Shadow of the Thin Man
Shadow of the Thin Man is the fourth of six "Thin Man" murder-mystery comedy films, released by MGM in 1941. It was directed by W. S. Van Dyke and stars William Powell and Myrna Loy as Nick and Nora Charles. Their son Nick Jr. (Dickie Hall) is old enough in this film to be involved in the comic subplot. Other cast members include Donna Reed and Barry Nelson. This was one of three films in the series to include Stella Adler. 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. Production. Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, the husband-and-wife team who wrote the first three "Thin Man" scripts, refused  to write another. 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." After difficulties with the previous films, author Dashiell Hammett was uninvolved in the production of "Shadow of the Thin Man" or in the two subsequent films in the series. The film was instead based on a story by Harry Kurnitz, who wrote the script along with Irving Brecher. On June 22, 1941, MGM filmed  the exteriors in Berkeley, California, with Golden Gate Fields racetrack, which had opened on February 1, 1941 as Greenway Park. Nick and Nora Charles are pulled over for speeding on the upper deck of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge. Box office. "Shadow of the Thin Man" was eagerly welcomed, as it had been two years since the previous installment. It would be three years before Myrna 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 the assistant  to the director of military and naval welfare. According to MGM records, the film earned $1,453,000 in the U.S. 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: