Murder, My Sweet (1944)

My great-grandmother knew Dick Powell's mother. They were mountain women from Arkansas. I went back to my ancestral home about fifteen years ago and there was the house where Powell grew up in Mountain View. I stopped and gazed at it, but that was about all you could do. There was a sign in front, but they weren't offering tours and there wouldn't have been much to see if they did.

When he starred in Murder, My Sweet, Powell was getting too old for the song and dance roles he played before that. There's a scene in this movie where a woman slips into his one room apartment while he's standing at the sink.

"You have a nice build for a private detective," she said.

"It gets me around," he says.

Which was sort of funny because he looked like a middle-aged guy in a t-shirt. 

In fairness, by normal human standards, he looked pretty fit for a guy who was 39 or 40. He wasn't a body-builder like all the actors now and his t-shirt might not have been as flattering as modern t-shirts, but he looked perfectly healthy.

Based on a Raymond Chandler novel. I liked the way Philip Marlow would jump to conclusions on little evidence.

Directed by Edward Dmytryk. He gave fellow Ukrainian Mike Mazurki a role as a big giant ex-convict looking for his old girlfriend. 

I watched it with my mother. It made no sense to her. She was amused and a perhaps a little insulted that the frail old man in it was only 65 which isn't that much older than I am. I'm the one who should have been insulted. He goes to take a nap while his wife hits on Powell. The way they drink and smoke in this thing, no wonder he was a physical wreck. Powell himself died of lung cancer at 58 although the two Ukrainians lived to old age.