If you stop to think about it, it's funny how few things in life we can be truly certain of. Even things that directly relate to us, such as our favorite foods, clothes, smells and even people are never fully safe from out ever changing personalities. You might claim that a good steak is the best dish you know, but with a simple taste of something new that could be forever changed. We are always evolving, always adapting.
How could I have known that my all time favorite movie would be the 50th theatrical feature made by Walt Disney Animation Studios? Or that a Japanese rollplaying game that I bought on a whim after a mention on a podcast would become the first game to make me cry? Or even that the Nantucket Nobodies would become my favorite basketball team (because of the simple fact they don't exist which makes following their season a very efficient use of my time)?
These changes come in all shapes and sizes, but the small ones are often the more welcome ones, at least that's how I have come to see it. There is of course a point to me mentioning all of this and it comes in the form of a story.
About two years ago I bought a Cary Grant-box set which included seventeen of the man's movies. I swiftly watched the Howard Hawks-directed screwball comedy Bringing Up Baby in which Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn's paths cross and chaotic hilarity ensues, and the romantic thriller Charade co-starring the second Hepburn of Hollywood; Audrey. After I had viewed the two most pressing films in the set it found itself placed on a shelf in a similar fashion to a trophy, Cary Grant's face looking at me whenever I passed it whilst looking for the next film to see. A few other titles in the set stood out, catching my interest. With titles like The Grass is Greener, Father Goose and The Toast of the Town the films at least sounded very interesting (I haven't seen any of these films as of writing this). No title was as captivating in its odd naming than a little film called Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House which sees Grant as a successful marketing executive who falls in love with the prospect of leaving Manhattan's noise and crowds behind for a life on the quiet Connecticut countryside. Of course nothing goes as planned and Mr. Blandings along with his wife and two daughters all find out that the move and the building of the house are more complicated (and expensive) than first believed and by the time the third act starts all you can reallly do is shake your head at the utter idiocy of what you are witnessing.
It was a solid movie, funny, well-acted and well-paced, clocking in at 90 minutes which is around the ideal length for the type of movie Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House is. Most of it was what I had come to expect from movies like Bringing Up Baby and His Girl Friday; quick dialogue and effectively executed slapstick. There was however one thing I had not expected; a person who I was not familiar with at all. In the role of Cary Grant's on-screen wife Muriel Blandings was an actress whose name I had heard my Swedish grandparents horribly mispronounce on a few occasions, an actress named Myrna Loy.
My mother pointed out for probably the third time that Myrna Loy had starred in a series of detective movies called The Thin Man back in those days and that she would very much enjoy seeing them again. Halfway through Mr. Blandings and I had ordered the entire The Thin Man-collection off of Amazon, which my mother said she would pay me for. I myself was interested in the first film, mostly because I had passed an image from the marketing of the film countless times in the book that I considered my bible 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die which of course meant that seeing it was inevitable in the long run anyway.
A week later the six-movie-set arrived and ten days after my initial viewing of Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House I sat down alone to watch the first movie in the The Thin Man-series. I was stunned to find out how much I liked it. The movie was intriguing, funny, suspensful. However the biggest draw was the couple in the center of it all; William Powell as the retired and constantly tipsy detective Nick Charles and Myrna Loy as his heiress wife Nora, who along with their little dog Asta find themselves in the middle of a world full of scoundrels and criminals, trying to solve the disappearence of one of Nick's old associates. The next night I put in the second movie, After the Thin Man and grabbed myself a glass of cherry wine and let William Powell and Myrna Loy sweep me away in another mystery filled with terrific wit and personality. The big difference between most other couples in similar situations (both modern or otherwise) and Nick and Nora Charles was that despite their adventures being filled with danger and jabs at one another, the banter never made any attempt at hiding the most obvious thing; that Nick and Nora love each other more than anything else. Their dynamic was something I had wished for but never seen. About halfway through After the Thin Man I knew that my mother would never pay me for the movies. She would never own The Thin Man, they were mine.
Despite the fact that I have yet to encounter more than a handful of people my own age who even know who Myrna Loy is, back in the day her collaborations with William Powell were highly successful. The two were first paired together alongside Clark Gable in W.S. Van Dyke's Manhattan Melodrama, a film which depicted two friends, raised as brothers who grow up to be each other's exact opposites. One is a criminal, the other a devoted attorney. It was a serious drama and it won an Academy Award for Best Story in 1934. W.S. Van Dyke was so impressed by the on screen chemistry displayed between Myrna and Bill that he immediately opted to cast them in his next film which was the adapation of Dashiell Hammett's novel The Thin Man, but the studio executives were sceptic. Powell had done comedy before, but Loy was considered a dramatic actress and the studio wasn't sure of her ability to deliver witty dialogue. Van Dyke stood firm and later in 1934, the very same year as Manhattan Melodrama came out The Thin Man was released.
Powell and Loy were a force to be reckoned with and by the end of their respective carreers they had starred in thirteen movies together along with Loy making an appearence in the Powell-movie The Senator was Indiscreet after she left MGM for RKO post-World War II.
In just about six months I have gone from not having seen a single movie with either of the two to having seen fourteen films with William Powell and ninteteen with Myrna Loy. It doesn't stop there either. I have Myrna's autobiography as well as a new biography in the mail and have come to realize that Myrna Loy is (for the time being at least) my favorite actress of all time and William Powell isn't far from being my favorite actor. It's an odd feeling, knowing that less than a year ago something as valuable to me as Myrna Loy and William Powell was something completely oblivious to me. But as previously mentioned all the best things start out that way. They don't make 'em like they used to, and when something is as charming and obscure as the Myrna Loy/William Powell-connection it's probably good that that statement is true. I'll be returning to both these two, and the sudden surprise of finding a new favorite several in later entries I am sure. So for now, I'm going to stop blabbing and get back to watching movies. And yes, the next movie in line is a William Powell and Myrna Loy-picture!
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