Best remembered as Nick Charles of the "Thin Man" series, the usually mustachioed Powell was the epitome of the suave, urbane yet streetwise Hollywood leading man. He first appeared on screen in 1922's "Sherlock Holmes", opposite Basil Rathbone, and played a variety of roles in silent days, a sizable number of them as villains in Westerns and many of them "ethnic" in nature, before he began playing leading roles near the end of the silent period (as in Josef von Sternberg's "The Last Command" 1928).William Powell really became an important new star (and, not coincidentally, fully
