Old Movie Teams

Weren’t they also in that other movie?

Myrna Loy & William Powell

Myrna Loy and William Powell appear together in 14 feature-length movies, including the six from the Thin Man series. By comparison, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers appear together in 10 feature-length movies; Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy in 9. Three of Mr. Powell and Ms. Loy’s films can be categorized as dramatic offerings: Manhattan Melodrama, the very first release of their collaborations; Evelyn Prentice; and The Great Ziegfeld. Incidentally, the Biograph movie theater John Dillinger was attending the night he was gunned down by FBI agents was playing Manhattan Melodrama, which, paralleling Mr. Dillinger’s fate, involves the death of a notorious gangster. The 11 other appearances Mr. Powell and Ms. Loy make together in films involves some drama (e.g. the Thin Man movies) and a good deal of humor (e.g. I Love You Again), at times verging on the hilarious (e.g. Love Crazy).

They possess a chemistry that has proven endearing to and enduring for audiences, especially when their chemistry manifests in that witty repartee that stands to be the hallmark of their teamwork. Even their very last outing together, The Senator Was Indiscreet, in which Ms. Loy appears only very briefly, proves that they do not need much film footage to demonstrate why it is they work so well together in front of the camera.

Here is a list of their collaborations:

Manhattan Melodrama (1934)
The Thin Man (1934)
Evelyn Prentice (1934)
Libeled Lady (1936)
After the Thin Man (1936)
The Great Ziegfeld (1936)
Double Wedding (1937)
Another Thin Man (1939)
I love You Again (1940)
Shadow of the Thin Man (1941)
Love Crazy (1941)
The Thin Man Goes Home (1945)
Song of the Thin Man (1947)
The Senator Was Indiscreet (1947)

2 Comments»

  cc wrote @

They were beautiful and you could tell that they really liked each other and were enjoying themselves.

  Nel Bekcer wrote @

Agreed wholeheartedly. One could guess that some of Wm. Powell’s verbiage was off the cuff, which made the series even more hilarious and at least somewhat realistic.


Leave a Reply

%d bloggers like this: