ANOTHER THIN MAN: Blu-ray (MGM, 1940) Warner Archive
Urbanity, thy name is William Powell. Indeed, the
world has never known as more suave, sleek or sophisticated leading man. In his
fourteen outings with co-star, Myrna Loy, Powell established himself as a man
of ostensibly unforced charisma, exquisite taste in all good things, and, with
the light touch of incredulity to laugh wholeheartedly at himself, as well as others.
Herein, we recall Mr. Powell’s poise in sending Loy, newly crowned ‘queen’ of
the movies by Look Magazine, a floral box of soiled, rotting grapes with a card
reading ‘From William, the 4th’ – Powell, to have come in
fourth for the coveted title of ‘King’ of the movies in the same poll, but slyly
bowing to Loy’s victory with ‘sour grapes.’ Powell was yet to receive two
devastating blows to his conceit – if, indeed, he possessed any – both in 1937;
the sudden loss of his 26-yr.-old fiancée, screen siren, Jean Harlow, felled by uremic poisoning, and then, himself, to face a diagnosis of rectal cancer for
which Powell underwent emergency surgery and experimental radium treatment,
miraculously to drive the disease into full remission within two years. Absent
from the screen for nearly as much time, William Powell strode back into form,
opposite Loy again. Having established the criteria for sophisticated crime
solver, Nick Charles in The Thin Man (1934), and, After The Thin Man
(1936), it was inevitable L.B. Mayer and the studio should re-team him with Loy
yet again for W.S. Van Dyke’s rather innocuously titled third installment - Another
Thin Man (1939), ostensibly, the best in the series. And Powell, already
twice Oscar-nominated for the aforementioned kick-starter to this fun film
franchise, as well as his loan-out to Universal for My Man Godfrey
(1936), would again get the Oscar-nod for 1947’s Life with Father, proved
time and circumstances had done very little, if anything, to break his
Teflon-coated resolve or lithe and gentlemanly magnetism.
Another Thin Man is the benefactor of Powell and
Loy’s well-seasoned uber-wit and sass, to have since taken the characters in
Dashiell Hammett’s original pulp novel to the nth degree of erudition by screenwriters,
Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, herein with an uncredited assist by the slick
and saucy, Anita Loos. Not enough is written about Powell’s costar these days;
Myrna Loy, rising like cream from out of the ‘dancing prologues’ at Grauman’s Egyptian
Theater, catching the eye of matinee idol, Rudolph Valentino along the way. Loy’s
evolution from slinky vamp and villainess to, as Powell’s Nick Charles describes
his wife, Nora, “a lanky brunette with a wicked jaw” took time. Loy
might have remained in the background indefinitely. Indeed, her particular
brand of sexual attraction was not obvious. Nor did it lend itself to the
blonde sexpots of her generation, but rather, the femme fatale class, up to no
good and doomed never to get the man in the final reel. That all changed when
Loy began to date producer, Arthur Hornblower Jr. while he was still a married
man. Loy’s first encounter with Powell in 1934’s Clark Gable vehicle, Manhattan
Melodrama caught the attention of director, one-take Woody Van Dyke, who
famously pushed her, fully clothed, into a swimming pool at a Hollywood party
to test her reaction to extreme adversity. L.B. Mayer had little faith in Loy’s
ability to do comedy but was a gambling man, and pleasantly, to be proven wrong
when The Thin Man became one of the biggest bell-ringers of the year.
After appearing in 80 movies to little advantage, The Thin Man made Myrna
Loy a super star and everyone’s favorite girl to come home to.
Few on-screen marriages have been as successful as
Powell and Loy, inevitably either cast as already marrieds or soon-to-be happily-ever-after
bound in wedlock. In life, the two remained excellent friends. Alas, fans who
hoped to someday see them actually walk down the aisle as man and wife were to remain
bitterly disappointed. The thrice married Powell would remain so to his third, MGM
contract player, Diana Lewis from 1940 until his death in 1984, while Loy ran
her course in four short-lived marriages, the last to Secretary of State for
Public Affairs, Howland H. Sargeant ending in 1960, nearly 3 decades before her
death in 1993. Outspoken about Metro’s casting hierarchy, especially where race
was concerned, Loy set aside her career aspirations at the outbreak of WWII to
do her part for the war effort. The temerity of her objections to Adolf Hitler resulted
in her movies being banned in Germany. But she would remain off the screen from
1943 to 1945, returning in – what else? – another installment in The
Thin Man franchise, for which she unequivocally proved time had not
withered her ability to romantically spar with her co-star.
Another Thin Man represents Powell and Loy at the
apex of their screen sophistication, tooling around in a sporty 1935 Lincoln
prototype with 1939 New York World’s Fair license plates, and crime-solving
their way into our hearts yet again. It is also the last of the ‘Thin Man’
movies to fully reunite all the players who had made the franchise such a huge
success: Powell, Loy, Dashiell Hammett, Goodrich and Hackett, and W.S. Van Dyke.
And herein, we pause to honor Van Dyke – born Woodbridge Strong Van Dyke, and a
beloved of L.B. Mayer. Over a span of 25-years, the larger-than-life Van Dyke directed
90 pictures with a keen-eyed economy for getting the job done, always on time
and usually, under budget. Attempting a career as a lumberjack, gold
prospector, railroad man and mercenary, Van Dyke hit his stride in the movies
as an assistant to the legendary D.W. Griffith in 1916. His career interrupted by
enlistment in WWI, Van Dyke’s reputation as a film-maker came into focus in
1920, adopting a very documentarian feel for the craft, and insisting on
rehearsals aplenty, but only ‘one take’ to get the shooting of a scene in the
can. Van Dyke first caught Mayer’s attention when he was forced to take over
shooting of White Shadows in the South Seas (1928) from ailing director,
Robert J. Flaherty. Over the next decade, Van Dyke would bring such legendary
Metro product to the screen as Tarzan the Ape Man (1932), Manhattan
Melodrama and The Thin Man (1934), San Francisco (1936) and Marie
Antoinette (1938). He also filmed all but 2 of Jeanette MacDonald and
Nelson Eddy’s wildly popular screen operettas, including their most memorable
outings, Naughty Marietta (1935), Rose-Marie (1936) and Sweethearts
(1938). A breezy and brilliant bon vivant, Van Dyke was to be fatally stricken
with heart disease and cancer while beginning work on Dragon Seed (1944).
Rather than wait for the inevitable, he committed suicide in February, 1943 –
leaving the usually Teutonic Mayer shaken to his very core.
In this, Powell and Loy’s 8th pairing
together, their 3rd as the famous husband and wife crime-solvers, Van
Dyke inveigles Nick and Nora Charles in a deftly executed mystery vaguely reminiscent
of Hammett’s ‘The Farewell Murder’. Somewhere along the way, actor, Rafael
Alcayde replaced Alexander D'Arcy as the gigolo, the parade of memorable faces
to also include Virginia Grey as Lois MacFay, C. Aubrey Smith as her stepfather,
Colonel MacFay, Otto Kruger (Van Slack), Ruth Hussey (Dorothy Waters), Nat
Pendleton (Lieutenant Gould), Patric Knowles (Dudley Horn), Sheldon Leonard (as
the crook, Phil Church) and loveably crusty, Marjorie Main as Mrs. Dolley. One
could fill an entire chapter with discussions about the careers of these
beloveds of Hollywood – with the exception of Main, who found ever-lasting immortality
as Ma Kettle over at Universal – to remain stock company bit players. On this third outing, Nick and Nora are
summoned to the estate of Colonel Burr McFay, an explosives manufacturer who
believes small-time hood, Phil Church is conspiring to have him murdered. The
murder does indeed take place as predicted one dark and stormy night, leaving
Nick to pursue Church and his accomplices through the usual series of plot
twists and turns. Darker, and perhaps more intelligently scripted than the rest
of the series, Another Thin Man still retains the comedic sparkle of
that coyly sparring couple.
There are some delicious zingers here, as in Nora, ‘getting
rid’ of a gaggle of prying reporters by informing them they are out of scotch,
to which Nick glibly replies, “What a gruesome thought!” At the outset
of Nick and Nora’s arrival in town, Nora tells her husband he has received
another call from a Long Island ‘operator’ inquiring whether or not Nick
believes he ought to answer it. “Certainly not,” Powell’s Nicky replies
with a glint in his eye, “She knows better than that. I told her I was
bringing the wife along this time” to which Loy’s sweetly amused gal/pal
fluffs off, “I don't know why I always take it for granted that you're
kidding.” Advancing the timeline since the last movie by 2-years, affords
the writers to introduce a son, Nicky Jr. (William A. Poulsen) to the proceedings.
Reuniting with Asta, their beloved wire-haired terrier, the Charles are almost
immediately invited to a weekend retreat by Colonel MacFay, the overseer of
Nora’s vast estate. As always, Nick is reluctant to partake of the journey, knowing
full and well it means another mystery is afoot. Indeed, approaching MacFay’s
country house under the cover of night, Nick’s headlight beams fall on the
startling discovery of a corpse lying along the side of the road. Curiously,
when he doubles back, the body has disappeared. The Colonel’s home is
surrounded by armed check posts, MacFay suspecting Phil Church, a thug with
supposed clairvoyant dreams, of plotting his demise. At first, Nick does not
really buy into MacFay’s paranoia. Besides, his home is tighter than Fort Knox.
Alas, during dinner, word arrives that the pool house is on fire – another failed
‘attempt’ to strike fear into MacFay’s heart. Nick learns Church is living
nearby and pays him a visit. Church implies to Nick that MacFay framed him in a
shady business set-up and hints further retribution will be his, even
suggesting he had a dream about Nora and Nicky Jr., causing Nick to sock Church
in the jaw as his moll, Smitty (Muriel Hutchison)
and hired goon, Dum-Dum (Abner Biberman) look on.
Sometime later that evening, a shot rings out, awakening
the entire house. Nick explores and discovers MacFay quite dead, his throat
slit from ear to ear. Asta digs up the murder weapon and presents it to Nick.
Thoroughly displeased with the bungled police investigation, Nick and Nora
movie MacFay’s adopted daughter, Lois, the housekeeper, Mrs. Bellam and the old
colonel’s secretary, Freddie (Tom Neal) into their Manhattan apartment.
Meanwhile, against his wishes, Nick discovers Nora is doing a bit of amateur sleuthing
on her own, running into Dum-Dum in the process. Dum-Dum confides about Church’s
other gal/pal, Linda Mills with whom Church was with on the night of MacFay’s
murder. Intercepted by a pair of thugs at Mills’ apartment, Nick nevertheless is
quick-witted enough to telephone Lieutenant Gould first. Meanwhile, a reformed
ex-con Nick sent up for petty larceny, Creeps Binder (Harvey Bellaver) insists
on throwing a birthday party for Nick Jr. In the resultant chaos, populated by
all sorts of small-time hoods Nick had previously arrested, Church attempts to
kidnap the Charles’ son. Instead, he is shot dead by an unseen assassin. Now,
Nick pieces together the clues to reveal Linda Mills and Lois MacFay are one in
the same. It was she who plotted with Church to murder her stepfather, gain the
inheritance and run off with him to Cuba. Smitty was supposed to be a frame-up
for the crime. Instead, Church fell in love with her, incurring Lois’ ire. Now,
Lois infers she has taken baby Nicky as a means to ensure her escape. Instead,
one of the ex-cons attending the party returns with Nicky in tow, having
honestly mistaken Nicky Jr. for his own. Lois is arrested and taken to jail.
Another Thin Man is a brilliantly conceived second
sequel, illustrating Mayer’s affinity for cost-effective franchise
picture-making, something his late VP in Charge of Production, Irving Thalberg,
would likely never have approved. Under Thalberg’s reign, MGM were the
purveyors of fewer, but far more lavishly mounted super-productions, Thalberg’s
reasoning, that with superior product he could lure a larger portion of the ticket-buying
public to invest in these expensive super-colossuses. While Thalberg’s logic
was sound, Mayer was not a fan of his profligate spending. After Thalberg’s
shockingly premature death, Mayer retooled many of his more ambitious projects
with a scaled-down business acumen, still squarely focused on quality, but at a
price point to allow more pictures to be made per annum, while still maintaining
the hallmarks that had put Metro on the map and made their movie output the envy
of the world. The Thin Man was just one such ongoing revenue stream for
the studio during these terrible years of Depression and war, with others to
include Young Dr. Kildare (1937-47), Maisie (1939-47), Tarzan
(1932-42), and, Andy Hardy (1937-58). Viewed today, Another Thin Man
is not only a valiant successor to the original movie that kick-started the
franchise, but a great stand-alone movie, even for those who have never seen a ‘Thin
Man’ movie before. The bulk of
the praise here is obviously owed Powell and Loy for their winning screen chemistry.
But we also need to acknowledge Mayer’s genius in having the great ‘good sense’
to recognize a franchise is only as good as its latest installment. The Thin
Man movies are exemplars in how to hand-craft solid entertainment,
expressly built around winning personalities. Powell and Loy…there’s nothing to
touch them. Nothing before, and most certainly, nothing since. Enjoy.
There is plenty to enjoy in Warner Archive’s newly
remastered Blu-ray. Not only does the new 4K scan from original elements improve
upon contrast and grayscale tonality, the image here is free of age-related
artifacts and otherwise, solidly represented with excellent black levels,
superb fine detailing, and a light modicum of film grain appearing very indigenous
to its source. This looks about as good as one might anticipate, with the mono
DTS 2.0 audio sounding resilient besides. I could suggest it is rather disheartening
Warner never bothered to include audio commentaries with any of these movies,
especially in the good ole days when DVD releases were generally accompanied by
some very fine ‘extra features.’ But I really cannot poo-poo WAC for their
efforts here. It is the movie that counts, after all, and WAC has spent its
money wisely on a renewed image harvest that easily bests its old DVD release,
so crisp and subtly nuanced, it just looks like film in motion and really does
justice to the cinematography, shared, on this occasion, by William H. Daniels,
Oliver T. Marsh and an uncredited John F. Seitz. This looks and sounds fabulous, and like the
previous two Thin Man movies gone before it to Blu, Another
Thin Man in hi-def comes very highly recommended! Keep ‘em coming, Warner Archive. Three down.
Three to go!
FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)
4
VIDEO/AUDIO
5+
EXTRAS
1
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