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| Baby Nicky and li'l Asta |
Back in New York with their new son, Nicky, and little Asta in tow, Nick and Nora (William Powell and Myrna Loy) are summoned to the Long Island estate of Colonel MacFay (C. Aubrey Smith). MacFay has been receiving weird death threats from an old employee named Church (Sheldon Leonard) and hopes to have Nick's protection. Naturally, as in most of these detective movies, the threatened man is murdered under the disinterested hero's nose, and the rest of the movie is concerned with finding out who done it. Another Thin Man is quite talky, but entertaining, with an intricate script and a denouement that is truly a surprise. Members of the supporting cast (as well as suspects in certain cases) include Virginia Grey [Jeanne Eagels] as MacFay's adopted daughter; Patric Knowles as her secret fiance; Tom Neal [Bruce Gentry] as a man carrying a torch for Grey; Otto Kruger as the detective on the case; Ruth Hussey as a kind of nanny; Muriel Hutchison as Church's paramour, among others, all giving adroit performances. The business with ex-cons being delighted to see Nick even though he sent them up the river gets tiresome, and leads into a party for little Nicky with the hoods each bringing their own baby! (Don't blink or you'll miss Shemp Howard.) Some of the subsequent victims certainly don't deserve to be murdered, but there's never any sympathy for them. However, there's a swell scene with Powell interacting with Marjorie Main [The Law and the Lady] as a landlady, and the ending is a pip! The killer in this is especially conniving and heartless.
Verdict: Things look up for the series with this entry. ***.
