“One night I was sitting around watching The Thin Man on TV,” begins a monologue on Myrna Loy. Although I wish I had written this line, this could be true of me on any given night.
Myrna Loy, the smart and stunning actress of the 1930s, got to shine as Nora, to William Powell’s Nick, in The Thin Man Series, based on Dashiell Hammett’s eponymous murder mystery. Although made into a film series (Hammett only wrote one Thin Man novel), starring the successful Loy/Powell brand, the first two, for my money, are the most superior, with sumptuous sets, killer costumes and an etched-in-memory cast of character actors. A young James Stewart even appears in The Thin Man Returns as a man-about-town in 1930s San Francisco.
In the monologue, written by the late humorist Cynthia Heimel, Loy is lionized as the perfect role model for yearning young women trying to figure out the dating scene of the 1980s and ‘90s: “When in doubt,” Heimel writes, “act like Myrna Loy!”
Loy, in Heimel’s mind, is the cinema’s response to the 1920s flapper, a young woman who called her own shots. “Consider Myrna in the movies,” Heimel writes. “A real pip. Witty, self-possessed, adventuresome, wore great hats. This is good stuff.”
There was a time when you could easily fall into the “they-don’t-make-‘em-like-that- anymore” lament of our parents. Then came the new television. And with it arrived Phryne Fisher, lately of Melbourne, Australia.
“The voltage of that unresolved relationship” said author Kerry Greenwood “I don’t remember writing it that well.” She was speaking of the making of Miss Fisher (of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries) for television and Phryne’s relationship with Detective Inspector Jack Robinson, who, like Nick, in The Thin Man, initially sees a female as simply getting in his way, when trying to solve a murder. But Miss Fisher is no ditsy dame, she is accomplished, intelligent, and multi-lingual. Indeed, Jack not only comes to rely on her; he falls hard for her, as well.
What The Thin Man, and Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries share in common is a celebration of the male-female couple as one, working together towards a common goal, in this case solving crimes. While, initially, there is certainly a sense of the male trying to assert his power by getting rid of the “little lady,” what elevates this genre is the emerging realization that the female is equal to him in talent and ability. And then there is the essential 1930s staple, snappy dialogue and witty repartee:
“One night I was sitting around, watching The Thin Man on TV, and William Powell had just put Myrna Loy into a cab. She thought he was getting in beside her and they were going to catch a murderer but instead he told the cab to take her to Grant’s Tomb and the cab sped away, containing an astonished Myrna. When her darling husband later asked her how she liked Grant’s Tomb…she just said, nice as you please, “It was lovely. I’m having a copy made for you.”
The Miss Fisher writing and production team knocked it out of the park with the series; can’t wait to see what happens with Phryne and Jack in Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears, the feature film, coming out later this year.