zaniness, misunderstandings, mishaps, and hilarious interactions between Nick and Nora and everyone else. Oh and a crime or two is mixed in too.

The crimes themselves, and how they were committed, are a bit dark at times, but never graphic or gruesome and the darkness is always overshadowed by the Charles’ antics.

The pairing of Powell and Loy was the ticket for success in the 1930s as they were in a number of movies together and are still considered one of the best movie couples of all time.

Their first film was Manhattan Melodrama (1934) and directed by the same director of The Thin Man, W.S. “Woody” Van Dyke.

The Thin Man is based on a book by Dashiell Hammet and as the movie starts, we find Nick has retired from being a Private Investigator in New York City to help oversee Nora’s wealth as an heiress in San Francisco. This leaves Nick with a lot of time on his hand to go drinking, goof off and do some general carousing, though never with women because he is completely and utterly devoted to Nora.

Nora would like him to get back to work, though, so when they go back to New York for a visit and Nick’s former client, Clyde Wynant (who is later described as simply a thin man — hence the name of the book/movie), goes missing. His daughter Dorothy comes to Nick for help, Nora gently, and later not-so-gently, suggests he help.

What makes this movie such a fun one that might bring an occasional gasp from viewers is that it is a pre-Hays Code movie. That means it was filmed before a bunch of rules went into affect about what can and cannot be shown or said in movies. That’s why there were a couple comments from some of the characters in this that had me gasping and then laughing.

For example:

Nick: I’m a hero. I was shot twice in the Tribune.

Nora: I read where you were shot 5 times in the tabloids.

Nick: It’s not true. He didn’t come anywhere near my tabloids.

Before I forget, what makes these movies even more fun is the addition of Asta, the couple’s wife-fox terrier, who also acted in Bringing Up Baby with Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn and The Awful Truth with Irene Dunn and Cary. He’s a fun addition who always adds to a scene. At one point Nick tells a criminal, (Summarizing here): Stay right there or my dog will get you. He’s vicious.”

All the while Asta is finding a place to hide under a table.

Asta’s real name was Skippy, by the way, and there are some fun stories about him, but I will share more about Asta/Skippy in future posts about the series.

So back in the beginning of the movie, before we even see Nick and Nora, Dorothy Wynant goes to her inventor father to tell him she’s getting married.

During that conversation we learn that Clyde cheated on Dorothy’s mother years ago with his secretary and they are now divorced. Later we will see that divorce really wasn’t such a bad thing because the ex-wife is absolutely batty.

Anyhow, shortly after Dorothy told her father she was getting married, we learn that Clyde Wynant’s former secretary and mistress, Julia Wolf, has stolen $50,000 worth of bonds from his safe. Those were going to go to Dorothy for her wedding gift. Clyde immediately suspects Julia, goes to her apartment, and finds her with a man named Joe Morelli.

Julia confesses she took the bonds, but she can’t give them back. She already spent $25,000 of them.

Clyde isn’t a very nice man and tells her she better get the $25,000 back or she’ll pay. He then leaves for a business trip and presumably never returns because three months later, Nick is out at a bar back in NYC for a visit when he runs into Dorothy who tells him her father is missing. She asks if Nick will help find him but Nick brushes her off by saying he’s sure her father will show up.

Things change later while Nick and Nora are throwing a party and Dorothy shows up to say Julia has been murdered and she truly feels her father is in danger. Now Nora pushes Nick to help out.

“You know, that sounds like an interesting case,” she says to Nick. “Why don’t you take it?”

Nick chuckles. “I haven’t the time. I’m much too busy seeing that you don’t lose any of the money I married you for.”

The really quirky and memorable characters show up when Dorothy goes to visit her mother, Mimi, who — like I said above — is crazy, but also is married to a loser, jobless husband named Chris. Living with her mother is her Mama’s Boy macabre-obsessed brother Gilbert.

Gilbert is a bit of a nerd who walks around with a book and shows everyone how smart he is by using very big words and even bigger theories about things. He’s also a smart mouth.

At one point, he asks one of the cops: “Could I come down and see the body? I’ve never seen a dead body.”

The cop asks why he’d want to, and he says, “Well, I’ve been studying psychopathic criminology and I have a theory. Perhaps this was the work of a sadist or a paranoiac. If I saw it, I might be able to tell.”

Dorothy’s mother, Mimi, is self-focused and selfish and though she was cheated on and might have been a victim in any other movie, she’s a total mess in this movie. Her biggest worry is losing access to her ex-husband’s money, which she has been able to hold on to through alimony. When Julia is murdered, she sees an opportunity to get even more of her ex-husband’s money.

Going back to Nick and Nora … What makes them so memorable, beyond their amazing banter, is how they show that adventure, sex, and adoration doesn’t end after the wedding bells ring. I love how affectionate and playful they are throughout the series.

The writing for them is absolutely outstanding, which is probably because the screenwriters (Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett) were told to focus less on Hammet’s story and more on the banter between the couple.

Some of my favorite exchanges:

Nora Charles: How many drinks have you had?

Nick Charles: This will make six Martinis.

Nora Charles: [to the waiter] All right. Will you bring me five more Martinis, Leo? Line them right up here.

——————

Nick Charles: Oh, it’s all right, Joe. It’s all right. It’s my dog. And, uh, my wife.

Nora Charles: Well you might have mentioned me first on the billing.

______________

Lieutenant John Guild: You got a pistol permit?

Nick Charles: No.

Lieutenant John Guild: Ever heard of the Sullivan Act?

Nora Charles: Oh, that’s all right, we’re married.

______________

Nora Charles: Pretty girl (about Dorothy Wynant)

Nick Charles: Yes. She’s a very nice type.

Nora Charles: You got types?

Nick Charles: Only you, darling. Lanky brunettes with wicked jaws.

_______________

Nora Charles: All right! Go ahead! Go on! See if I care! But I think it’s a dirty trick to bring me all the way to New York just to make a widow of me.

Nick Charles: You wouldn’t be a widow long.

Nora Charles: You bet I wouldn’t!

Nick Charles: Not with all your money…

According to information online, Hammett based Nick and Nora’s banter upon his rocky on-again, off-again relationship with playwright Lillian Hellman and the book itself on his experience as a union-busting Pinkerton.

MGM tried to prevent Myrna Loy from being cast in The Thin Man by telling director Van Dyke that he could have her “only if she was finished in three weeks to begin shooting Stamboul Quest (1934),” according to TCM. Van Dyke not only completed Loy’s scenes but all of the production somewhere between 12 and 18 days.

“Known as “One-Take Woody,” Van Dyke often did not bother with cover shots if he felt the scene was right on the first take, reasoning that actors “lose their fire” if they have to do something over and over,” Rob Nixon wrote for TCM. “It was a lot of pressure on the actors, who often had to learn new lines and business immediately before shooting, without the luxury of retakes, but Loy credited much of the appeal of The Thin Man to Van Dyke’s pacing and spontaneity.”

It was Van Dyke, with that whole desire of his to create natural reactions, who worked out Loy’s classic entrance into the bar and restaurant at the beginning of the movie — all her packages spilling on to the floor as Asta pulls her down the hall toward Powell.

Loy was told about the scene right before they shot it.

Van Dyke took a similar approach with Powell by telling him to take the cocktail shaker, go behind the bar, and walk through one of the early scenes while the crew checked lights and sound.

Powell did so and ad-libbed some comments to the crew as he worked out the scene. Before he knew it VanDyke yelled “That’s it! Print it!”

The director had had the cameras rolling the whole time.

He liked his actors as relaxed and natural as possible which is why a scene of Nick shooting the ornaments off the tree was added into the movie because “Powell playfully picked up an air gun and started shooting ornaments that the art department was putting up.”

I couldn’t find quotes from Powell about working with Van Dyke but there are quotes about working with Powell because he loved working with her.

“When we did a scene together, we forgot about technique, camera angles, and microphones. We weren’t acting. We were just two people in perfect harmony,” he said. “Myrna, unlike some actresses who think only of themselves, has the happy faculty of being able to listen while the other fellow says his lines. She has the give and take of acting that brings out the best.”

You can find plenty of opinions and articles about this movie online, most of them positive.

The Blonde at the Film wrote on her blog in 2014, “The Thin Man (1934) is a truly delightful mystery-comedy chock full of snappy dialogue, fantastic stars, art deco sets, magnificent costumes, enough mystery to make it suspenseful, and enough alcohol to give you a sympathy hangover.”

Christopher Orr wrote for The Atlantic: “As Nick and Nora, Powell and Loy subverted the classic detective film with comic aplomb and presented an impressively modern vision of marriage as an association of equals. They were also cinema’s most glamorous dipsomaniacs, a reminder of a bygone era when Hollywood could still imagine that charm, taste, and good humor might go hand-in-hand with the copious consumption of distilled spirits.”

His opinion of the mysteries in this movie and the others is fairly accurate, even though not altogether positive: “The mysteries themselves tend to be somewhat disappointing–needlessly convoluted, with solutions that often hinge on a last minute revelation or “clue” of dubious import (for example, whether or not someone announced themselves before opening a door). Rather, the chief pleasure of the films is in spending time with Nick and Nora as they tease, cajole, and romance their way toward the conclusion.”

Film critic Roger Ebert wrote of The Thin Man, “William 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.”

He continued: “Powell plays the character with a lyrical alcoholic slur that waxes and wanes but never topples either way into inebriation or sobriety. The drinks are the lubricant for dialogue of elegant wit and wicked timing, used by a character who is decadent on the surface but fundamentally brave and brilliant.”

Have you seen The Thin Man? What did you think of it?

Up next (at some point) I will be writing about the next movie in the series, After The Thin Man.

__________

Sources:

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2005/08/the-movie-review-the-thin-man/69449/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thin_Man_(film)

https://www.tcm.com/articles/behind-the-classics/133583/behind-the-classics-the-thin-man-1934

https://www.goldderby.com/film/2024/the-thin-man-william-powell-myrna-loy/

If you want to find clips and thoughts about vintage movies and TV, you can visit me on Instagram on my Nostalgically Thinking Account or on my YouTube account Nostalgically and Bookishly Thinking here: https://www.youtube.com/@nostaglicandbookish

Winter of Cagney: Strawberry Blonde

January 15, 2026January 14, 2026 / Lisa R. Howeler / 6 Comments

I am watching James Cagney movies this winter.

This week I’m writing about Strawberry Blonde (1941). Some listings add a “The” to the name, but the original title was just Strawberry Blonde.

Here we have another Cagney film (like Yankee Doodle Dandy) that isn’t a gangster film but does show him as a bit of a rough guy. Rough, but ultimately good.

This movie, told in one long flashback, shows a slow transformation of Cagney’s character and leaves you wondering throughout the first part of the movie whether you like him or not.

By the end, you’re rooting for him and maybe for him to get a bit of revenge on some people too.

James’ character is Biff Grimes, a young and scrappy dental student with a good heart who lives in New York City. He’s obsessed with a strawberry blonde named Virginia Brush played by Rita Hayworth, who likes to walk past the barber shop each day and rile up all the men. I’m going to say upfront that I didn’t recognize Rita in this movie at all. First, I’m used to her as a brunette, second, I actually haven’t seen her in that many movies. (Summer of Rita? Hmmm….good idea! Spring has been reserved for Bette Davis.)

The only problem with this obsession is that his friend Hugo Barnstead (Jack Carson) is also interested in Virginia.

Hugo and Virginia work to push Virginia’s friend, Amy, a nurse and women’s rights activist played by Olivia de Havilland, on to Biff, especially after Hugo promises Virginia a wealthy life if she elopes with him.

Biff has no interest in Amy, who annoys him and says solicitous and suggestive things to him to show him that women are just as good as men. We get the impression, however, that Amy doesn’t believe everything she’s saying. She simply likes to shock people.

Eventually, though, love blooms in a very authentic way between Biff and Amy, but not without some mix-ups, difficulties, and trials along the way, culminating when Hugo reveals even more of his crooked ways after he hires Biff.

You’ll have to watch the movie to see what happens.

I love Olivia de Havilland’s character in this. She wants to be bold at the same time she doesn’t want to be. It’s like how James’ character wants to be a tough guy but yet doesn’t.

The movie is ahead of its’ time in my opinion, with so many suggestive (yet not crude) subjects raised, and witty banter exchanged back and forth between James and Olivia. I was very charmed by this movie, which I watched before I officially decided I was going to do a marathon of Cagney movies.

Each time I watch one of his movies I fall more in love with him as an actor. He was witty, charming, and that grin was so infectious.

The movie is based on a Broadway play called One Sunday Afternoon by James Hagan. It’s a bit of a musical, comedy, and drama, but not a super, super heavy drama. It was first made into a non-musical film by the same name as the play in 1933. That movie was directed by Stephen Roberts and starred Gary Cooper. Unlike the earlier picture, Strawberry Blonde was a hit.

Director Raoul Walsh remade the film again as a full musical in 1948, according to TCM.com, changing the name back to One Sunday Afternoon, but Strawberry Blonde still remained the more popular version.

The part of Viriginia was originally supposed to be played by Ann Sheridan, the Oomph Girl from Warner Pictures, (No, I have no idea what or who that is!) but instead Rita was loaned to Warners by Columbia for the role. Sheridan was in a contract dispute with Warner at the time and refused to do it.

All the better for Rita.

Felicia Feaster wrote for TCM.com, that Hayworth “brought her typical enigmatic, frosty perfection to the role. Her fortuitous securing of the role in The Strawberry Blonde helped establish her sex queen status as the “Love Goddess.” Though a confident mantrap on camera, Hayworth was just a shy, reserved girl off, causing Cagney to marvel at how, after her scenes, she would just “go back to her chair and sit there and not communicate.’”

Olivia was also praised for her role in the film.

Many critics commented on her gift for comedy and said it matched Cagney’s perfectly in this movie and I have to agree.

A bit of trivia about the movie:

Hayworth received $450 per week for the film

She also dyed her hair for the movie to fit the title name.

This film marked the first time Hayworth was seen as a redhead and the only time that audiences heard her real singing voice.
When Warner Bros. released Strawberry Blonde on February 21, 1941, “the studio knew it had a hit on its hands.” Walsh considered it his most successful picture to date, and he called it his favorite film.
Cagney looked at the movie as a way to break out of playing tough guys and it was his brother William Cagney who suggested he take the project on as a gift to their mother Carrie, “who would only live a few more years.”

Jack Warner (of Warner Bros) screened the 1933 film and wrote a memo to his production head Hal B. Wallis telling him to watch it also: “It will be hard to stay through the entire running of the picture, but do this so you will know what not to do.”
James Cagney was past forty at the time of filming but was playing much younger, and was in fact only seven years younger than his on-screen father Alan Hale.

The TCM print ran 99 minutes; the extra two minutes was due to a ‘follow-the-bouncing-ball’ sing-along after “The End”, to the main song “The Band Played On.”

In March 1941, Warner Brothers distributed this film on a double bill with another comedy, Honeymoon for Three (1941) starring Ann Sheridan and George Brent.

Even though IMDb and some other websites use the title “The Strawberry Blonde,” the Warner Bros. collateral at the time of release and the Warner Archives DVD do not include “The,” leaving the title as simply “Strawberry Blonde.”

James Cagney and Olivia de Havilland previously co-starred in The Irish in Us (1935). They both also appeared in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935).

So, have you ever seen this one? What did you think of it?

If you haven’t seen it, I really would recommend it for a fun, lighthearted (for the most part) watch.

Next week I am watching Mister Roberts.

If you would like to follow along with my Winter of Cagney and watch some of the movies yourself, here is my schedule for the winter:

Yankee Doodle Dandy

Taxi

The Strawberry Blonde

Mister Roberts

Angels With Dirty Faces

Public Enemy

Love Me or Leave Me

White Heat

Man of A Thousand Faces

Bonus: The Seven Little Foys

Additional sources:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0034236/trivia/

https://www.tcm.com/articles/25791/the-strawberry-blonde

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Strawberry_Blonde

Winter of Cagney: Taxi (1931)

January 9, 2026January 11, 2026 / Lisa R. Howeler / 9 Comments

This winter I’m watching movies with James Cagney.

This week I was supposed to watch Man of Many Faces but, but unfortunately, I didn’t check to see if it was streaming anywhere before I decided to watch it (at my husband’s suggestion) and I couldn’t order a Blu-Ray, which seems to be the only format available to watch it on, before this week.

I am hoping to get a copy of it before the end of this feature so I can watch it and write about it.

What I ended up doing was just moving up my movies I had scheduled and placing Man of Many Faces at the end of the list.

Taxi was one of Cagney’s first breakout films, right after his actual breakout film, The Public Enemy.

This is the movie where he almost says the words everyone has always tried to say he said: “You dirty rat.”

What he actually says in the movie is, “”Come out and take it, you yellow-bellied rat! Or I’ll make you take it through the door!”

If you want to know why he said those words, you’ll have to watch the movie.

This is also the first time Cagney showed us he can dance as he participates in a dance competition during the movie.

According to TCM.com, “To play his competition on the dance floor, Cagney recommended his pal, fellow tough-guy-dancer George Raft. The scene culminates in Raft winning the contest and getting slugged by Cagney for his trouble. Within a year or so, Raft — uncredited here — would emerge as a Warner Bros. star in his own right.”

The story of this hour-and-nine-minute-long movie is pretty simple.

Cagney plays Matt Nolan, an employee of an independent cab company in New York City during a time when a large cab corporation was trying to push independent cab companies out of business.

Matt wants to date Sue Riley (Loretta Young), the daughter of his boss who gets sent to jail after he shoots the man who trashed his cab in the cab war.

Nolan is a complex man with a temper but also a deep love for those who mean the most to him. A lot of the movie is him courting Sue and her telling him that he needs to get his temper in check.

I spent a lot of the movie telling Matt to chill out and telling Sue to dump Matt.

I won’t go into too much detail about the plot, but something tragic does happen part way through the movie, which will make Matt have to decide if he will let his temper rule him or not. You’ll have to watch to see what happens.

This movie was made before the Hays Code came into play. What is the Hays Code, you may ask?

Let Wikipedia explain: “The Motion Picture Production Code was a set of industry guidelines for the self-censorship of content that was applied to most motion pictures released by major studios in the United States from 1934 to 1968. It is also popularly known as the Hays Code, after Will H. Hays, president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) from 1922 to 1945. Under Hays’s leadership, the MPPDA, later the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Motion Picture Association (MPA), adopted the Production Code in 1930 and began rigidly enforcing it in 1934. The Production Code spelled out acceptable and unacceptable content for motion pictures produced for a public audience in the United States.”

Loretta Young later confessed to having a crush on Cagney.

“I admired him so much, though I could never tell him so,” she revealed. “I remember having this romantic dream about him…in which I was drowning and he rescued me.”

She recalled that Cagney had “complete control over expressing the whole gamut of emotions with his eyes. He could accomplish with a glance what other actors need a whole bag of tricks to put over.”

I found this tidbit of information in the TCM article shocking: “As in The Public Enemy, several scenes in Taxi! involved the use of live machine-gun bullets. After a few of the slugs narrowly missed Cagney’s head, he outlawed the practice on future films.”

Have you ever seen this one?

What did you think of it?

If you would like to follow along with my Winter of Cagney and watch some of the movies yourself, here is my schedule for the winter:

Yankee Doodle Dandy

Taxi

The Strawberry Blonde

Mister Roberts

Angels With Dirty Faces

Public Enemy

Love Me or Leave Me

White Heat

Man of A Thousand Faces

Bonus: The Seven Little Foys

Favorite movies I watched in 2025

January 5, 2026January 5, 2026 / Lisa R. Howeler / 8 Comments

This past year I watched 84 movies, some long and some short, the majority of them made before 1960.

At the end of this post, I’ll list them all, but for now, here are my favorites from the bunch. I did not include any movies that were rewatches for me in my favorites list, but I did include rewatches in the overall list.

The Stranger

The Young In Heart

The Prisoner of Zenda(1937)

The Intouchables

The Manchurian Candidate

Gaslight

The Scarlet Pimpernel

Without Reservations

KPop Demon Hunters

The Talk of the Town

It Happened One Night

Superman (2025 version)

Take Me Out to the Ballgame

They Got Me Covered

The Exile

How To Steal A Million

Meet Me In St. Louis

The Strawberry Blonde

Another Man’s Poison

Yankee Doodle Dandy

The movies I watched in 2025:

Morning Glory
The Stranger
Gunga Din
The Power of the Press
The Prisoner of Zenda
The Young in Heart
The Exile
Angles Over Broadway
Sinbad The Sailor
The Rise of Catherine The Great
The Sun Never Sets
Almost Heroes
The Quiet Man
The Barkleys of Broadway
Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris
How to Steal A Million
The Intouchables
Paris Blues
Hugo
Charade
Paddington in Peru
The Assassination Bureau
The Honey Pot
The Manchurian Candidate (original)
Herbie Goes to Morocco
National Velvet
The Rains Came
Gaslight
Bedknobs and Broomsticks
Abbott and Costello: Jack and The Beanstalk
The Scarlet Pimpernel
The Pirates of Penzance
Take Me Out to the Ballgame
A Hole in the Head
The Canary Murder
Please Murder Me
Without Reservations
Death on the Nile
The Court Jester
They Got Me Covered
Raffles
The Picture of Dorian Gray
A Life At Stake
The Long, Hot Summer
Find Me Falling
KPop Demon Hunters
The Celtic Riddle
Nonnas
Benny and Joon
The Talk of the Town
The Bishop Murder Case
Autumn Harvest
It Happened One Night
What’s One More?
Pennie’s From Heaven
A Green Journey
Superman (2025)
Topper
Pfffft!
The Mummy
Iron Man
Iron Man 2
Thor
Storm in A Teacup
The Englishman Who Went Up A Hill and Came Down A Mountain
The Storied Life of AJ Fickery
Iron Man 3
The Avengers
I’ll Take Sweden
Another Man’s Poison
The Strawberry Blonde
Meet Me In St. Louis
Condemned to Devil’s Island
Guardians of the Galaxy
Winter Soldier
Ball of Fire
It Happened on Fifth Avenue
A Christmas Story
The Falcon Takes Over
Tenth Avenue Angel
The Grinch Who Stole Christmas
The Thin Man
The Bishop’s Wife
The Benson Murder Case
Yankee Doodle Dandy

Have you seen any of these movies? Which ones did you enjoy?

Comfy, Cozy Christmas: Meet Me In St. Louis and Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas

December 15, 2025December 15, 2025 / Lisa R. Howeler / 7 Comments

A vlogger I watch recently suggested watching Meet Me In St. Louis as a Christmas movie, mainly because of the song Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, which is sung toward the end of the movie.

I had never watched the movie because I’ve never felt like I was a big fan of Judy Garland, even though I haven’t seen her in much other than The Wizard of Oz.

I decided to give the movie a try a couple of weeks ago, though, and it turns out I don’t mind Judy as much as I thought and the movie does have a few Christmas-themed scenes (including a Christas Eve dance at the end), but it is much more than a Christmas movie.

The movie is funny, fun, warmhearted, and full of really sweet or fun songs. The dresses worn by the young women are gorgeous and it was shot in technicolor which makes all the beautiful dresses even more captivating.

The movie is a musical, which I didn’t know when I started it. I didn’t even know that this is where the song Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas came from. I also didn’t know this is where The Trolly Song (which I thought was just called Clang, Clang, Clang Goes the Trolly) came from. (That’s the song my husband always sings when he pretends he’s looped out from a knock on the head or when he is super tired. I’d say when he is drinking, but he doesn’t drink enough to get that drunk. I told him this movie is where the song he sings is from and he said he thought it was from The Simpsons. Ha! I think Homer does sing part of it in an episode.)

Yes, I have been living under a rock for my entire life.

If you’ve seen this movie you can skip over the next paragraph where I share what the movie is about.

The movie follows the Smith family, primarily Esther Smith (Judy) and her siblings as they grow up in St. Louis. The movie shows a year in the life of the family and there isn’t really a deep plot to the movie other than Judy trying to catch the eye of the college boy next door — John Pruitt — and her sister trying to get married. I don’t find the lack of a plot a detriment of the movie, by the way. The majority of the movie follows the different situations the youngest girls get themselves in, as well as the love life of Esther and her sister, and it is a fun journey.

The movie takes place in 1903.

The parents, grandfather, and housemaid are really all secondary characters but still very fun additions.

The youngest sisters, played by Margaret O’Brien (Tootie) and Joan Carroll (Agnes), are absolutely hilarious. The scenes with them are the funniest scenes in the movie. There is one that takes place on Halloween that is so insanely crazy I found myself gasping at the verbal “brutality” of these kids. (Written with a laugh, just to explain.)

If you’ve seen the movie, you know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t seen the movie, you’ll need to watch and find out.

In addition to Judy, the movie also stars Lucille Bremmer, Mary Astor, Leon Ames, and Harry Davenport.

The musical was released in 1944 and based on a series of short stories by Sally Benson.

Her stories story first appeared in the New Yorker magazine between June 21, 1941 and May 23, 1942. The twelve installments were published under at The Kensington Stories with Kensington referring to the fictional street address of the “Smiths’s” house.

Benson sold the rights to MGM in 1942 and was hired to work on the screenplay, which was ultimately written by Irving Brecher and Fred F. Finklehoffe with her help.

Benson published the stories as a novel of the same name with each chapter covering one month of the year the same year the movie came out.

According to AFI.com, Benson’s story was based on her own experiences growing up in St. Louis. “Tootie” was based on Benson, while “Esther” was inspired by her older sister.

The movie, incidentally, was directed by Vincent Morelli, who married Judy a year later. That marriage is a whole crazy story for another day.

Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas was written by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane who originally wrote it to be about celebrating Christmas during wartime. At the request of Judy, though, the lyrics were tweaked and the mood of the song was uplifted a bit. Judy, who was supposed to be 17 in the movie, is singing the song to her younger (5-year-old sister) in the movie and didn’t feel it was appropriate to sing a sad song at Christmastime to a little girl.

Meet Me In St. Louis was the second-highest grossing film that year behind the Bing Crosby movie Going My Way (the prequel to The Bells of St. Mary).

The movie produced three “standards” or songs that became very popular and well-known even years later: “The Trolley Song“, “The Boy Next Door” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas“, all written by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane for the film.

According to TCM.com, Meet Me in St. Louis received a very large amount of awards in 1944 and beyond. Here are some of those:

It was nominated for four Academy Awards including Best Cinematography, Best Original Song (for “The Trolley Song”), Best Musical Score and Best Writing, Screenplay.
In 1989 it won an ASCAP Award for the song “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” which they named the Most Performed Feature Film Standard.
The National Board of Review named it one of the top ten films of 1944.
In 1945 the Library of Congress selected it as one of 7 films to be the first inclusions in the library’s film collection.
In 2005 the American Film Institute ranked it the 10th Greatest Movie Musical of All Time.
In 2004 the American Film Institute ranked “The Trolley Song” from it as the 26th Greatest Movie Song of All Time.
In 2005 Time Magazine named it as one of the Top 100 All-Time Movies.

An interesting story I read while researching this movie was that Margaret O’Brien’s juvenile Oscar was stolen by a former maid of her family’s. The Academy gave her a replacement Oscar, but she still hoped to one day have her original Oscar returned to her. She used to search flea markets and collector auctions for it.

The story is a bit long, but the Oscar was eventually found and returned to her during a special ceremony held by the Academy.

At the time she said, “For all those people who have lost or misplaced something that was dear to them, as I have, never give up the dream of searching—never let go of the hope that you’ll find it because after all these many years, at last, my Oscar has been returned to me.”

There is plenty more information about the movie online, including on the TCM.com website: https://www.tcm.com/articles/musical/18523/meet-me-in-st-louis-1944

Have you ever seen this one?

______

Resources:

American Film Institute: https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/moviedetails/24066

TCM.com: https://www.tcm.com/articles/musical/18523/meet-me-in-st-louis-1944

This post is part of the Comfy, Cozy Christmas feature hosted by me and Erin at Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs. If you have a blog post that you would like to share as part of this annual link-up, please find out more here.

Classic Movie Impression: It Happened On Fifth Avenue

December 11, 2025December 11, 2025 / Lisa R. Howeler / 6 Comments

I’ve been watching less popular Christmas-themed movies around Christmas for the last couple of years. One of those movies was It Happened on Fifth Avenue (1947).

I truly thought I’d written about this movie in previous years, but I can’t find it when I search so I am writing about it now.

The movie is about a group of people who are sort of thrown together but it starts with a man named Alyosius T. McKeever (Victor Moore) who sneaks in the mansion of businessman Michael O’Connor (Charlie Ruggles) in New York City early in November when O’Connor goes to his home in Virginia for the winter.

McKeever is a “vagabond” or homeless man.

He lives in the home, wearing O’Connor’s clothes, and eating any food left at the house in the pantry.

The movie opens with him sneaking inside through the back fence and will later learn that he’s been doing this for some twenty years.

I, of course, am surprised that no one has ever seen him or seen the lights on in the house but, it’s a movie. Let’s suspend belief.

There are police who patrol the grounds, but McKeever has a system where he hides in the icebox (or a room they call the icebox) until the police have passed by. He also has the lights hooked up so they will shut off as soon as someone opens the front door.

One day McKeever meets Jim Bullock played by Don DeFore, sleeping on a park bench. Jim, a veteran, has been evicted from his apartment building because it is being torn down. Michael O’Connor is putting up an 80-story building in its place.

When Jim gets to the mansion and is settling in, he sees an award shaped like a boat with the name Michael O’Connor on it and accuses McKeever of taking over homes of people who can’t afford to live in family homes like his.

McKeever tells Jim he’s not really O’Connor, but a friend of his. Jim accepts this explanation easily

Jim isn’t sure what to think of this arrangement, but he needs a place to stay so he accepts it.

Soon we see Michael O’Connor, who is in Virgina having a board meeting. During the board meeting he gets a call from his daughter Trudy’s school and been told that it’s possible she’s run away.

Michael looks at a photo of two women and asks his assistant if he thinks that she has run off to her mother in Florida.

The man doesn’t know so Michael orders him to hire a private investigator and find his daughter (played by … get this name…Gale Storm).

His daughter, though, is already found for us viewers. She is at her father’s mansion looking for her clothes when Jim finds her. He demands to know what she’s doing there and suggests she is stealing from the mansion. He threatens to call the police.

Trudy, apparently smitten with Jim merely based on his appearance, decides not to tell him who she really is and tells him to go ahead and call the police.

McKeever pulls Jim aside and confesses all. He is not a friend of O’Connor, but is, instead, simply someone who takes advantage of the home being empty for a few months out of the year. When O’Connor leaves, he moves in and when O’Connor leaves Virginia, McKeever hitches his way to Virginia and moves in that house until it’s time to come back to New York.

(Again…suspend belief).

Jim isn’t sure what to make of the arrangement, but is amused and impressed that McKeever hasn’t been caught yet.

Trudy listens in and overhears what McKeever has been doing and smiles in an amused way. She decides she will find a way to stay on with the men since it will be a way to hide from her father for a while. She tells the men the truth, which is that she’s going to get a job at a music store so she can get back on her feet again. She then says she only broke into the house because she was hungry and desperate and then does a lovely fake faint to add to her story.

The men agree that she can stay. From here the movie will start to get a bit more complicated as more people are invited to stay at the mansion, including a family with small children. What could make all of this even more chaotic? Add in Michael O’Connor returning to New York to try to find his daughter and planning to return to the mansion.

One little thing that bothered me about this movie was how young Gale Storm looked and was supposed to be. She was supposed to be 18 but a romance develops between her and Jim and he seems considerably older than her. That was…awkward at times. However, I’m not sure how old Jim is actually supposed to be so maybe it isn’t so awkward. Gale was 22 at the time the film was made.

The screenplay for this movie was written by Everett Freeman. The original story was created by Herbert Clyde Lewis and Frederick Stephani.

Harry Revel wrote the songs “It’s A Wonderful, Wonderful Feeling.” “That’s What Christmas Means to Me” and “Speak My Heart” for the movie, according to the opening credits, but I wouldn’t call this movie a musical. One of the main characters simply sings a bit.

Gale Storm thought she’d be singing the parts in the film, but, unfortunately, she was told her voice would be dubbed over.

She later wrote in her memoir: “I couldn’t believe it. I thought that maybe the director didn’t know I’d been singing and dancing in films, and that if I spoke to him he’d let me do my own numbers. Well, I asked him, and he said no. I asked him to look at some of my musicals, and he said no. I asked him if I could sing for him, and he said no. His theory was that if you were a dancer, you didn’t sing; if you were a singer, you didn’t dance; and if you were an actor, you didn’t sing or dance. It was humiliating.”

Another song in the movie is “You’re Everywhere” sung by The King’s Men at 1930s/1940s barbershop quartet.

According to TCM.com, Frank Capra originally acquired the rights to the movie but passed it on to Allied Artists, a new subsidiary of Monogram Pictures, which used to develop B movies. It Happened on Fifth Avenue was the companies first major motion picture and was developed by Roy Del Ruth.

Not only was Gale upset about not being able to sing in the film, but she also was disappointed Capra didn’t direct it, according to the TCM.com article. She felt the movie was decidedly “Capra-esque” — “a warmhearted human story about the little guy with underlying social and political commetary. She said that she felt Del Ruth didn’t make the most of the story’s potential, but she may have been holding a grudge since he didn’t let her do her own singing.

Gale said Del Ruth wasn’t easy on anyone.

“I wasn’t the only one Del Ruth humiliated,” continued Storm in her biography. “Victor Moore was a dear, sweet old man who was kind to everyone; we all loved him. Except Del Ruth. Whatever Victor did, the director made him redo it — again and again. And Del Ruth never told the old man what he might have been doing wrong.”

Despite these complaints from Gale, the movie did well when it was released, with the actors receiving praise by reviewers and critics. It has now become a beloved classic as well.

Is this one you’ve ever seen? What did you think about it?

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