Pulp International

vintage and modern pulp fiction; noir, schlock and exploitation films; scandals, swindles and news

ANOTHER FINE TIME

Powell and Loy return to foil criminals and support the liquor industry.

Third in the Thin Man series following 1934’s The Thin Man and 1936’s After the Thin Man, the mystery caper flick Another Thin Man sees dilettante detective William Powell, who is always trying to retire, suckered by family acquaintance C. Aubrey Smith into taking another case. Smith, playing an elderly blueblood, has been receiving death threats. He thinks he knows who’s behind them—a disgruntled former employee. Powell, along with his life partner in crime solving Myrna Loy, spends the film ensconced in Smith’s elegant estate as bizarre and threatening occurrences unnerve the occupants. Of course, occurrences always offer clues, and Powell is observant as always, interspersed between the drinks he consumes.

Another Thin Man isn’t as good as the previous two films, but we can’t think of many series where the third film is the best. Do they drop off due to screenwriter ideas drying up, actors giving less to the roles, audiences becoming jaded? We can’t say. This series has so much going for it that film three taking a dip in quality doesn’t make for a bad experience. Powell and Loy still banter better than anyone, the lovely Virginia Grey does fine in her co-starring role, and the production values are of course top notch. To the latter, the entire sequence in the fictional West Indies Club is priceless.

Like his character who’s always trying to quit sleuthing, we imagine Powell and Loy were always trying to move on from this series. But popular demand is an irresistible force. Their hard-drinking, sharp-tongued lovebirds made the Thin Man movies events, and the public continued to love them even as the scripts got a little weaker and Powell got a little weirder (we can’t figure out why he filled the movie with double-takes—you’ll see what we mean). But in the end you won’t ask too many questions about this slice of sweet and effortless entertainment. Well, maybe one. You may ask why your marriage can’t be as fun as Powell’s and Loy’s. The answer may be simply to drink more. Another Thin Man premiered today in 1939.

Another Thin Man, William Powell, Myrna Loy, Virginia Grey, Otto Kruger, C. Aubrey Smith, Tom Neal, Patric Knowles, Ruth Hussey, poster art, cinema, movie review

BATH AND BODY WORKS

She always comes out clean as a whistle but the flower petals get wedged in the strangest places.

Above: two promo shots of U.S. actress Myrna Loy made from her famous bath scene in the 1933 pre-Code film The Barbarian. The movie has a classic pulp plot—she’s kidnapped by a lustful prince who has a problem differentiating ownership and love. Remember White Man’s Slave? Same plot. Numerous other books went the identical route. The Barbarian is a gap in our film viewing but we’ll check it out just to see Loy’s rub-a-dub dub.

The Barbarian, Hays Code, Myrna Loy

HAPPILY EVER AFTER

For Nick and Nora marriage and murder go together like Scotch and soda.

After the Thin Man, sequel to 1934’s seminal mystery-comedy The Thin Man, was the 1930s equivalent of a holiday event movie, premiering on Christmas Day 1936 with sky high expectations. It’s also set during the holidays, with its events bracketing New Year’s Eve. Because of the setting, general atmosphere, and romantic interplay between leads William Powell and Myrna Loy as spouses Nick and Nora Charles, the movie is pleasantly transporting, a good watch for the yuletide season. Most couples can’t even decide on pizza toppings together, but Nick and Nora laughingly solve murders.

Here in movie two, Nick and Nora return home to San Francisco after solving movie one’s baffling NYC murder case, only to find Nora’s cousin involved in a love triangle that leads to a fatal shooting. Once again, functional alcoholic Nick sifts his way through a roster of suspects that include James Stewart, Elissa Landi, and Joseph Calleia, as Nora remains the sharp marital foil who, to quote the screenplay, doesn’t scold, doesn’t nag, and looks far too pretty in the mornings. She also can drink like a fish, a crucial skill when wedded to Nick. Everything climaxes with Nick explaining the crime to a roomful of suspects, one of whom, as required by the format, completely loses his shit when unmasked as the killer.

Unsurprisingly, audiences made After the Thin Man a hit, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences favored it with two Oscar nominations for best screenplay. It’s definitely clever. That was job one for the follow-up to the pithy The Thin Man, an all-time classic. Hiring the same writing and directorial team from the debut was a no-brainer for MGM. The entire group was elsewhere by the time the series ended—which may be one reason why it ended. But the decline of the franchise is a long way off yet. After the Thin Man is a fine night’s entertainment. Watch it with a full flute of bubbly and your Christmas lights twinkling.

San Francisco, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Academy Award, After the Thin Man, William Powell, Myrna Loy, James Stewart, Elissa Landi, Joseph Calleia, Sam Levene, poster art, cinema, movie review

SQUASHED TOGETHER

Hello there, pumpkin. It's Halloween again.

Pumpkins are squashes, in case you ever wondered. And if you’ve ever wondered, we think Halloween is the most giving of U.S. holidays, because unlike Christmas your gifts go to strangers. We’ve cobbled together a collection of seasonal shots featuring Hollywood stars posing with jack-o’-lanterns, that yearly tradition we discussed a bit last year in another Halloween post. These pumpkins range from real, to plaster, to papier mâché, to paint, to shadows. There’s even a jack-o’-lantern house.

The stars are posted in the order of the keywords at bottom. Of special note are the last three: Peggy Ryan sitting on the identical pumpkin used by Ellen Drew for her Halloween shots (same prop department, we guess), Ava Gardner being her usual notable self, and finally, Gloria Saunders posed as if she’s about to let a scarecrow go doggy on her. Don’t judge us—you’ll think the same thing. Of all our previous posts along these lines, our favorite is at this link. Happy Halloween. Don’t eat too much candy.

Clara Bow, Myrna Loy, Barbara Bates, Yvonne De Carlo, Ann Rutherford, Betty Grable, Cyd Charisse, Etchika Choureau, Martha Vickers, Nancy Carroll, Ann Miller, Ida Lupino, Anita Page, Maila Nurmi, Myrna Dell, Alfred Hitchcock, June Pressier, Sandar Dee, Bunny Yeager, Mia Farrow, Audrey Totter, Peggy Ryan, Ava Gardner, Gloria Saunders

LOY AND ORDER

I've always heard that power corrupts. But what nobody told me is that it also feels really good.

Legendary U.S. actress Myrna Loy strikes a stern pose in this beautiful photo. Because she made more than one hundred films, and some of them are lost, it’s impossible to pinpoint from where this shot comes. At least it is for us, and we spent quite a bit of time on it. At first we thought that because the 1934 comedy The Thin Man is the film that made her a big star, and this was surely shot earlier, we’d be able to narrow the possibilities down to a smallish number of pre-Code dramatic roles. Turns out she made many, many pre-Code dramas. In fact, she almost didn’t get The Thin Man because she was considered a strictly dramatic actress. So the provenance of the photo is a mystery to us, but someone will figure it out eventually. Meanwhile, see another image here. And incidentally, there’s a good Loy themed Tumblr out there with numerous photos, if you’re a big fan. Check here.

Hays Code, The Thin Man, Myrna Loy

SONG REMAINS THE SAME

Even Powell and Loy's legendary act was bound to get tired eventually.


There’s nice Roger Soubie art on this French poster for Song of the Thin Man, the last of six movies in the Thin Man series, which premiered in the U.S. in 1947 and reached France today in 1948. After six sessions the concept might seem a little worn to some viewers, but it still has William Powell and Myrna Loy as the leads. The mystery involves the death of an orchestra musician and the search for a missing bandleader, which leads to Powell and Loy exploring New York City’s jazz underground. It’s an all-white underground spread across various clubs, gambling boats, and parties, populated by at least fifty musicians, none of them of color. Of all the sight gags in the movie, the barring of black musicians from a film revolving around the art form they invented is the most notable one of all, but that’s mid-century moviemaking for you.

The jazz gimmick is useful anyway, because it gives the filmmakers the opportunity to have Powell—as upper class supersleuth Nick Charles—play the role of a fish out of water. He understands neither the hipster jazzcats nor their customs and slang, and in about half a decade probably turns into the white-haired bartender from The Wild One. Even so, he needs to find and unmask a murderer in order to free a wrongly accused acquaintance from police custody. In true Thin Man fashion, he quips his way through the proceedings, plays cagey with femmes fatales Marie Windsor and Gloria Grahame, and finally unveils the killer in a nightclub populated by all the suspects. Loy is reliable as always in the sidekick role, and even amusingly picks up a few words of hep lingo.

While Dashiell Hammett originated the two characters of Nick and Nora Charles, he didn’t touch Song of the Thin Man. Instead it was written by veteran crime novelist Steve Fisher and comedy writer Nat Perrin. Their union, unlike Nick and Nora’s marriage, is an uneasy pairing, though it’s hard to put a finger on what exactly is wrong. The mystery has an interesting backdrop, but is never compelling, while the humor seems clunkier than in the past. Powell and Loy do their best, but the movie failed to earn back its production budget, and the franchise came to an end. There were screenwriting and production issues, but we suspect that the real culprit was simple boredom—slayer of movie series and marriages alike. Audiences had simply moved on. World War, generational cynicism, and the emergence of grittier cinema will tend to cause that. Song of the Thin Man premiered today in 1947.
France, Meurtre en musique, Song of the Thin Man, William Powell, Myrna Loy, Keenan Wynne, Gloria Grahame, Marie Windsor, Dean Stockwell, Roger Soubie, Steve Fisher, Nat Perrin, Dashiell Hammett, poster art, cinema, movie review

THIN MAN, FAT DICK

Powell and Loy take their relationship to the next level.


The lockdown has put us in a lewd mood. So to scratch that itch, today we have William Powell and Myrna Loy, famous for the series of Thin Man movies they made during the 1930s and ’40s, starring in an x-rated Tijuana bible. It’s called Nuts to Will Hays, a reference to the Hays Code, the motion picture censorship regime that arrived on the Hollywood scene in 1930. In the comic Powell decides to become more than friends with Loy, explicitly planting his huge hairy organ into hers, to the enjoyment of both. We’re glad we ran across this—it’s a reminder to watch the entire series of Thin Man movies. We already watched the first, and nothing like this happened. We’re probably safe in assuming nothing like this happens in any them, but we can dream. See more Tijuana bibles by clicking the keywords at the bottom of this post.
Tijuana bible, Hays Code, The Thin Man, William Powell, Myrna Loy, Will Hayes

DRUNK AND DISORDERLY

Cocktails, comedy, and crime make a mix that'll go right to your head.
Above: a fantastic Czech poster for the 1934 romantic comedy-murder mystery The Thin Man, which there was titled Detektiv Nick v New Yorku. This is a photo-illustration, rather than the paintings we love, but it’s still, in our book, as good as promo art gets. As far as the film goes, like Casablanca or Chinatown, there’s no way to overrate it. Some of the humor is so modern that you’ll have trouble believing it was made almost a century ago and wasn’t cribbed from an episode of Friends or Seinfeld. Just goes to show that in the infinity of time we don’t change as quickly as we think.

We adore the boozing party animals at the center of this tour de force—Nick and Nora Charles, played by William Powell and Myrna Loy—whose drunken interactions could easily be the inspiration for Jim and Jules of the hilarious television show Brockmire. Credit the director, actors, editors, and everyone else for this masterpiece, but give the biggest nod to Dashiell Hammett, who wrote the excellent source novel. There’s no release date for Detektiv Nick v New Yorku in Czechoslovakia, but figure spring or early summer of 1935.

Czechoslovakia, Detektiv Nick v New Yorku, The Thin Man, William Powell, Myrna Loy, Maureen O'Sullivan, Dashiell Hammett, poster art, cinema, movie review

FIRST NAME BASIS

Everybody's a friend in Screenland.

This issue of the celeb magazine Screenland hit newsstands this month in 1936 with a nice painting of Jeanette MacDonald adorning the cover. The art on that is by Marland Stone. Inside the magazine are Randolph Scott, Kay Francis, Gary Cooper, Jean Arthur, and numerous other stars. Among them are Arline Judge, who was in a boatload of movies during the ’30s, but later became more known for marrying and divorcing seven times, which is high even for Hollywood. Generally, the stars are referred to by Screenland editors only by their first names, which is a clever approach in a magazine that was designed to help fans connect with their favorite celebs. We have twenty-five scans below and a couple more issues of Screenland here and here.

Screenland, The Magnificent Brute, Libeled Lady, Jeanette MacDonald, Marland Stone, Jean Harlow, Myrna Loy, William Powell, Spencer Tracy, Randolph Scott, Kay Francis, Gary Cooper, Jean Arthur, Ginger Rogers, Arline Judge, Errol Flynn, Fred MacMurray, Ann Harding, magazine art
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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1941—Japanese Attack Pearl Harbor

The Imperial Japanese Navy sends aircraft to attack the U.S. Pacific Fleet and its defending air forces at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. While the U.S. lost battleships and other vessels, its aircraft carriers were not at Pearl Harbor and survived intact, robbing the Japanese of the total destruction of the Pacific Fleet they had hoped to achieve.

1989—Anti-Feminist Gunman Kills 14

In Montreal, Canada, at the École Polytechnique, a gunman shoots twenty-eight young women with a semi-automatic rifle, killing fourteen. The gunman claimed to be fighting feminism, which he believed had ruined his life. After the killings he turns the gun on himself and commits suicide.

1933—Prohibition Ends in United States

Utah becomes the 36th U.S. state to ratify the 21st Amendment to the United States Constitution, thus establishing the required 75% of states needed to overturn the 18th Amendment which had made the sale of alcohol illegal. But the criminal gangs that had gained power during Prohibition are now firmly established, and maintain an influence that continues unabated for decades.

1945—Flight 19 Vanishes without a Trace

During an overwater navigation training flight from Fort Lauderdale, five U.S. Navy TBM Avenger torpedo-bombers lose radio contact with their base and vanish. The disappearance takes place in what is popularly known as the Bermuda Triangle.

1918—Wilson Goes to Europe

U.S. President Woodrow Wilson sails to Europe for the World War I peace talks in Versailles, France, becoming the first U.S. president to travel to Europe while in office.

1921—Arbuckle Manslaughter Trial Ends

In the U.S., a manslaughter trial against actor/director Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle ends with the jury deadlocked as to whether he had killed aspiring actress Virginia Rappe during rape and sodomy. Arbuckle was finally cleared of all wrongdoing after two more trials, but the scandal ruined his career and personal life.

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WALKING AFTER MIDNIGHT

Cover art by the great Sandro Symeoni for Peter Cheyney's mystery He Walked in her Sleep, from Ace Books in 1949.

PARIS BLEUS

The mysterious artist who signed his or her work as F. Harf produced this beautiful cover in 1956 for the French publisher S.E.P.I.A.

RAISE EM UP

Aslan art was borrowed for many covers by Dutch publisher Uitgeverij A.B.C. for its Collection Vamp. The piece used on Mike Splane's Nachtkatje is a good example.

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