William Powell, Detective

I hadn't heard of the movie Star of Midnight until I saw it on tomorrow morning's TCM schedule: 6:30 AM, to be precise. Powell plays -- surprise surprise -- a detective, and one who drinks and trades quips with a woman (Ginger Rogers). Sounds a lot like The Thin Man, which was released a year earlier and at another studio. But then, studios have never been original.

Not that The Thin Man marked Powell's debut as a screen detective. He had played Philo Vance in films like The Kennel Murder Case in the early 1930s. There are also other detective roles for Powell, such as The Ex-Mrs. Bradford, where his ex-wife (a mystery writer played by Jean Arthur) ropes him into playing detective with her.