Background
The
Thin Man
(1934) is the first installment of a popular series
of six films casting a sophisticated, glamorous, pleasure-seeking,
and urbane husband-wife detective team (William Powell and Myrna
Loy as Nick and Nora Charles). It became one of the defining films
of the classic era in the comedy-detective subgenre. Director W.S.
Van Dyke had just previously directed
Manhattan
Melodrama (1934)
,
in which stars Powell and Loy had displayed their unique and charming
chemistry in the first of their 14 film pairings. [Note: Their
coupling immortalized them as a fantastic screen duo, joining others
in the annals of cinematic history, such as Bogie and Bacall, Tracy
and Hepburn, Garland and Rooney, Lewis and Martin, Astaire and
Rogers, Day and Hudson, Hope and Crosby, and Newman and Redford.]
The film's murder mystery story took a back seat to
the romantic screwball comedy, featuring the splendid, snappy and
flirty banter between the rich, carefree married couple. They were
known for sleuthing, solving murders, wisecracking one-liners, affectionate
witticisms, delightful teasing and one-upmanship, alcoholic fun with
plenty of martinis (two years after the end of Prohibition), a wire-haired
terrier named Asta (actually named Skippy), and a loving relationship
- often punctuated with quick kisses and slight hiccups. In the end,
retired sleuth Nick Charles resolved the crime and assembled all
of the major characters (and suspects) at a New Years' Eve dinner
party to reveal the devious killer.
The story was taken from Dashiell Hammett's 1934 detective
novel of the same name, with a married couple that was supposedly
modeled on the author's relationship with longtime love and playwright
Lillian Hellman. [Note: This was Hammett's fifth and final novel,
written following the hard-boiled noirs
The Maltese Falcon
and
The
Glass Key
.] Mystery and detective films were very much in vogue
during the 1930s, including the Charlie Chan, Mr. Moto, The Shadow,
Bulldog Drummond, Ellery Queen, and Philo Vance series. [Note:
The
Thin Man
star
William Powell had just completed four films as Vance from 1929
to 1933.]
The 'Thin Man' of the title was actually the murder
victim in the novel and film (Clyde Wynant), and only appeared in
this first film. The low-budget MGM film - that was shot on the cheap
in less than three weeks (some even claimed just 14 days) and earned
over $2 million, has always been rated as the best of the bunch.
The entertaining, escapist film
launched
a series of five more lucrative
Thin
Man
sequels (from 1936 to 1947), some of which had their screenplays
also written by Dashiell Hammett. Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich
were responsible for co-writing the screenplays for the first three
Thin
Man
films:
- After the Thin Man (1936)
, d. W.S. Van Dyke
- a Best Picture nominee
- Another Thin Man (1939)
, d. W.S. Van Dyke
- Shadow of the Thin Man (1941)
, d. W.S. Van
Dyke
- The Thin Man Goes Home (1945)
, d. Richard
Thorpe
- Song of the Thin Man (1947)
, d. Edward
Buzzell
The husband and wife team (billed as "the happiest
married couple in radio") was also broadcast on radio (by Pabst
Blue Ribbon) for many years, with Claudia Morgan in the role of Nora,
and a number of actors in Nick's role (Lester Damon, Les Tremayne,
Joseph Curtin, and David Gothard). Each radio show ended with Nora's
closing: "Good night, Nickeee..." The couple's popularity
progressed into television, where Peter Lawford and Phyllis Kirk
portrayed the pair for three seasons on NBC-TV in
The Thin Man
from
1957-1959, in 72 30-minute episodes.
Other copy-cat husband/wife sleuthing comedies were
also inspired, such as these 1970s-1980s shows:
- McMillan and Wife
(1971-1977), on NBC, with
Rock Hudson and Susan Saint James
- Hart to Hart
(1979-1984), on ABC, with Robert
Wagner and Stefanie Powers
- Remington Steele
(1982-1987), on NBC, with
Pierce Brosnan and Stephanie Zimbalist
- Moonlighting
(1985-1989), on ABC, with Bruce
Willis and Cybill Shepherd
Woody Allen's part-homage film
Manhattan Murder
Mystery (1993)
starred the director and Diane Keaton as the
Liptons, modeled after the Charles couple. The couple was also
memorably spoofed as Mr. and Mrs. Dick and Dora Charleston (cunningly
played by David Niven and Maggie Smith) in
Murder by Death (1976)
.
A modernized remake of the original
Thin Man
film was planned
by Warner Bros - to be directed by Rob Marshall and to star Johnny
Depp as the tuxedoed, Prohibition-era sleuther solving a Manhattan
murder mystery.
Although it was nominated in four categories for Academy
Awards, Best Picture, Best Actor (William Powell), Best Director
(W. S. "Woody" Van Dyke), and Best Adapted Screenplay (husband-and-wife
screenwriting partnership Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, also
authors of
Naughty Marietta (1935)
,
It's
A Wonderful Life (1946)
,
Easter Parade (1948)
,
Father
of the Bride (1950)
, and
The Diary of Anne Frank (1959)
),
it was up against stiff competition from the Oscar-sweeping film
It
Happened One Night (1934)
, and went away empty-handed.
[Note:
This film's first sequel,
After the Thin Man (1936)
was also
a Best Picture nominee, and the first sequel ever nominated for Best
Picture. The film also featured a surprise ending in which Nora revealed
her impending motherhood. And then in the third film in the series
Another
Thin Man (1939)
, there was the debut of a new generation of
Charles' represented by Nicky Charles, Jr. (William A. Poulsen).]
Plot Synopsis
As the film opened, an eccentric, tall, wealthy businessman/inventor
named Clyde Wynant (Edward Ellis) - the "thin man" of the
film title, was in his inventor's workshop - viewed first as a silhouetted
shadow cast on a wall. He was angered when his assistant interrupted
him, and not knowing that his doting daughter Dorothy (Maureen O'Sullivan,
better known as "Jane" from two Tarzan films) and future
son-in-law Tommy (Henry Wadsworth) had arrived. When they announced
their wedding plans to him, mean-spirited Wynant told his daughter
that he was going into seclusion to work on an important new business
idea and invention (because there's
"no peace, no quiet, everybody interrupting me"). He refused
to tell her his intended whereabouts, but he promised that he would
return for her post-Christmas wedding (December 30th) to give her
away.
Wynant was recently divorced from his wife - later
introduced as Mimi who had since remarried - because he was conducting an
affair with his pretty blonde secretary/mistress Julia Wolf (Natalie
Moorhead). He had put his mustached lawyer, Herbert MacCaulay (Porter
Hall), in charge of his financial and business affairs while he planned
to be away.
Just before he departed for his long sabbatical, Wynant
visited his upstairs office and discovered $50,000 in government
bonds missing from his safe. Intended as a wedding present for his
daughter, he questioned his clerk Tanner (Cyril Thornton) about their
whereabouts. He immediately suspected his mistress-secretary Julia
had taken the bonds. He stormed into her apartment, where he surprised
her in the company of another man [Joe Morelli (Edward S. Brophy)].
He accused his mistress Julia of two-timing and cheating on him,
and pressured her to confess that she took the bonds and sold them.
(He also believed that she had taken advantage of his absentmindedness.)
He threatened her with embezzlement and promised to turn her over
to the police. Then, he learned that she had divided the bonds equally
with an unnamed accomplice. Intercepting a strange telephone call
(from a scar-faced man later identified as Nunheim), he suspected
who had assisted her.
Three Months Later
In the next scene, three months later on Christmas
Eve in a fancy restaurant, Dorothy danced with her fiancee Tommy
and expressed how worried she was that she hadn't heard from her
father, who had promised he would return by then. At the nearby bar,
a suave and glib Nick Charles (William Powell), a retired former
sleuth, made a memorable first appearance in the film. He illustrated
to an assemblage of bartenders how to properly mix a batch of martinis,
while moving rhythmically to the music:
The important thing is the rhythm! Always have rhythm
in your shaking. Now a Manhattan you shake to fox-trot time, a
Bronx to two-step time, a dry martini you always shake to waltz
time.
Dorothy recognized him ("as a real live detective" from
years earlier) and introduced herself to him. Nick remembered her
also, since her divorced father was a former client - as she explained
to her fiancee: "He once worked on a case with my father." She
told Nick that she was concerned and suspicious that her father was
nowhere to be found, and had failed to notify her. Nick suggested
that she telephone her father's lawyer, MacCaulay, to find out if
he had heard from Wynant.
In the next memorable comedic scene, Nick's sophisticated
and loving wife Nora (Myrna Loy) also made a noisy and memorable
entrance - typical of screwball comedies. Heavily laden with Christmas
packages, and dragged by their dog Asta on a leash, she ended up
sprawled face-first on the floor as she entered the crowded restaurant.
When asked to take the dog out of the restaurant by a waiter named
Joe, Nick had a ready answer:
Nick: Oh, it's all right, Joe. It's all right. It's
my dog. And uh, my wife.
Nora: Well, you might have mentioned me first on the billing.
Nick: The dog's well-trained. He'll behave himself.
Dorothy and Tommy were introduced to Nora before they
left. Nick invited them to look them up again, since they were going
to be in town for a while. They had come to New York from California
(where they had lived for four years) for the Christmas holidays
to celebrate their newly-wedded bliss with drinking, partying, sleeping
late, and shopping. [The film capitalized on the recent repeal of
Prohibition, although in the novel set before Prohibition's repeal,
the couple had to drink boot-legged hootch.] The couple sat down
to have a few drinks at a table in the bar area:
Nora: (commenting on Dorothy's beauty) Pretty girl.
Nick: Yes, she's a very nice type.
Nora: You got types?
Nick: Only you, darling. Lanky brunettes with wicked jaws.
It was obvious that Nick had been drinking heavily,
and Nora wanted to keep up with him:
Nora: Say, how many drinks have you had?
Nick: This will make six martinis.
Nora (to waiter): All right.
Will you bring me five more martinis,
Leo? And line them right up here.
Soon
afterwards, the couple both suffered from severe hangovers in their
hotel room:
Nora: What hit me?
Nick: The last martini. How about a pick-me-up?
Just then, the doorbell rang and Wynant's lawyer MacCaulay
entered, and asked:
What's Mimi [Dorothy's divorced mother] up to, Mr.
Charles?...She usually is trying one way or the other to get money
out of Wynant...I wanted to find out if you were, uh, (laughs),
sleuthing for her?
Nick explained that he had quit being a gumshoe detective
four years earlier and preferred to be retired, in order to manage
the private affairs of his newly-wed heiress wife - and presumably
spend his inherited fortune.
MacCaulay explained how he hadn't heard from or seen
Wynant for three months ("He sends word through his secretary
Julia Wolf when he wants money. I give it to her and she gives it
to him"). Then, MacCaulay received a phone call from his secretary
and was informed that Wynant had reappeared and was
"back in town" and waiting to meet him. As MacCaulay hurriedly
left, he wished them both a "Merry Christmas." Nora was
tired of the Christmas spirit:
The next person who says Merry Christmas to me, I'll
kill 'em.
Based on MacCaulay's phone call report, Nick telephoned
Dorothy to let her know that her father had arrived back in town.
Mimi (Wynant) Jorgensen (Minna Gombell), Wynant's equally mean-spirited
ex-wife, overheard the conversation, and demanded to know where Wynant
was. Greedy and frantic, she was concerned that Wynant's mistress
Julia was taking all her ex-husband's money, now that she had remarried
an unemployed, penniless lothario named Chris Jorgensen (Cesar Romero).
She was worried that Wynant was unavailable to help support
her and Chris.
Dorothy
told off her mother who was only interested in her ex-husband's money:
You
just want money and you haven't any right to any more. He made a
big settlement on you.
After learning that Wynant had supposedly been seeing
his mistress Julia while in town, Mimi phoned Julia in the Clarkson
Apartments (#9A) and arranged to meet and speak with her. To make
matters even more serious, she found Julia's murdered corpse
in the apartment when she arrived. (Nunheim was seen surreptitiously
leaving the building as she entered.) At the scene of the murder,
Mimi secretly removed Wynant's watch chain from Julia's clutching
dead hand, thinking that she could protect Wynant from incriminating
evidence. [Wynant's alleged reappearance happened to coincide with
the first of several murders of his close acquaintances.]
Five short scenes were inter-cut to add further intrigue
to the story:
(1) Mimi was seen in a restaurant speaking to Nunheim:
Mimi: Where have ya been?
Nunheim: Out makin' money.
Mimi: Let's see it.
Nunheim: I haven't got it yet. But I'll get it.
(2) A stocky-built man named Stutsy Burke (Walter
Long) informed Joe Morelli at a bar that Julia Wolf had recently
been "bumped...off."
(3) MacCaulay expressed complete shock and surprise
when phoned and told that Julia had been murdered.
(4) A cleaning woman described how she would tell
the police
"everything" about how she "heard an awful fight in
there awhile ago" between Wynant and Julia the night that he
left town.
(5) MacCaulay, summoned by police, was questioned
about his last contact with Julia, when he gave her money for Wynant.
He answered:
"Yesterday, I gave her a thousand dollars." Police detective
Lt. John Guild (Nat Pendleton) immediately suspected that the missing
Wynant was Julia's murderer, because there was no sign of the money:
MacCaulay: Perhaps it was a robbery.
Guild (skeptically): And her with that sparkler on her finger and
thirty dollars in her purse. It looks to me like our friend
Wynant came around to collect and ran into a little trouble.
MacCaulay also asserted that his secretary received
a phone call message from Wynant to meet him at the Plaza at 3
pm, but Wynant didn't show up.
Later at Mimi's apartment, Lt. Guild questioned her
about the murder scene that she witnessed, and asked: "Did you
see anything in Miss Wolf's hand?"
Mimi denied seeing anything or touching the body, although the medical
examiner claimed that the body may have been touched ("that someone
had forced open the girl's hand after she'd been killed"). After
the police left, Dorothy walked in on Mimi putting the watch chain
in a wall safe, and was dismayed to think that her father might be
the murderer.
At a festive Christmas party that the Charles couple
were hosting, news of the Julia Wolf murder was heard on the radio:
Police have found out that the beautiful blonde secretary
was once a gangster's girl. They're now looking for the gangster.
Clyde Wynant, the girl's employer, is still missing.
Nick was asked why he was in town during the Julia
Wolf murder case: "My wife's on a bender. I'm trying to sober
her up." Nora was also asked if Nick was working on the case:
Nora: Yes.
Reporter: What case?
Nora (retorting): A case of scotch. Pitch in and help him.
In the kitchen, she recommended that Nick take the
Julia Wolf case, because it sounded interesting and exciting. He
reminded her why he was not coming out of retirement:
I haven't time. I'm much too busy seeing that you
don't lose any of the money I married you for.
She tried to entice him with the intriguing murder
case, now that the inventor had been accused of a crime: "Girl
mysteriously murdered, nobody knows who did it, they haven't found
any clues, no gun, no fingerprints." Nick asserted that he wanted
to hear nothing more from her about the case:
Nora: Is that my drink over there?
Nick: What are you drinking?
Nora: Rye.
Nick: (He picked up the glass and slugged down its contents.) Yes.
That's yours.
Dorothy arrived at the Charles' Christmas party terribly
distressed. She begged to speak to Nick alone. To protect her father,
she confessed to Nick that she shot Julia, but Nick immediately saw
through her fabricated story - a cover-up to protect her father.
Soon after, Mimi arrived and also wished to speak to Nick about "something
very important." Mimi asked Nick for assistance in locating
her missing ex-husband:
You will help me find Clyde, won't you?
Nick was again reluctant to interrupt his Christmas
vacation to help anyone, speak to reporters, or to get involved in
the case in any way. However, in the midst of the party, he received
an intriguing phone call from Nunheim:
"I'd like to lay a proposition before you. Well, I can't discuss
it over the telephone, but if you'll give me a half-hour of your time...It's
about Julia Wolf" - but then the call was cut off.
As the drunken party-goers sang
Oh Christmas Tree
,
Nora embraced and kissed Nick, and told him what she thought about
all the low-life guests he had gathered together: "Oh, Nicky.
I love you, because you know such lovely people."
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