Manhattan Melodrama (W.S. Van Dyke, 1934)

Clark Gable and William Powell in Manhattan Meldodrama

Cast: Clark Gable, William Powell, Myrna Loy, Leo Carrillo, Nat Pendleton, George Sidney, Isabel Jewell, Muriel Evans, Thomas E. Jackson, Isabelle Keith, Frank Conroy, Noel Madison, Jimmy Butler, Mickey Rooney, Shirley Ross. Screenplay: Oliver H.P. Garrett, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Arthur Caesar. Cinematography: James Wong Howe. Art direction: Cedric Gibbons. Film editing: Ben Lewis. Music: William Axt.

This is the movie that John Dillinger saw before he was shot down outside the theater. It's the one in which Mickey Rooney grows up to be Clark Gable. It's the first film to team William Powell and Myrna Loy, months before they became Nick and Nora Charles in The Thin Man (with the same director, W.S. Van Dyke). It's the one in which Shirley Ross sings Rodgers and Hart's "Blue Moon" with Hart's original lyrics, "The Bad in Every Man." It was made before the Production Code took effect, so there's no dodging the implication that Eleanor (Loy) is Blackie Gallagher's (Gable) mistress before she marries Jim Wade (Powell), leading to a crucial plot point. Manhattan Melodrama is, to say the least, of historical interest even if it's not really a very good movie. It can pass for one, however, because of Gable and Powell and Loy, James Wong Howe's cinematography, and some clever lines. It won an Oscar for Arthur Caesar's story, though what it really deserved was some kind of award for truth in labeling: In melodrama, characters do things in service of the plot, and not in the way real human beings behave. We are asked to believe that two very different boys, one a hedonistic rascal, the other studious and virtuous, would become close friends and remain so even after the former grows up to be a gangster and the latter a district attorney with high political ambitions. And that they would remain close friends after the gangster's mistress leaves him and marries the D.A. And that the gangster would sacrifice himself, going blithely to the electric chair after his old friend has convicted him of murder. Life may not be like that, but Manhattan Melodrama certainly is. 

The Thin Man (W.S. Van Dyke, 1934)

Myrna Loy and William Powell in The Thin Man

Nick Charles: William Powell
Nora Charles: Myrna Loy
Dorothy Wynant: Maureen O'Sullivan
Guild: Nat Pendleton
Mimi Wynant Jorgenson: Minna Gombell
MacCaulay: Porter Hall
Tommy: Henry Wadsworth
Gilbert Wynant: William Henry
Nunheim: Harold Huber
Chris Jorgenson: Cesar Romero
Julia Woolf: Natalie Moorhead
Morelli: Edward Brophy
Claude Wynant: Edward Ellis
Tanner: Cyril Thornton

Director: W.S. Van Dyke
Screenplay: Albert Hackett, Frances Goodrich
Based on a novel by Dashiell Hammett
Cinematography: James Wong Howe
Art direction: Cedric Gibbons
Film editing: Robert Kern
Music: William Axt

I have seen W.S. Van Dyke's The Thin Man several times before, and I recently read Dashiell Hammett's novel, but I still couldn't remember whodunit. Even now, I'm not sure why and how the killer did things the way they were done. Which is, I think, because it doesn't really matter: The mystery is secondary to the banter of Nick and Nora and the eccentricity of the characters they encounter as her world of privilege marries with his world of cops and lowlifes. Most of the best mysteries, by which I mean those of Hammett and Raymond Chandler, are about atmosphere rather than crime: Those who want to try to solve the mystery along with the detective should read other writers who are more involved with planting clues and red herrings. The Thin Man may have benefited from MGM's lack of interest in the project, which could have been swamped with the kind of second-guessing from the front office that often stifled the studio's films. Instead, it was treated as a routine programmer whose stars, William Powell and Myrna Loy, were second-tier and whose director, known as "One-Take Woody" Van Dyke, was known for getting things done quick and dirty -- filming took only 16 days. But Powell and Loy became first-tier stars, and the movie earned four Oscar nominations (picture, actor, director, and screenplay) and was followed by five sequels. Powell has often struck me as a surprising star, with his big nose and his dubious chin, and I used to have trouble distinguishing him from Melvyn Douglas. Even now, if you asked me to say without hesitating whether it was Powell or Douglas in My Man Godfrey (Gregory La Cava, 1936), or Douglas or Powell in Ninotchka (Ernst Lubitsch, 1939), I might stumble a bit. But he had undeniable chemistry with Loy, so much so that they got re-teamed in movies outside the Thin Man series like The Great Ziegfeld (Robert Z. Leonard, 1936), Libeled Lady (Jack Conway, 1936), and others. The Thin Man also has a little more zip and zest than some of the films made after the Production Code clamped down, though Nick and Nora, like other married couples, were forced into twin beds. They still drink to an unholy excess, of course.

Marie Antoinette (W.S. Van Dyke, 1938)

Robert Morley and Norma Shearer in Marie Antoinette

Marie Antoinette: Norma Shearer
Count Axel de Fersen: Tyrone Power
King Louis XV: John Barrymore
King Louis XVI: Robert Morley
Princesse de Lamballe: Anita Louise
Duke d'Orléans; Joseph Schildkraut
Mme du Barry: Gladys George
Count de Mercey: Henry Stephenson

Director: W.S. Van Dyke
Screenplay: Claudine West, Donald Ogden Stewart, Ernest Vajda
Cinematography: William H. Daniels
Art direction: Cedric Gibbons
Film editing: Robert Kern
Costume design: Adrian, Gile Steele
Music: Herbert Stothart

Hollywood historical hokum, W.S. Van Dyke's Marie Antoinette was a vehicle for Norma Shearer that had been planned for her by her husband, Irving G. Thalberg, who died in 1936. MGM stuck with it because as Thalberg's heir, Shearer had control of a large chunk of stock. It also gave her a part that ran the gamut from the fresh and bubbly teenage Austrian archduchess thrilled at the arranged marriage to the future Louis XVI, to the drab, worn figure riding in a tumbril to the guillotine. Considering that it takes place in one of the most interesting periods in history, it could have been a true epic if screenwriters Claudine West, Donald Ogden Stewart, and Ernest Vajda (with uncredited help from several other hands, including F. Scott Fitzgerald) hadn't been pressured to turn it into a love story between Marie and the Swedish Count Axel Fersen. But the portrayal of their affair was stifled by the Production Code's squeamishness about sex, and the long period in which Marie and Louis fail to consummate their marriage lurks unexplained in the background. MGM threw lots of money at the film to compensate: Shearer sashays around in Adrian gowns with panniers out to here, with wigs up to there, and on sets designed and decorated by Cedric Gibbons and Henry Grace that make the real Versailles look puny. The problem is that nothing like a genuine human emotion appears on the screen, and the perceived necessity of glamorizing the aristocrats turns the French Revolution on its head. The cast of thousands includes John Barrymore as Louis XV, Gladys George as Madame du Barry, and Joseph Schildkraut (with what looks like Jean Harlow's eyebrows and Joan Crawford's lipstick) as the foppish Duke of Orléans. The best performance in the movie comes from Morley, who took the role after the first choice, Charles Laughton, proved unavailable; Morley earned a supporting actor Oscar nomination for his film debut. With the exception of The Women (George Cukor, 1939), in which she is upstaged by her old rival Joan Crawford, this is Shearer's last film of consequence. When she turned 40 in 1942, she retired from the movies and lived in increasing seclusion until her death, 41 years later. It says something about Shearer's status in Hollywood that Greta Garbo, who retired at about the same time, and who also sought to be left alone, was the more legendary figure and was more ardently pursued by gossips and paparazzi.