The Other Thin Man-Ginger Rogers And William Powell’s “Star Of Midnight” (1935)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Sam Lowell

[Although Sam is formally retired he has expressed a desire to help out when we have several films to review and not enough hands to do the tasks. He has graciously taken time away from his hot pursuit of why one very famous California ex-public cop turned private eye named Lew Archer, yes, that Lew Archer who solved the very important Galton, Turner and Hallman cases, that last one a real twister where the wife turned out to be the serial murderer never made the P.I. Hall of Fame despite a very promising start. He is following so far successfully the trail of sexual impotence as a key factor. That sex business, flirting with danger by messing with some hot maybe not so innocent femme on the way to closing down the case at least for old time P.I.s part of the package if you wanted to move up the food chain. Good luck. Since Sam is very familiar with PIs in general and with The Thin Man series in particular which as here had starred William Powell as the suave Nick Charles (and Myrna Loy as Nora) who did have the qualities to make the Hall he was the natural choice to cover this film. Thanks, Sam-Greg Green]

Star of Midnight, starring Ginger Rogers, William Powell, 1935 

One of the problems a few actors have had is to be type-cast into a certain cinematic persona. That was generally the case with William Powell, the male lead in the film under review, Star of Midnight where he plays a smart, sophisticated urban (New York City of course) man about town very similar to the role that he played in The Thin Man the year before this film was released (and would go on to star with Myrna Loy in six sequels, ouch) except here he is a high-priced lawyer, Dal, and not an ex-cop private dick Nick Charles. 

The play is the same though although the romantic interest is Donna a young smitten, smitten by Dal, played by Ginger Rogers who is not his boon companion as Myra Loy as Nora Charles was. Here a friend of Dal’s is looking for him to find his missing paramour who blew Chic town (okay, Chicago) a year before without leaving a forwarding address. (Forget it buddy, rule number one is when they don’t leave a forwarding address that means they don’t want to be found, move on, and that isn’t even high-priced legal advice.)  The plot thickens when the three of them attend a play and nobody but a masked girlfriend is on the stage. The guy yells out Alice. Bad move though since she is on the lam from somebody trying to silence her after she witnessed a murder in, ah, Chicago. Somebody has reason to silence her to cover up his own dastardly deeds so he let out that he was looking for Alice too. Don’t worry even though Dal was accused of killing a source killed in his own apartment he was left by the coppers to figure the whole thing out. And you know just like Nick (and Nora) he does. By the way Dal won’t be lonesome anymore. Donna snagged him. The killer: well grab the film and check it out. It could have been one of several people as usual.