Welcome to Saturday Night at the Movies.

I'm your host, Glenn Holland.

Tonight's film is the classic 1934 comedy mystery, "The Thin Man".

It was directed by versatile veteran director W. S. Van Dyke from a screenplay by Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich.

The film is based on the novel by Dashiell Hammett, who also wrote "The Dain Curse" and "The Maltese Falcon", both of which were adapted for motion pictures more than once.

"The Thin Man" stars William Powell and Myrna Loy as Nick and Nora Charles.

Supported by Maureen O'Sullivan, Nat Pendleton, Minna Gombell and Porter Hall with Cesar Romero in a minor role.

The film opens in the laboratory of Clyde Wynant, an eccentric inventor.

His daughter Dorothy visits with her boyfriend Tommy to tell him they're engaged.

Wynant has plans to leave town for a few months to do his work in complete isolation, but he promises he'll be back in time for the wedding.

Later, Wynant visits his mistress, Julia Wolf, and accuses her of cheating on him and stealing bonds intended for his daughter.

He threatens to turn her over to the police, and leaves.

Months later, a few days before Christmas, former detective Nick Charles is demonstrating his technique for mixing martinis at a club, when his heiress wife Nora is dragged in by their fox terrier Asta.

Their approached by Dorothy Wynant, who tells them her father has failed to return to New York, despite his promise to her.

Nick tells her he's retired, but she persists, seconded by Nora who wants to help her husband solve a case.

But what starts out as a disappearance, turns into a murder investigation when Julia Wolf is found dead, and Clyde Wynant, the thin man of the title, is the primary suspect.

Dorothy refuses to believe her father is guilty.

So Nick works with police Lieutenant John Guild, with the eager assistance of Nora, to solve the mystery before more bodies pile up.

Dashiell Hammett became famous as a writer of hard boiled detective fiction for pulp magazines of the 12 years between 1922 and 1934.

Hard boiled detective stories presented their protagonist facing gangsters, corrupt officials, and seductive women while trying to solve murders.

The stories were often narrated in the first person, and they were written in a literary version of the language of the streets.

Hard boiled mysteries, notably Hammett's 1930 novel "The Maltese Falcon", provided the model for the film noir pictures of postwar era but "The Thin Man" is something else entirely.

Although the character of Nick Charles is like Hammett himself, a former detective who lives in San Francisco, his life at the beginning of the movie is entirely devoted to enjoying the company, and considerable wealth, of his young wife Nora.

Nick and Nora are completely devoted to each other and express their affection through the give and take of witty sophisticated repartee.

Much of this was inspired by Hammett's own rocky relationship with playwright Lilian Hillman, and augmented by screenwriters Albert Hackett and Francis Goodrich, who were husband and wife.

In 1998, film historian Andrew Sarris wrote that Nick and Nora Charles were the first onscreen Hollywood couple for whom matrimony did not signal the end of sex, romance, and adventure.

In fact, one might go so far as to say that for Nick and Nora, the sex, romance, and adventure only really got started once they were married.

The novel, "The Thin Man", is set in December 1932, during the last days of prohibition and copious drinking at parties and speakeasies is a recurring feature of the story.

Social critic Ian Schuls referred in 1984 to nostalgia for the sophistication of an earlier age.

William Powell and Myrna Loy knocking back highballs high over Art Deco Manhattan.

Hard drinking was once thought charming, a mark of high intelligence and style.

Nick Charles is introduced mixing a martini, and he and Nora seem to regard a stiff drink as the proper response to almost any development in the films plot.

As Ben Mankiewicz has said, to put it in cocktail terms, the thin man is one part who done it, two parts comedy, and three parts vermouth.

It may be hard to believe, but William Powell got his start in movies playing villains, starting with this first film role as one of Professor Moriarty's Henchman in John Barrymore silent film "Sherlock Holmes" in 1922.

But with the advent of talking pictures, his pleasant voice and manner of speaking made him a leading man.

Notably as Detective Philo Vance in "The Canary Murder Case" in 1929, and three other movies for Paramount.

But executives at MGM thought Powell was too straight laced to play Nick Charles, until director W. S. Van Dyke convinced them otherwise.

In fact, the trailer for the thin man, William Powell as Philo Vance encounters William Powell as Nick Charles, and the two merrily discussed the plot of the film.

MGM executives also initially had their doubts about Myrna Loy.

In silent films, she had most often been cast as Asian or Eurasian Vamps.

She later said her appearance as Azuri in one of her first sound pictures, "The Desert Song" in 1929 "Kind of solidified my exotic non-American image."

There were also concerns about Loy's age discrepancy with her co-star.

She was 29 and Powell was 42 when the picture was made but they were actually closer in age than the couple they portrayed since.

According to Hammett's novel, Nick was 45 and Nora was only 26.

In any event, Van Dyke got the stars he wanted and he insisted Louis B. Mayer and other MGM executives watched the first rushes of The Thin Man to show them he had been right.

They unanimously agreed Powell and Loy were perfect for their roles.

This was in part because of their remarkable chemistry.

William Powell loved working with Myrna Loy because of her professionalism and absolute naturalness.

"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 later said.

Myrna 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.

Director Van Dyke had ways to keep his stars performances fresh and spontaneous.

He was always concerned that actors might lose their fire if they repeated a scene too many times.

He paid attention to Powell and Loy when they bantered during breaks from filming, and later incorporated some of their conversation and antics into the script.

The scene where Nick shoots balloons off of the Christmas tree, for example, was added after Powell used an airgun to shoot ornaments off the tree while the art department was setting it up.

For Nick's first scene of the film, Van Dyke told Powell to run through it, while the crew got ready to shoot.

Powell did the scene showing how to make a proper martini, adding some patter and business of his own.

When he'd finished, Van Dyke shouted, "That's it, print it."

It turned out he had been filming the scene, and captured Powell's stellar performance on film.

For Nora's first appearance, Van Dyke didn't tell Myrna Loy she was going to be led into the restaurant by a rambunctious Asta, until just before the shot.

Ever game, Loy did the scene, allowing the Fox Terrier to drag her across the floor.

The film was completed in a staggering 12 days and released on May 24th, 1934, to almost universally enthusiastic reviews.

The critic for "The Film Daily" spoke for many when he wrote "The screen seldom presents a more thoroughly interesting piece of entertainment than this adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's popular novel.

The rapid fire dialogue is about the best heard since talkies, and is delivered by Powell and Miss Loy to perfection."

The film was shot for $231,000 and became a major hit, earning about $1.4 million on its first release.

"The Thin Man" was nominated for four Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Performance by an Actor for William Powell and Best Adapted Screenplay.

The film didn't win any Oscars.

Frank Capra's "It Happened One Night" swept the major awards, but as they say, it's an honor just to be nominated.

In 2002, critic Roger Ebert added "The Thin Man" to his list of great movies, and heap praise on William Powell's performance In particular.

he said 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."

Please join us again next time for another Saturday night at the movies.

I'm Glenn Holland.

Goodnight.