Shadow of the Thin Man

Shadow of the Thin Man is a 1941 American murder mystery comedy film directed by W. S. Van Dyke and starring William Powell and Myrna Loy as Nick and Nora Charles. It was produced and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as the fourth in the series of six The Thin Man films. In this film their son Nick Jr. (Dickie Hall) is old enough to figure in the comic subplot. Other cast members include Donna Reed and Barry Nelson. This was one of three films in which Stella Adler appeared.

Plot
Nick and Nora Charles are looking forward to a relaxing day at a racetrack, but when a jockey accused of throwing a race is found shot to death, Police Lieutenant Abrams requests Nick's help. The trail leads to a gambling syndicate that operates out of a wrestling arena, a murdered reporter, and a pretty secretary whose boyfriend has been framed. Along the way, Nick and Nora must contend with a wild wrestling match, a dizzying day at a merry-go-round (accompanied by Nick, Jr.), and a table-clearing restaurant brawl.

Cast

 * William Powell as Nick Charles
 * Myrna Loy as Nora Charles
 * Barry Nelson as Paul Clarke
 * Louise Beavers as Stella
 * Donna Reed as Molly
 * Sam Levene as Lieutenant Abrams
 * Alan Baxter as "Whitey" Barrow
 * Henry O'Neill as Major Jason I. Sculley
 * Stella Adler as Claire Porter
 * Loring Smith as "Link" Stephens
 * Joseph Anthony as Fred Macy
 * Will Wright as Maguire - Nervous Ticket Seller (uncredited)
 * Sid Melton as "Fingers" (uncredited)
 * Adeline De Walt Reynolds as Barrow's landlady (uncredited)
 * Tor Johnson as Jack the Ripper - wrestler (uncredited)
 * Frankie Burke as Jockey at the races (uncredited)
 * Joe Oakie as Spider Webb (uncredited)
 * Lou Lubin as Rainbow Benny
 * Richard Hall as Nick Jr.

Production
Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, the husband and wife team who wrote the first three Thin Man scripts, refused to write another one. Goodrich said: "They press you awfully hard there…when they started talking about another Thin Man, we started throwing up and crying into our typewriters. We had the nervous breakdown together, [so] we said, "let's get out of here [and] we quit".

The film was based on a story by Harry Kurnitz, not Dashiell Hammett, as the previous films had been, with the script written by Harry Kurnitz and Irving Brecher.

After difficulties with the previous films, author Dashiell Hammett was uninvolved in the production of Shadow or the two subsequent films in the series.

On 22 June 1941, MGM filmed exteriors for Shadow of the Thin Man in Berkeley, California, with Golden Gate Fields racetrack, which first opened on 1 February the same year, as Greenway Park. On the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge, Nick and Nora Charles get "pulled over" for speeding on the upper deck of the bridge.

Box office
Shadow of the Thin Man was eagerly welcomed, coming two years after the previous outing and hitting theaters just two weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbor. It would be three years before Loy would make another film (The Thin Man Goes Home in 1945) as she left Hollywood for New York, where she volunteered for the war effort with the Red Cross, as an assistant to the director of military and naval welfare.

According to MGM records, the film earned $1,453,000 in the US and Canada and $848,000 elsewhere, resulting in a profit of $769,000.

Nick and Nora Charles film series
This film was the fourth of six based on the characters of Nick and Nora Charles:
 * The Thin Man (1934)
 * After the Thin Man (1936)
 * Another Thin Man (1939)
 * Shadow of the Thin Man (1941)
 * The Thin Man Goes Home (1945)
 * Song of the Thin Man (1947)