At the nearby bar, a suave and glib Nick Charles (William Powell), a retired former sleuth, made a memorable first appearance in the film...Broken bits of his life in his new home.His life has unraveled in an opium den of the Anglo-Saxon West, where he smokes the deadly drug: "Chinese, Malays, Lascars, where the Orient squats at the portals of the West...History is to repeat itself").And then the school""s photographer Colin was petrified and brought into the infirmary, as Dumbledore cautioned: "Our students are in great danger." In he film""s first hint at her stinginess, she is upset and naturally distressed by the diagnosis: "Oh no! That will cost too much, won""t it?" "For the first time in his life, McTeague felt an inkling of ambition to please a woman.Not to mention one or two other less savory items of publicity before we got that so-called epic in the can.