A most astonishing aspect of their 14-film teamings is that within that group is a series, The Thin Man. Since they made a half dozen of them, it wouldn't seem at all unusual if their other films bombed because audiences couldn't accept them as anyone beyond Nick and Nora Charles of The Thin Man. But that wasn't the case at all. No matter where the twosome showed up, audiences lapped up their perfect timing. Before they ever shared a screen, Powell had been in 56 films and Loy had made 78, so they certainly knew their way around a movie set.
He set off for Manhattan and the bright lights of Broadway when he was only 18. He joined the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and found early work doing stock, a bit of vaudeville and finally landing some Broadway roles. But he had his eye on films and in 1922 headed for Hollywood. Two years later he hired on at Paramount Studios, doing a seven-year stretch which he disliked. He felt he was going nowhere but when he began a short series of films on detective Philo Vance, things picked up. It could also be said it was a training ground for the future Thin Man series.
He did a turn at Warner Bros where he was also fairly unhappy. However, when sound came to the movies, it didn't take long at all for the public to discover and embrace his urbane voice, stately manner, impeccable style and masterful comic timing. Soon MGM offered him a contract and he never looked back.
Loy moved to Los Angeles as a child and determined in her earliest years that she would be a dancer. She trained extensively in that regard. Her first job out of high school was at the already-famed Grauman's Chinese Theater. In those days the theater offered, along with a first-run movie, a floor show. Loy was hired as a dancing chorus girl. To tell you the truth, I can't imagine.
As though it leaped off the pages of a script of a Warner Bros' 1930's musical, the girl was discovered by a talent scout who brought her to the attention of a photographer who got the photo to Rudolph Valentino who admired her but couldn't use her. He, in turn, got the photo to a casting director who wanted her to test for a film that she didn't get but the test was seen by someone working on the 1926 version of Ben-Hur and she did get a small role. Phew. I bet we're as exhausted as she must have been.
It's funny. Powell's earliest movie career, the one he didn't like, was playing villains and other unsavory roles. Loy's earliest career was playing seductresses, exotics and often Asians. No wonder her early career didn't work any better than Powell's. But MGM hired Loy about the same time they brought Powell aboard. After a few films studio honchos saw her differently... she was elegant, graceful, smart as a whip, frequently irreverent and always had a twinkle in her eye. More importantly, someone had the insight to see her as a screen partner to Powell. From their first film they scattered the magic.
Manhattan Melodrama (1934)
It was the first time they worked together and the third time they do so this year. It was also the third time she worked with Clark Gable and there would be three more pairings after this film. Despite my great enjoyment of both actors, I think it was the divine Loy that gave each partnership that extra dollop of allure. While she would usually work in comedies with both actors, this film possesses few laughs. It concerned two friends from early childhood (cute little Mickey Rooney played young Gable) that take wildly different paths but never stop being pals. Powell is a district attorney seeking the governorship and Gable runs a gambling joint and kills people he doesn't like.
Loy is frustrated being Gable's girl at the beginning of the story but she leaves him when he won't give up his thuggery. After she meets Powell, she falls in love with him and they marry. Their life and his political integrity is compromised by Gable's misdeeds.
It's a fine drama with all three participants up to the task and looking young and gorgeous.
Manhattan Melodrama also became famous because gangster John Dillinger was killed outside the theater after seeing it. He was reportedly so crazy about Loy that he risked coming out of hiding to see her newest film. I suspect the subject matter held some allure for him as well.
The Thin Man (1934)
Dashiell Hammett wrote the book featuring the characters of Nick and Nora Charles, ace detective and his tag-along wife. She was high society and he knew every lowlife in town. Hammett said his idea came from his days as a Pinkerton detective in Montana and the saucy banter between the duo was based on his own with girlfriend Lillian Hellman. It was originally supposed to be a little B picture but it caught on with such fire that Powell and Loy ended up doing five more Thin Man pictures. Powell would cop his first Oscar nomination.
Nick, who certainly likes to knock back the cocktails, has not worked in the detective business since marrying the wealthy Nora and he now says his only job is managing her assets. She is a little bored with her privileged life and begs Nick to take up detective work again by looking into the case of a murdered girl. She says since the case involves no fingerprints, no clues, no gun and no suspects, it should prove fascinating. Nick doesn't want to because, as he says, he's a gentleman now. He's paying little attention to his deadbeat friends who always seem to be around.
The film showed the great flare for comedy the two have, especially after the heavy melodrama in Manhattan. And the lines... oh my, were they priceless. When a cop is rustling through Nora's bureau attempting to locate some evidence, she cries out to the assembled crowd, what's that man doing in my drawers? Nick gives a little mug for the camera. Later she says to a butler at her crowded dinner table, will you serve the nuts, and then quickly adds, will you serve the guests the nuts?
Evelyn Prentice (1934)
Back to murder but, as with Manhattan Melodrama, there is no comedy. Again they play a married couple but unlike any they would ever play with one another. Both are adulterers! He is once more an attorney and is defending a woman (Rosalind Russell, in her film debut) with whom he has been having a brief affair. Loy gets wind of it and because she is neglected because of her husband's busy work life, she half-heartedly embarks on her own affair with a pompous gigolo. When he attempts to blackmail her with incriminating letters she wrote to him, she shoots him with his own gun. She believes she killed him but when the man's jealous girlfriend is arrested for the murder, Powell defends her. The finale is all played out in court with great relish.
I would not consider this their best film and partially because I think Loy was miscast. Her pal and Powell's real-life love, Jean Harlow, would have been far better. Lovely Myrna Loy, movieland's favorite wife, a cheater! Oh sure. It also seemed to me to be poorly titled. Why give her character the title when Powell's role was greater?
Nonetheless, three films in 1934, one of which was a Thin Man, made these two extremely popular at the box office and the public was clamoring for more. And more. And more.
The Great Ziegfeld (1936)
Here is the biggest film they made together and the only one to cop Oscar's best picture (in a large field of contenders). This one is Powell all the way as Broadway impresario Florenz Ziegfeld. Loy plays his wife, actress Billie Burke, but does not appear until the last quarter of the film, blonde and about as fetching as she ever looked. The early part of the film deals with his star performer, Anna Held, who achieved common law status as his wife. Viennese actress Luise Rainer, in only her second American film, would win an Oscar as best actress.
As it is with most movie biographies, this one is a little soft on the facts but without question this is one big, splashy extravaganza with, I believe, the most lavish production numbers one is likely to ever see in a movie. Nobody could do it like MGM.
It was a great year for Powell who copped an Oscar nomination for one he did without Loy, the screwball comedy, My Man Godfrey, which co-starred his real-life ex-wife, Carole Lombard. Also in 1936, Loy and Gable (Lombard's next husband) were crowned the King and Queen of Hollywood because their movies were so financially successful.
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| Playing older in The Great Ziegfeld |
Libeled Lady (1936)
Here is a splendid cast, indeed. Besides Powell and Loy, there is Spencer Tracy (fourth billed, no less) and Powell's real-life fiancee, Jean Harlow. This is a wonderful film that is the subject of its own posting.
After the Thin Man (1936)
The crime-solving, cocktail-loving Nick and Nora are back for the second time and it was the sixth pairing for Powell and Loy... if you're keeping track. As always, Nick is reluctant to put on his gumshoes again but how can he turn down his charming wife when she tells him her cousin's husband is missing. Woody Van Dyke, the director of the original, was back and again it has some of the work of Hammett. A young and rather handsome Jimmy Stewart came aboard in a rather important role. After solving the case Nick says to Nora... let's get something to eat. I'm thirsty. As we fade out, Nick catches Nora knitting booties. Oh my...
Double Wedding (1937)
I told a friend a few days ago that I finally saw this for the first time and it is clearly my least favorite of all their films together. She said what, it's my favorite. The only thing it had going for it at all was that Powell plays a struggling artist living in a trailer instead of his usual upper crust, stylish gentleman.
What's really wrong here... and I gulp as I say it... is Loy. If this is a comedy, someone forget to tell her. She is downright unpleasant. Myrna Loy! She is a pushy, arrogant, humorless older sister who stage manages her sister's life in such ways as deciding who she will marry, when, where the honeymoon will be and even how many children they will have. That wouldn't be funny in real life and it didn't get too many chuckles on film. Perhaps seven films into their pairings and they wanted to try something different when they weren't being Nick and Nora. Nice try. Ooops.
Another Thin Man (1939)
The Charleses, now parents, get away to Long Island for a quiet weekend and get swept up in the murder of a munitions expert. There was a funny scene showing their luggage being shipped with a few crates being among them. One has "Asta" marked on it and another has a fireplug in it.
I thought both Powell and Loy looked a little under the weather in this one. Oh, the witty exchanges were still there, courtesy of screenwriters Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett who were still interpreting Hammett's saucy prose, but they looked so wan. Deciding to do my own investigation into this, I discovered in the two years since Powell and Loy had worked together, his fiancee (and a good Loy friend), Jean Harlow, had unexpectedly died and he was being treated for colon cancer.
I Love You Again (1940)
This is just too silly to consider as being one of their best. It's another one of those implausible amnesia stories for which Hollywood seemed to have a penchant. While Powell is trying to recover from his memory loss, he rediscovers a wife who is planning to divorce him. Of course, he has no idea why.
But still another film directed by Van Dyke, it is proof positive that no matter how weak the material, this team is so special and has such magic that they can get by with just about anything.
Love Crazy 1941)
This is one of their best non-Thin Man movies... a high-caliber comedy with Powell playing it more broadly than he usually does. Any time he slips out of his usual elegant ways he just cracks me up. There are moments here that linger in slapstick, especially when his head gets caught in an elevator door. Both Powell and Loy each suspect the other of being unfaithful and while it certainly appears that each is guilty, we, the audience, knows it's not true.
Character actress Florence Bates, who often played interfering landladies to perfection, here plays Loy's mother and Powell's nemesis as she insinuates herself into their marriage and sets a series of funny misunderstandings in motion. Jack Carson is his usual blustery self as an innocent man whom Loy thinks she has an arrangement with to make Powell jealous (a case of mistaken identity which then finds her in the company of a horned dog).
Toward the end of the story, Powell, more desperate than ever to win Loy back, shows up in drag (what happened to that pencil-thin mustache?) to play his elder sister. A very funny flick.
Shadow of the Thin Man (1941)
This is the first installment that presented a new team of writers although director Van Dyke was still around to guide them along. The plot concerned the death of a jockey and with Nick and Nora being racetrack aficionados, there was no way Nick wasn't going to get involved, especially with Nora dying to get into the heart of things as apprentice detective in residence.
Their son is featured more and appears to be around 5-6. The kid and Powell have some amusing scenes together although, frankly, both Powell and Loy seem a little long in the tooth to have a child this age.
Donna Reed and Barry Nelson, both only with their second film roles, offer their youthful exuberance. As with all of MGM's franchises, The Thin Man served as a training ground for new actors under contract to the studio. More interesting to me is seeing the great New York drama coach, Stella Adler, in a decent-sized acting role.
The Thin Man Goes Home (1945)
This entry into the Charles' frolics and the next one are generally considered to be inferior to the others. It was the first time Van Dyke didn't direct one (here it is MGM stalwart, Richard Thorpe) and that seems to generally bring about a bad omen to a project. It was also written by another new pair of writers.
I was, however, especially fond of this one because it showed the Charles' in a new light. Nick and Nora travel to his birthplace to spend a quiet time with his parents, winningly played by longtime character actors, Lucile Watson and Harry Davenport. Little Nicky is left at home and is not in this installment. Nora doesn't understand why the bond seems non-existent between Nick and his father and she's determined to find out. It seems that the father, a doctor, wanted Nick to join him in his practice and was unhappy when his son became a boozing, part-time detective who may have married a rich woman for the life her money could provide him.
Things change when there's a knock at the door and Nick answers it. A man gushes that he'd like to have a moment of Nick's time to tell him something important and the man is shot to death at that moment. There is no need for Nora to coax him into taking the case. This one has Nick's complete attention and of course for the climax with all of the cast in one room, the father is finally impressed with what a savvy son he has.
Song of the Thin Man (1947)
The song was the swan song of the Thin Man series and sadly, was probably time. For one thing, they both looked older, even from just having worked together two years earlier. Additionally, the light looked like it had gone from their eyes and they looked a bit weary. That delicious witty banter between the Nick and Nora exchanges had only a whisper of the zip from the previous outings.
This incarnation also clearly has a harder edge than the franchise had ever attempted... less fun, more drama. Of course, it was but another new set of writers and another new director in the form of second-stringer Edward Buzzell.
The plot concerns the murder of a society bandleader aboard a cruise ship. He is quite a disliked man and there is a never-ending supply of suspects. Those suspects came in the series' most well-known or about-to-be well-known cast including Gloria Grahame, Keenan Wynn, Jayne Meadows, Don Taylor, Leon Ames, William Bishop and Marie Windsor. Additionally, this is the most grown-up Nicky Jr. we have yet seen and luckily he is delightfully played by 10-year old Dean Stockwell.
The Senator Was Indiscreet (1947)
Some listings say that Powell and Loy made 13 films together rather than 14, but guess what, technically this is number 14. Loy is not his leading lady (that is Ella Raines) in this one but had the briefest of cameo roles. The comedy concerns a pompous, crooked senator who is running for President around the time that his diary is missing, causing all kinds of complications.
It is the only film directed by Broadway director and playwright George S. Kaufman and is proof that he certainly didn't have all his ducks in order to make a film. Powell, however, seems to come out of it relatively unscathed, a testament to his great sense of style and proficiency.
And then...
By the late forties, both had moved into character parts and each had the role of a lifetime. In 1947 he was a late 19th century, most meticulous parent (read: control freak) in Life with Father, an utterly charming comedy with Powell receiving his third and final Oscar nomination. He was smitten with Lauren Bacall in 1953's How to Marry a Millionaire and lovingly honest as Doc in his final film, 1955's naval comedy-drama, Mister Roberts. It was a fitting send-off.
She was the devoted mother and wife in William Wyler's Academy Award-winning The Best Years of Our Lives. Until the end of her life she would say it was her favorite film. I feel certain she means that based on what the film had to say, not how happy the set was. Likely that honor goes to her films with Powell.
In addition to being known as the Queen of Hollywood, she was also known as the perfect wife and Best Years helped promote that reputation. No one cracked up at that more than Loy herself. She said I have been married four times, divorced four times, have no children and can't boil an egg.
Two of her best roles in her later career were both playing alcoholics... certainly a case of playing against type. She was hauntingly broken as Robert Ryan's emotionally-abused wife in Lonelyhearts (1958) and in a complete state of disarray as Paul Newman's mother in From the Terrace (1960).
Fourteen films together... imagine. They must be at the top for an opposite-sex duo that wasn't married. Of some of the teams of the day, Astaire/Rogers did 10 films together, Hepburn/Tracy and Flynn/de Havilland were in nine, MacDonald/Eddy and Gable/Crawford managed eight.
After Powell's death Loy was asked about her relationship with him. She said I never enjoyed my work more than when I worked with William Powell. He was a brilliant actor, a delightful companion, a great friend and above all, a true gentleman.
A number of years earlier Powell was asked about Loy and said: 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 timing. Many times I've played with an actress who seemed to be separated from me by a plate-glass window; there was no contact at all. But 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.
Their witty repartee was certainly at the heart of their teamwork. Yes, certainly, two people in perfect timing. There is no doubt. Their chemistry is as obvious to audiences today as when they first appeared together
Adding to this picture is that he was a close-to-the-vest but devoted Republican while she was a noisy, passionate Democrat. And they got along and showed respect to one another. Weren't people funny back then?
Next posting:
Let's visit another studio
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