Dear Kartina,
I was surfing around the channels today and came upon “At The Movies” just in time to see your piece on “The Thin Man Series”. Your passion for the old movies really shows, you did a great job. I wanted to tell you about my dad and Myrna Loy…
*This post originally appeared on Roger Ebert’s Far Flung Correspondents*
I will do most anything to avoid thinking.
At the hint of strenuous thought I flee. I run like the dickens. I do not want my world to be disrupted.
Seventy five percent of my energy is spent repairing a glorious cocoon of comfort. Inside this shelter there is no overhead lighting, only lamps. There are no cold mornings or metaphysical crises. Everything is as it should be. Every question is easily answered. There you will find me licking my wounds, secretly enjoying the tang of blood and pus.
Thankfully, for the health of body and soul, this cocoon is under constant siege. The valiant twenty five percent of life force that remains does all in its power to destroy a sheltering that in reality is more prison than sanctuary. This twenty five percent is Saint George. The cocoon is the terrible dragon. It is death.
As Cocteau said “comfort kills creativity.†You will find me angrily hissing this to myself all day every day. On good days I heed the wisdom of the french man. On bad ones I refuse.
On the days Saint George loses this battle I immediately review a list of movies and TV shows I have carefully programmed for pacification purposes. These are films I have seen numerous times. I know the plot and dialogue by heart and so don’t need to pay any attention to them at all. I use them only for their mood elevating qualities. Some of them are actually great films (Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House). Others just happen to have a lot of sunlight (Housesitter).
But at the top of this list are five movies. Films that have held the top positions for over twenty years. MGM’s The Thin Man (1934), After the Thin Man (‘36), Another Thin Man (‘39), Shadow of the Thin Man (‘41), and The Thin Man Goes Home (‘45).
Song of the Thing Man (1947) is not included. I never did like it.
Apologies:
1. I apologize for the interlaced video.
2. I apologize for the lapse in posting. I was lazing about at the beach
Dear readers,
Your day is about to be made. I have a glorious treat for you.
It is something many writers and directors strive for, but few ever attain.
It is the perfect comedic scene, and it is in The Bachelor & the Bobby Soxer from 1947 starring Cary Grant, Shirley Temple, and Myrna Loy.
Of note: Grant also exercised his dramatic muscles as an angel in The Bishop’s Wife the same year. In 1948 he was back to being his funny flustered self in Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, also with Myrna Loy. Coincidentally all three of these movies were main players in the Richardson VHS rotation. After Blandings Grant didn’t make another good movie until To Catch A Thief in 1955. My apologies if you like I Was a Male War Bride.
In Bachelor Grant plays Richard Nugent, a fancy bachelor artist who frequently finds himself in trouble with the law. The latest judge deciding his fate is Margaret Turner, an unimpressed cynic played by Myrna Loy. Loy lets Nugent go with only a warning, and off he goes to guest lecture at a high school, the very same high school that Margaret’s teenage sister Susan attends! Susan is a melodramatic bobby soxer played by a teenage Shirley Temple (she lucked out with the perfect combination of cuteness & sex appeal. Everything you would want your teenage Shirley Temple to be).