TCM Schedule for Thursday, December 31 -- New Year's Eve Thin Man Marathon

[Staph]

If you have already overdosed on football, eggnog, and holiday parties, TCM has the perfect antidote -- a day full of Hitchcock thrillers and an evening of Thin Man adventures. Enjoy!


4:00am -- Two Guys From Milwaukee (1946)
A runaway prince in disguise takes up with a taxi driver.
Cast: Dennis Morgan, Joan Leslie, Jack Carson, Janis Paige
Dir: David Butler
BW-90 mins, TV-G

Watch for a cameo -- Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall playing themselves on a plane.


6:00am -- Aventure Malgache (1944)
A French actor in Madagascar during World War II makes enemies on both sides.
Cast: Clarousse, The Moliere Players.
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
BW-31 mins, TV-PG

Alfred Hitchcock did not make his customary cameo appearance in Aventure malgache (1944) nor did he in his other short propaganda war film Bon Voyage (1944).


7:00am -- The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)
International spies kidnap a doctor's son when he stumbles on their assassination plot.
Cast: James Stewart, Doris Day, Brenda de Banzie, Bernard Miles
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
C-120 mins, TV-PG

Won an Oscar for Best Music, Original Song -- Jay Livingston and Ray Evans for the song "Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera)".

The film was unavailable for decades because its rights (together with four other pictures of the same period) were bought back by Alfred Hitchcock and left as part of his legacy to his daughter. They've been known for long as the infamous "Five lost Hitchcocks" amongst film buffs, and were re-released in theatres around 1984 after a 30-year absence. The others are Rear Window (1954), Rope (1948), The Trouble with Harry (1955), and Vertigo (1958).


9:15am -- Marnie (1964)
A rich man marries a compulsive thief and tries to unlock the secrets of her mind.
Cast: Tippi Hedren, Sean Connery, Diane Baker, Martin Gabel
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
C-130 mins, TV-PG

After rehearsing just a few scenes with co-star Sean Connery, Tippi Hedren asked Alfred Hitchcock, "Marnie is supposed to be frigid - have you seen him?" referring to the young Connery. Hitchcock's reply was reportedly, "Yes, my dear, it's called acting."


11:30am -- Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
A young girl fears her favorite uncle may be a killer.
Cast: Teresa Wright, Joseph Cotten, MacDonald Carey, Henry Travers
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
BW-108 mins, TV-PG

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Writing, Original Story -- Gordon McDonell

In his interview with François Truffaut on "Shadow" (first published in 1967), Alfred Hitchcock said the dense, black smoke belching from the train that brings Charles Oakley to Santa Rosa was a deliberate symbol of imminent evil.


1:30pm -- Psycho (1960)
A woman on the run gets mixed up with a repressed young man and his violent mother.
Cast: Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles, John Gavin, Martin Balsam
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
BW-109 mins, TV-PG

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Janet Leigh, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White -- Joseph Hurley, Robert Clatworthy and George Milo, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- John L. Russell. and Best Director -- Alfred Hitchcock

The Bates house was largely modeled on an oil painting at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The canvas is called "House by the Railroad" and was painted in 1925 by American iconic artist Edward Hopper. The architectural details, viewpoint and austere sky is almost identical as seen in the film.


3:30pm -- Vertigo (1958)
A detective falls for the mysterious woman he's been hired to tail.
Cast: James Stewart, Kim Novak, Barbara Bel Geddes, Tom Helmore
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
C-130 mins, TV-PG

Nominated for Oscars for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White or Color -- Hal Pereira, Henry Bumstead, Sam Comer and Frank R. McKelvy, and Best Sound -- George Dutton (Paramount SSD)

Costume designer Edith Head and director Alfred Hitchcock worked together to give Madeleine's clothing an eerie appearance. Her trademark grey suit was chosen for its colour because they thought it seemed odd for a blonde woman to be wearing all grey. Also, they added the black scarf to her white coat because of the odd contrast.


6:00pm -- Rear Window (1954)
A photographer with a broken leg uncovers a murder while spying on the neighbors in a nearby apartment building.
Cast: James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Wendell Corey, Thelma Ritter
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
C-114 mins, TV-PG

Nominated for Oscars for Best Cinematography, Color -- Robert Burks, Best Director -- Alfred Hitchcock, Best Sound, Recording -- Loren L. Ryder (Paramount), and Best Writing, Screenplay -- John Michael Hayes

The entire picture was shot on one set, which required months of planning and construction. The apartment-courtyard set measured 98 feet wide, 185 feet long and 40 feet high, and consisted of 31 apartments, eight of which were completely furnished. The courtyard was set 20 to 30 feet below stage level, and some of the buildings were the equivalent of five or six stories high.


What's On Tonight: TCM PRIME TIME FEATURE: NEW YEAR'S EVE THIN MAN MARATHON


8:00pm -- The Thin Man (1934)
A husband-and-wife detective team takes on the search for a missing inventor and almost get killed for their efforts.
Cast: William Powell, Myrna Loy, Maureen O'Sullivan, Nat Pendleton
Dir: W. S. Van Dyke
BW-91 mins, TV-G

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- William Powell, Best Director -- W.S. Van Dyke, Best Writing, Adaptation -- Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, and Best Picture

Given three weeks to shoot the film, W.S. van Dyke managed it all in 12 days for the paltry budget of $231,000. The film surprised everyone by becoming a major box office hit, ranking in $1.4 million.


9:45pm -- After The Thin Man (1936)
Married sleuths Nick and Nora Charles try to clear Nora's cousin of a murder charge.
Cast: William Powell, Myrna Loy, James Stewart, Elissa Landi
Dir: W. S. Van Dyke
BW-112 mins, TV-G

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Writing, Screenplay -- Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett

Though William Powell and Myrna Loy were very close friends off-screen, their only romantic moments together occurred on-screen. The public, however, was determined to have them married in private life as well. When the two stars showed up in San Francisco (where most of After the Thin Man (1936) was shot) at the St. Francis, the hotel management proudly showed "Mr. and Mrs. Powell" to their deluxe suite. This was an especially uncomfortable moment as Jean Harlow, who was engaged to Powell, was with them, and the couple had not made a public statement about their relationship. Harlow saved the day by insisting on sharing the suite with Loy: "That mix-up brought me one of my most cherished friendships," Loy said in her biography Being and Becoming. "You would have thought Jean and I were in boarding school we had so much fun. We'd stay up half the night talking and sipping gin, sometimes laughing, sometimes discussing more serious things." Meanwhile, Powell got the hotel's one remaining room - a far humbler accommodation downstairs.


11:45pm -- Another Thin Man (1939)
Not even the joys of parenthood can stop married sleuths Nick and Nora Charles from investigating a murder on a Long Island estate.
Cast: William Powell, Myrna Loy, Virginia Grey, Otto Kruger
Dir: W. S. Van Dyke II
BW-103 mins, TV-G

The elegant car that Nick and Nora ride out to Col. MacFay's estate in is a 1935 Lincoln. These were an expensive, low-production car, with only about 1,400 made that year. The major movie studios kept a number of expensive cars around for executive purposes, and they often did double duty as props as required in production.


1:45am -- Shadow Of The Thin Man (1941)
High society sleuths Nick and Nora Charles run into a variety of shady characters while investigating a race-track murder.
Cast: William Powell, Myrna Loy, Barry Nelson, Donna Reed
Dir: Major W. S. Van Dyke II
BW-97 mins, TV-G

Debut of Sid Melton and Barry Nelson.


3:30am -- The Thin Man Goes Home (1945)
On a trip to visit his parents, detective Nick Charles gets mixed up in a murder investigation.
Cast: William Powell, Myrna Loy, Lucile Watson, Gloria De Haven
Dir: Richard Thorpe
BW-101 mins, TV-G

This movie was to begin production in 1942, but Myrna Loy refused the part. Instead, she went to New York to marry car rental heir John Hertz, Jr., and worked for the Red Cross war-relief effort. The movie almost began shooting with Irene Dunne as Nora Charles.

[Staph]

1. THE THIN MAN: The Essentials

SYNOPSIS

New York City residents Nick and Nora Charles are vacationing in California where Nick previously lived. The former detective still knows a number of people in town, and when one of his acquaintances, Clyde Wynant, mysteriously disappears, he is reluctantly drawn into the case by his own wife and the man's daughter. The Charleses have been living off Nora's considerable wealth since they wed, so Nick doesn't need to return to sleuthing. But Nora finds it exciting, and soon Nick is tracking down Wynant (the Thin Man of the title) who proves to be a murder victim. This brings him into contact with all sorts of unsavory characters who eventually wind up at the Charles's Christmas party where the guilty party is unmasked.

Director: W.S. Van Dyke
Producer: Hunt Stromberg
Screenplay: Albert Hackett & Frances Goodrich, from the novel by Dashiell Hammett
Cinematography: James Wong Howe
Editing: Robert J. Kern
Art Direction: Cedric Gibbons
Original Music: William Axt
Cast: William Powell (Nick Charles), Myrna Loy (Nora Charles), Maureen O'Sullivan (Dorothy), Nat Pendleton (John Guild), Minna Gombell (Mimi Jorgenson), Porter Hall (MacCaulay).
BW-91m. Closed captioning. Descriptive video.

Why THE THIN MAN is Essential

The Thin Man was adapted from a popular novel by the great mystery writer Dashiell Hammett, but the mystery around which the plot turns is relatively unimportant to the movie's focus and its enduring appeal. What makes the film so entertaining is not the unraveling of the murder but the movie's central relationship of Nora and Nick Charles, one that redefined the screen depiction of marriage. It also helped to set the tone and style of a new, then-emerging Hollywood genre - the screwball comedy.

MGM director W.S. ("Woody") Van Dyke was a big fan of detective novels - he'd even written a few himself. When he learned that the studio had the rights to Hammett's novel, The Thin Man, Van Dyke thought the story of private eye Nick Charles and his wife Nora would make a terrific film. He also knew exactly who should play Nick and Nora. He had just directed Manhattan Melodrama (1934), starring Clark Gable, William Powell, and Myrna Loy, and had been struck by the chemistry between Powell and Loy. The two had developed a bantering friendship, and their between-the-scenes repartee was charming and lighthearted. That was exactly what The Thin Man needed. MGM executives didn't agree. Both actors came with a lot of baggage, and studio bosses couldn't see them as the glamorous detective duo.

In the end Van Dyke had his way, and proved that he knew what he was doing. He instructed the husband-and-wife screenwriting team of Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich to play up Nick and Nora's affectionate banter in their script for The Thin Man, and to make the mystery secondary. That was easy enough for the Hacketts, whose own marriage and personal style was very Nick-and-Nora. And for Powell and Loy, it was a delight to play, from their first appearance in the film, with Nick instructing a bartender on the finer points of shaking a martini, and Nora making a grand comic entrance by falling on her face. The Thin Man was shot on a "B"-movie budget, very quickly -- accounts vary between 12 and 18 days. Not for nothing was Van Dyke dubbed "One-Take Woody."

It's impossible now to imagine anyone in the roles of Nora and Nick Charles but Myrna Loy and William Powell. Their on-screen chemistry was so dynamic that the public came to believe the two were married in real life. And thanks to Van Dyke's direction and the witty script, Powell and Loy created something fresh and new for the screen, a married couple who enjoy each other's company, unfettered by mundane responsibility or children (although, regrettably, they were saddled with a son later in the series). Prior to this, marriage in movies was usually depicted in one of two ways: either as the focus of domestic problems (financial or medical woes, infidelity, etc.) or as the "happy ending" to a romance, the final outcome of a story rather than its starting point. But Nick and Nora are already married at the start. They are young, attractive and healthy; rich enough not to worry about money (Nick is apparently quite content to live off his wife's wealth); and unsaddled by any charge except their dog. The alcohol also flows abundantly whenever Nick and Nora are together - it had only been two years since Prohibition - but it is never presented as a problem or something sinful but simply as the fuel for the wacky fun and snappy dialogue that transpires during the movie.

Certainly it's the little details Van Dyke and company create around Nick and Nora's domestic life that stick in the memory. Take the unconventional Christmas setting, Nora wrapped in a "stifling" fur coat too pretty to shed, Nick reclined on the couch shooting ornaments off the tree with a pop gun. Or watch them walking their dog down the street on Christmas Day. As Nick talks to the police about his current case, the couple pass by trees, light poles, fire hydrants, all barely noticed. Their dog, Asta, is out of frame, the only evidence of him is the leash Nora is holding. But as the mystery plot is discussed, what we end up watching is the way the Charles's forward gait is repeatedly interrupted, without comment or notice, by Asta stopping and pulling back on the leash. Nothing is made of it; certainly there's nothing inherently interesting about a dog doing his daily business. But this sort of causal off-handed detail about the couple's life is the hallmark of what a movie can do better than any other artistic medium.

Audiences adored The Thin Man, and so did critics. It was a huge hit, and turned around the careers of Powell and Loy. The film earned Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay. Five sequels followed, with Van Dyke directing three of them, After the Thin Man (1936), Another Thin Man (1939), and Shadow of the Thin Man (1941). The other two were produced after Van Dyke's death in 1943 and included The Thin Man Goes Home (1945), directed by Richard Thorpe, and Song of the Thin Man (1947), helmed by Edward Buzzell.

The Thin Man and its sequels also created another star - "Asta," the Charles's wire-haired terrier. It was a breed that hadn't been particularly popular in this country, but the "Thin Man" films changed all that, creating a national craze for wire-haired terriers. Asta was played by several dogs, but Myrna Loy later recalled that she and Powell were never allowed to make friends with any of them, because the dogs' trainer didn't want to break their concentration. In fact, Loy claimed that the first Asta, whose real name was "Skippy," bit her, "so our relationship was hardly idyllic."

by Rob Nixon & Margarita Landazuri