psammead:
There is a spanking scene in one of the later Thin Man movies - think it's the Thin Man Goes Home
That's right, there is: William Powell spanks Myrna Loy with a folded newspaper, so it's not the world's most effective spanking. But he does it in front of his parents, and his father says: "I should have done that to your mother years ago." Which is a nice line.