THE THIN MAN Murder, Mirth and Marriage  At The Movies

     Filming began in July 1939 and ran through August. Myrna Loy was just returning from a European vacation while an anxious William Powell was just getting back to work for the first time after a two year fight with cancer. Perhaps discouraged over his slow recovery from the second of his two operations, Powell remarked to his friend Quentin Reynolds “By the time I’m ready for Another Thin Man, Myrna and I will be too old to play anything but character parts.”

     It was Powell’s first film at MGM in nearly two years. He had last been on the lot completing Double Wedding when fiancée Jean Harlow had died unexpectedly of uremic poisoning on June 7, 1937. While he was recovering from that, he had been diagnosed with cancer. The nature of his illness had been kept quite and not many of the crew and cast had seen much of him in the intervening time. They only knew that he had spent the last year or so battling a serious illness.

     Even with doctors clearing Powell for work, Van Dyke was more than willing to make concessions for his star. As he told Powell-

For openers, your shooting schedule will be strictly ten to four, and that’s official. I won’t let you work any more than that even if you want to. You just learn your words and show up on time and leave the rest to me!

     Van Dyke also saw to it that the production was allocated four sound stages and a double than normal size crew to facilitate speedier setups. All the principals had stand-ins for lighting. Powell was given a limo for shuttling between the soundstages and his own portable dressing room had an oversized couch with extra pillows and blankets for between scene napping.

     When Powell finally appeared on set for the first day of shooting, he was greeted by a rousing round of cheers and applause from the crew. At a loss for a witty remark, he received a hug and a kiss from Loy. By the time filming had finished, many friends felt that the William Powell of old was back.

     The filming was not without its problems. Stromberg had been prescribed morphine by an unscrupulous doctor for a back injury. As his addiction to it increased so did the disorganization in his production unit. Despite any problems, the cast crew only needed to reunite for one day’s worth of retakes, shot on October 13. The unit also traveled to the town of Chico in Butte County in northern California for the exteriors of the Bidwell Mansion.

     Another Thin Man was released on November 17, 1939 and once again the reviews were good. Frank Nugent wrote in the New York Times wrote, “This third of the trademarked Thin Men takes its murders as jauntily as ever, confirming our impression that matrimony need not be too serious a business and provides as light an entertainment as an holiday amusement seeker is likely to find.”

     Despite the reviews and the studio’s wish to continue the series, this would be the last Thin Man film to have both Hammett’s and the Hackett’s participation. On December 7, 1938, Hammett submitted an eight-page outline for a fourth film, tentatively titled “Sequel to the Thin Man.” (Evidently written very quickly after completing his work on the script for Another Thin Man.) The story featured a host of returning characters from the first two films.

     In the outline, Macaulay, the murderous lawyer from the first film, has escaped from prison, vowing to kill Mimi. Mimi and son Gilbert move to San Francisco, but are followed by Macaulay, who is masquerading in drag. They go to Mimi’s first husband Chris, who is back with his first wife Georgia. Georgia is seeing Morelli behind Chris’s back. Chris and Dancer, the nightclub owner from After the Thin Man, plan on extorting money from Mimi.

     After a “battle royale” at Nick and Nora’s between Morelli, Dancer, Georgia, Chris and Mimi, Chris is murdered on the way to his hotel. In his haste to leave the scene, Macauly drops his wig and is arrested for murder. Nick isn’t convinced of Macauly’s guilt and begins to investigate. He ultimately proves that it was Gilbert who shot Chris, convinced that the money Mimi was paying in extortion was rightfully his, as his father’s heir.

     The entire plot bordered on the ridiculous and some of Hammett’s biographers have speculated if the whole thing wasn’t done to test Stromberg’s patience.

     The outline was rejected on Christmas Day, 1938. By early spring of 1939, Hammett was back to work adapting a 1929 Continental Op story called “Fly Paper” into the original, non-Thin Man screen story Girl Hunt. On July 14, Hammett’s contract was cancelled and Girl Hunt was returned to his agent, rejected on August 12, 1939.

     The Hacketts also had no desire to continue working on the series. As Frances later told Myrna Loy, “Finally, I just threw up on my typewriter. I couldn’t do it again; I couldn’t write another one.”

PART 4