William Powell

My Man Godfrey

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Carol Lombard and William Powell

William Powell wouldn’t make screwball comedy My Man Godfrey without Carole Lombard as his co-star. It’s not every actor who insists on getting the ex-wife in to play love scenes (they’d divorced three years earlier) but watching the results you can see why he insisted. It’s an exquisite film, superbly directed and brilliantly written but it’s the acting that is the best thing about it. David Niven and June Allyson would star in a remake in 1957, but good though they are, they stand no chance against Powell and Lombard in full spate in 1936, not to mention the whole rest of the cast. There isn’t a role in this film that isn’t … Read more

I Love You Again

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Myrna Loy and William Powell

I Love You Again is a knockabout Hollywood farce, a cock-eyed “comedy of remarriage” – The Philadelphia Story is the king of the genre – done in rat-a-rat style by the crack team of director WS Van Dyke and his stars, William Powell and Myrna Loy. Van Dyke was known as One Take Woody, for reasons that don’t need explaining, and at this point had worked together with Powell and Loy on three Thin Man films, which had done all three of them a lot of favours. If you’re not familiar with the Thin Man films (there would eventually be six; the first three are the best), they all feature Powell and Loy as … Read more

100 Years of… When Knighthood Was in Flower

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Forrest Stanley and Marion Davies in a clinch

When Knighthood Was in Flower answers the question posed by Citizen Kane – just how much of a chump was media magnate William Randolph Hearst over actress Marion Davies? Here is how much – a massive movie conceived on the grandest scale, produced by a company Hearst set up expressly to make Davies a star, with her name above the title, opening credits making great claims to the film’s historical accuracy, an opening scene with a grand entrance by Davies’s character in a royal barge, exteriors shot in Windsor, UK, even though much of the rest of the film was shot in New York and Connecticut, followed by an advertising campaign on the … Read more