Overlooked Classics: Emma (1932)

 It amazes me that Marie Dressler and so many of the films she appeared in are so forgotten today. From 1930 to her death in 1934, Marie was voted as the biggest box office drawl in Hollywood. She was not your typical Hollywood star, mostly because she was in her 60's at this time, but she was extremely popular with early 1930's audiences. One of her best performances was in the 1932 film Emma.

This film was directed by Clarence Brown, who had previously directed Marie in Anna Christie (1930, Greta Garbo's first talkie). Brown was a big director of the silent era directing such movies as Flesh and the Devil (1926), Kiki (1926), and The Trail of '98 (1928). He would continue to have a great career in the talkie era with The Yearling (1946), National Velvet (1944), and Conquest (1937), among many others.

In this film Marie plays a nanny named Emma, who is essentially a mother in all but name of the children. After the children grow up, she decides to take a trip to Niagara Falls. She is worried about leaving the family. The family's father (Jean Hersholt) decides to go with her and ends up asking Emma to marry her. The father passes away and leaves the money to Emma. His children are angry and want to sue Emma over this money. The exception to this is Ronnie (Richard Cromwell) who has a stronger connection to her than the other children.

This film also featured Myrna Loy in her first role for MGM. She was also working on two other films at this time and was very stressed. Marie told Myrna "Get your chin up, kid. You've got the whole world ahead of you." Helping Loy to gain back her confidence and put on a great performance. Loy had nothing but nice things to say about Marie Dressler in her autobiography Being and Becoming. She would go on to a great career at MGM especially with the classic Thin Man movie series. 

Emma is an amazing film. Marie Dressler's performance is near perfect, the script is great, the film is fantastically directed, and everything just works. The story is sentimental but is extremely effective and the sentiment never feels forced. This is a must watch movie, for all lovers of classic film.

The movie was a big success at the box office and Marie Dressler was nominated for an academy award for this film (though she didn't win).

Recourses Used
tcm.com/tcmdb/title/1546/Emma/articles.html

Another Thin Man (1939)

The third entry in The Thin Man series is an excellent comedy-mystery. While it may not live up to the first movie (not that that is an insult in the slightest), but it is very entertaining in its own right. I was lucky enough to see this movie at The Old Town Music Hall last night and seeing this with an audience proved to me how delightful this film truly is, as everybody was enjoying it just as much as I was.

This film's production was plagued by health problems for star William Powell. Filming was meant to start in early 1938, but before any filming could be done, Powell was too obviously having health problems. These health problems were later revealed to be cancer. This was a tough time for Powell in general. As if having cancer weren't bad enough he had also recently lost his wife, actress Jean Harlow a year earlier and hadn't quite emotionally recovered yet. Powell would have operations in March 1938 and January 1939, and with the success of these he would be able to return to work in fall of 1939. Meanwhile he had to turn down some great movie roles including that of Maxim De Winter in Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940). When Powell arrived for the first day of filming he received a standing ovation from the cast and crew, which embarrassed him quite a bit. Director Woody Van Dyke (who had also directed the previous two Thin Man movies) broke up this scene by stating "what are we wasting time for? Let's get to work." Van Dyke was known for making movies extremely quickly but he did make allowances for Powell's health with this film. Filming would only last six hours a day and crews would be doubled to compensate. Still in typical W.S. Van Dyke fashion the film was finished rather quickly and was released in November of 1939.

Another Thin Man marked the last Thin Man movie to be written by husband and wife team Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett (this is a rare Thin Man sequel to be based off an actual story by Dashiell Hammett (who wrote the original novel) (this was a short story entitled The Farewell Murder). Myrna Loy would later give the reason for this in her autobiography Being and Becoming stating "Do you know I never saw them at Metro? It's terrible, really, but unless they sent for the writers to get us out of a hole, we seldom saw them on the set....I didn't meet the Hacketts until I moved to New York in the fifties. We became friends, I'm happy to say, and Albert facetiously explained one day why they didn't write the last three Thin Man pictures: 'Finally I just threw up on my typewriter. I couldn't do it again; I couldn't write another one.' Perhaps we all should have concurred; those last three never really touched the pervious ones." Truth be told when you compare these first three movies to the last three, there is no doubt the ones written by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett are well above the later entries. While I enjoy the later films, they lack the clever and laugh out loud funny banter between Nick and Nora that these first three have. While maybe not as memorable or quotable as the first movie, the dialogue in Another Thin Man is still full of the charm and wit that one could want from a Thin Man movie. This film is just as funny today as it was in 1939. Adding to the delightful of this banter is that William Powell and Myrna Loy have lost none of their amazing chemistry. They still play off each other perfectly and a scene in a club is a sheer delight to behold.

As did many of these sequels this movie features more slapstick involving the dog Asta (who gets the largest billing in the opening credits) than the first entry. This is hardly a problem when the slapstick is as funny as it is here. There are plenty of times when Asta steals the show, which considering the cast of this movie is no easy feat. This movie also introduced a new character, Nick and Nora's son Nick Jr. (William A. Paulson). Nick Jr. has somewhat of a baring on this movie's story but rarely provides any comedy himself, letting his adult and canine costars run the whole show. This is probably for the best. One watches The Thin Man movies for the banter between Nick and Nora Charles, not for antics from a baby, and such antics could have hurt a thing that was already working./

When released this film became one of the highest grossing movies of its year and it should come as no surprise that more sequels would be in the future.

While none of these sequels quite reach the level of the first movie, Another Thin Man stands as my second favorite in the series and never fails to delight me.

Also Stooges fans should look for Shemp in a brief uncredited role.

A hit movie never failed to send MGM to tooting their own horn as can be seen by the advertisement from The Film Daily below or the advertisement from The Motion Picture Herald below that.

  



I love the way movie theatres advertised films back in the day and some excellent examples of that (including one for After The Thin Man) can be seen in the below two pages from The Motion Picture Herald. If you having trouble reading just click on the picture and use your touch screen to zoom in.





-Michael J. Ruhland

Resources Used

http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/1747/Another-Thin-Man/articles.html

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031047/?ref_=hm_rvi_tt

The Thin Man (1934)

The Thin Man is often times called one of the finest movie comedies ever made. Seeing this film last night at The Old Town Music Hall in El Segundo, California and listening to the crowd laugh their heads off I certainly can't argue with that assumption. This was one of the most popular movies of 1934, and it delights audiences just as much in 2020.

Like many great Hollywood films, it was not viewed as a masterpiece during its creation. It was a strictly B budget movie that MGM had little faith in. The studio did not think the emphasis of comedy over mystery would work and they were unsure about having William Powell and Myrna Loy as the leads. MGM was certainly wrong as the movie became an incredible hit spawning five popular sequels and being nominated for four Oscars (Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay).

This movie was in many ways the brain-child of director W.S. Van Dyke. Van Dyke was not only a fan of detective novels, but he had also written them himself. Learning that MGM had the rights to Dashiell Hammett's (also the author of The Maltese Falcon) novel, The Thin Man, Van Dyke was excited to make a film based off this story. Van Dyke also wanted to make a movie that could star William Powell and Myrna Loy as a team and saw this as the perfect story for the two of them. Van Dyke had just directed the two in Manhattan Melodrama (1934) and was not only wowed by their chemistry on screen but off screen as well.

However just as important to this movie as the director and stars were husband and wife screen writers Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich. Van Dyke instructed them saying that he felt the film would work best if the banter between husband and wife Nick and Nora Charles was at the forefront. This was a stoke of brilliance. The two writers incorporated their own marriages into the script and there have been few onscreen marriages as fun to watch as Nick and Nora Charles. So much of this has to do with the dialogue the two share. When people talk about old movies having such clever dialogue that you don't see today, this is the type of film the are referring to. Not only does it have a real sophisticated wit to it, but it is also laugh out loud funny. This is certainly a movie I quote quite a bit. Of course just as important as the writing is the fantastic chemistry between William Powell and Myrna Loy. Various historians and critics have referred to these two as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers without the dancing. This is a perfect description. The two talented actors create a perfect dance in their exchanges to each other. They know exactly when to give to the other and take from each other. They move together with perfect grace and precision, creating a beautiful art all their own. This is a screen team that epitomizes movie magic at its best.

A huge star was made with this film, that was Nick and Nora's dog, Asta. This Terrier soon captured the hearts of movie goers and the film's sequels would use a lot more slapstick involving this dog. Similarly many comedies after The Thin Man would have similar looking dogs in their casts. Over the course of the series Asta would be played by multiple dogs, though the credits would always list the character as being played by Asta. In the first movie the character is played by a dog named Skippy. This dog was hardly friends with Myrna Loy and she would later refer to their relationship as "hardly idyllic." Still their is no doubt that the dog does bring a certain charm to this movie and in the sequels Asta would often steal the show.

MGM in a moment of humility (well for them anyways) made fun of its self for not having faith in The Thin Man in an advertisement for the movie Hide-out (1934) from The Motion Picture Herald.

  

MGM was of course quick to toot its own horn when the film became a hit as you can see in the below advertisement in Variety.



-Michael J. Ruhland

Resources UsedThe Essentials: 52 Must See Movies and Why They Matter by Jeremy Arnold
http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/2737/The-Thin-Man/articles.html