Editing The Thin Man (film) (section)

===Filming===
[[File:Thin-Man-Loy-Powell-Skippy.jpg|thumb|Myrna Loy, William Powell and Skippy]]
{{blockquote |quote=[Nick and Nora were the] first on-screen Hollywood couple for whom matrimony did not signal the end of sex, romance and adventure.|source=Film historian [[Andrew Sarris]] (1998)<ref>[[Andrew Sarris|Sarris, Andrew]] (1998) ''"You Ain't Heard Nothin' Yet": The American Talking Film History and Memory, 1927-1949''. New York: Oxford University Press. p.419 {{ISBN|0-19-513426-5}}</ref>}}

The film was shot with a budget of $226,408 by cinematographer [[James Wong Howe]]. For Powell's first scene in the film, Van Dyke told him to take the cocktail shaker, go to the bar and just walk through the scene while the crew checked lights and sound. Powell did it, throwing in some lines and business of his own. Suddenly he heard Van Dyke say, "That's it! Print it!" The director had decided to shoot the scene without Powell knowing it so that he would be as relaxed and natural as possible.

Van Dyke often did not bother with cover shots if he felt the scene was right on the first take, reasoning that actors "lose their fire" if they have to do something over and over. It was a lot of pressure on the actors, who often had to learn new lines and business immediately before shooting, without the luxury of retakes, but Loy credited much of the appeal of the film to Van Dyke's pacing and spontaneity. He paid the most attention to Powell and Loy's easy banter between takes and their obvious enjoyment of each other's company and worked it into the movie. The director often encouraged and incorporated improvisation and off-the-cuff details into the picture. In order to keep her entrance fresh and spontaneous, Van Dyke did not tell Loy about it until right before they shot it.

Powell loved working so much with Loy because of her naturalness, her professionalism, and her lack of any kind of "diva" temperament. Of her, Powell said: 
{{bquote|When we did a scene together, we forgot about technique, camera angles, and microphones. We weren't acting. We were just two people in perfect harmony. Myrna, unlike some actresses who think only of themselves, has the happy faculty of being able to listen while the other fellow says his lines. She has the give and takes of acting that brings out the best.}}

According to Loy, the actors were not allowed to interact between takes with the dog Skippy; trainers felt it would break his concentration. Skippy once bit Loy during filming.<ref name="Being and Becoming">{{cite book |last1=Kotsilibas-Davis |first1=James |last2=Loy |first2=Myrna |author-link2=Myrna Loy |date=1987 |title=Myrna Loy: Being and Becoming |url=https://archive.org/details/myrnaloybeingbec00kots |location=New York |publisher=[[Alfred A. Knopf]] |isbn=9780394555935 |url-access=registration}}</ref>{{Rp|91}}

Although she had great compliments for Powell's charm and wit, [[Maureen O'Sullivan]] (who played the daughter of Wynant) later said she did not enjoy making the picture because her part was so small and the production was so rushed.

The scene of Nick shooting the ornaments off the tree was added after Powell playfully picked up an air gun and started shooting ornaments the art department was putting up.

Loy wrote that the biggest problem during shooting was the climactic dinner party scene in which Nick reveals the killer. Powell complained that he had too many lines to learn and could barely decipher the complicated plot he was unraveling. It was the one scene when several retakes were necessary, which brought up an entirely new problem. The script called for oysters to be served to the dinner guests and, in take after take, the same plate of oysters was brought out under the hot lights. Loy recalled that "they began to putrefy. By the time we finished that scene, nobody ever wanted to see another oyster".<ref name="Being and Becoming"/>{{Rp|89–90}}