For those not going out on the town tonight, there’s one of my favorite movies playing on PBS (Channel 2, locally) – “The Thin Man”, starring the dashing William Powell and the beautiful Myrna Loy. Based (loosely) on the novel by Dashiell Hammett, the story revolves around Nick and Nora Charles. Nick is a former private detective who retired when he married Nora in order to handle the businesses she inherited which made her stinking rich. Produced in 1934, Charles examplify the country’s Depression-era vision of the lifestyle of the wealthy class, living in a luxury apartment, travelling incessantly, and never missing an opportunity to have a drink, but they are both very down-to-earth. “Earthy” sort of says it all, as a matter of fact, when it comes to the dialogue between Nick and Nora. The couple’s clever banter in the screenplay is often risque for the time, and Nora gives as good as she gets.
The story revolves around an eccentric inventor, Clyde Wynant, who leaves town to do some work in isolation, but doesn’t tell anyone where he’s going. Wynant is divorced, and is seeing a gold-digging vamp, Julia Wolfe, whom he suspects has been stealing his money. When Wynant doesn’t return, his daughter Dorothy asks Nick to investigate. Nick refuses, saying he’s retired, but gets dragged into the case when Wynant becomes suspected of murdering Julia Wolfe and Dorothy tries to protect him by confessing to the crime. Nora convinces Nick that he has to solve the case, if only to protect Dorothy, and naturally does her best to help him in his sleuthing.
The movie’s plot hardly matters, it’s the characters that make this movie a treat. Nick is constantly running into minor villains that he’d had sent to jail, and they all treat him like a long lost friend, much to Nora’s amazement. Between the villains and the Wynant family, there’s no shortage of suspects. The mystery ends when Nick gathers them all together and cross-examines them until one of them slips up in classic detective fiction style. The movie was so popular that they made a total of six “Thin Man” movies, and Powell and Loy were so popular that Hollywood paired them in no less than twelve movies together. The movie shows tonight at 8PM on Channel 2 and PBS stations around the country, followed by one of the sequels. If you watch the first one, I guarantee you’ll watch the second.
