Top Qs
Timeline
Chat
Perspective

The Thin Man (film)

1934 film by W. S. Van Dyke From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Thin Man (film)
Remove ads

The Thin Man is a 1934 American pre-Code comedy-mystery film directed by W. S. Van Dyke and based on the 1934 novel by Dashiell Hammett. The film stars William Powell and Myrna Loy as Nick and Nora Charles, a leisure-class couple who enjoy copious drinking and flirtatious banter. Nick is a retired private detective who left his very successful career when he married Nora, a wealthy heiress accustomed to high society. Their wire-haired fox terrier Asta was played by canine actor Skippy. In 1997, the film was added to the United States National Film Registry having been deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[3][4]

Quick facts Directed by, Screenplay by ...

The film's screenplay was written by Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich, a married couple. In 1934, the film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. The eponymous "Thin Man" is not Nick Charles, but the man Charles is initially hired to find – Clyde Wynant. In the original novel Charles is described as being overweight and out of shape while Charles describes Wynant as a "thin man with white hair". The trim William Powell was cast for the films, leading many viewers to believe it referred to Nick Charles and, it was subsequently used in the titles of sequels as if referring to Charles. It was followed by five sequels.

Remove ads

Plot

Summarize
Perspective
Thumb
William Powell, Myrna Loy and Skippy (Asta) in The Thin Man

Dorothy Wynant discusses her upcoming wedding with her father Clyde. She is surprised that her fiancé, Tommy, knows all about her family yet still wants to marry her. Later, her father discovers that bonds worth $50,000, intended as a wedding present for his daughter, are missing. The only other person who knows the combination of the safe in which they were kept is his secretary and mistress, Julia Wolf. When he confronts Julia about the missing bonds, she confesses that she cashed them in and has only $25,000 left. He threatens to call the police unless she comes up with the other $25,000.

Nick Charles is a retired detective and he once did a job for Clyde. Nick and his wealthy wife, Nora, live in San Francisco but are visiting New York City for Christmas, staying in a glamorous apartment-like suite at the Hotel Normandie. While in New York, Nick is pressed back into service by Dorothy, as her father, the "Thin Man" of the movie title, had left on a secret business trip with a promise to return home before his daughter's wedding, but he has mysteriously disappeared. According to his attorney, Herbert MacCauley, he had been sending money to Wynant from time to time while Wynant was away on his trip. Dorothy convinces Nick to take the case, with the assistance of his socialite wife, who is eager to see him in action.

What appears to be a missing person situation rapidly turns into a murder case, when Julia Wolf is found dead, and evidence points to Clyde as the prime suspect. Dorothy refuses to believe that her father is guilty. Nick and Police Lieutenant Guild visit Arthur Nunheim, a petty criminal who regularly provides information to the lieutenant. After being pressed for information, Nunheim excuses himself momentarily, only to slip away down the fire escape. Later he arranges a meeting with the yet-unidentified murderer (someone whose face is not yet shown) to collect $5,000 from him, in exchange for keeping quiet about the murder. When Nunheim arrives, however, he is immediately shot four times and killed with what police find was the same gun that killed Julia Wolf.

Police think Wynant is guilty of both murders after his ex-wife, Mimi Wynant Jorgenson, provides evidence that implicates him. On a hunch, Nick visits Wynant's closed shop in the dead of night and uses Asta's nose to find a skeletonized, but fully dressed, body, buried under the floor. In the dark shop, Wynant's former bookkeeper, Tanner - a man known to Nick as an ex-con, suddenly appears. He had been hired by Julia Wolf and admits stealing money from Wynant, claiming to have come back to return the money and "clean up the books."

When the police—whom Nick had called once he found the body—arrive, they conclude that Wynant committed the murders of Julia and this newly discovered body, assuming that the remains belong to the "Fat Man"—a long-ago enemy of Wynant's—because of its oversized clothing with a belt buckle bearing an "R" (for "Rosebreen", that notorious figure's surname).

Nick—who had accompanied the medical examiner when he X-rayed the buried body—theorizes that the clothes were planted to hide the body's true identity, as the X-ray revealed telltale shrapnel, presumably from an old war wound, in one leg, the exact same injury that had plagued the "Thin Man": the missing Clyde Wynant. Nick deduces that the real culprit murdered Clyde once he discovered that the killer had been embezzling from him, and then the culprit murdered his own accomplice, Julia Wolf, because she knew about Clyde's murder, and after that, he murdered Nunheim since he had witnessed Julia's murder and was blackmailing him.

Since Nick has already all but solved the case, he invites the full cast of suspects to an elegant dinner party to expose the murderer. Nick unfurls his theory to the dinner guests, informing them that Wynant isn't the killer, and that he saw Wynant the night before (not revealing he meant Wynant's corpse). Several guests claim to have also seen Wynant the night before.

As Nick provides potential evidence about each guest as the murderer, Herbert MacCauley, Wynant's attorney, panics and tries to shoot Nick. Nick punches him out and declares MacCauley to be the murderer.

After murdering Wynant and then Wolf, MacCauley had sought to clean out Wynant's bank account by making it look like Wynant was just away on a business trip. He also paid off Wynant's ex, Mimi Wynant Jorgenson, to throw police the scent in Julia Wolf's murder, having her provide evidence to police that would implicated her cheating ex-husband, Wynant, in that case. Further, he didn't inform Mimi that Wynant was dead, and that she was entitled to her ex-husband's entire estate, not just the small bribe MacCauley paid her.

Finally, Nick and Nora, along with Dorothy and her new husband, Tommy, celebrate as they ride a luxury train back to California. Nora, in the lower bunk, wants to sleep with Asta, but Nick tosses Asta to the upper bunk and joins Nora himself. Asta looks down on the couple and covers his eyes with his paw. The film ends with a short rendition of California, Here I Come.[5]

Remove ads

Cast

Thumb
Lobby card

Cast notes:

Remove ads

Production

Summarize
Perspective

Screenplay

The film was based on the novel of the same name by Dashiell Hammett, released in January 1934. Hammett's novel drew on his experiences as a union-busting Pinkerton detective in Butte, Montana. Hammett based Nick and Nora's banter upon his rocky on-again, off-again relationship with playwright Lillian Hellman.[8]

MGM paid Hammett $21,000 for the screen rights to the novel. The screenplay was written by Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich, who had been married for three years. Director W.S. Van Dyke encouraged them to use Hammett's writing as a basis only, and to concentrate on providing witty exchanges for Nick and Nora.[citation needed]

Casting

Van Dyke convinced MGM executives to let Powell and Loy portray the lead characters despite concerns that Powell was too old and strait-laced to play Nick Charles and that Loy had become typecast in exotic femme fatale roles.[9][10]

Skippy played Asta, the dog of Nick and Nora. Skippy was subsequently cast in two screwball comedy classics, The Awful Truth (1937) and Bringing Up Baby (1938).[11]

Filming

Thumb
Myrna Loy, William Powell and Skippy

[Nick and Nora were the] first on-screen Hollywood couple for whom matrimony did not signal the end of sex, romance and adventure.

— Film historian Andrew Sarris (1998)[12]

The film was shot with a budget of $226,408 by cinematographer James Wong Howe. For Powell's first scene in the film, Van Dyke told him to take the cocktail shaker, go to the bar and just walk through the scene while the crew checked lights and sound. Powell did it, throwing in some lines and business of his own. Suddenly he heard Van Dyke say, "That's it! Print it!" The director had decided to shoot the scene without Powell knowing it so that he would be as relaxed and natural as possible.

Van Dyke often did not bother with cover shots if he felt the scene was right on the first take, reasoning that actors "lose their fire" if they have to do something over and over. It was a lot of pressure on the actors, who often had to learn new lines and business immediately before shooting, without the luxury of retakes, but Loy credited much of the appeal of the film to Van Dyke's pacing and spontaneity. He paid the most attention to Powell and Loy's easy banter between takes and their obvious enjoyment of each other's company and worked it into the movie. The director often encouraged and incorporated improvisation and off-the-cuff details into the picture. In order to keep her entrance fresh and spontaneous, Van Dyke did not tell Loy about it until right before they shot it.

Powell loved working so much with Loy because of her naturalness, her professionalism, and her lack of any kind of "diva" temperament. Of her, Powell said:

When we did a scene together, we forgot about technique, camera angles, and microphones. We weren't acting. We were just two people in perfect harmony. Myrna, unlike some actresses who think only of themselves, has the happy faculty of being able to listen while the other fellow says his lines. She has the give and takes of acting that brings out the best.

According to Loy, the actors were not allowed to interact between takes with the dog Skippy; trainers felt it would break his concentration. Skippy once bit Loy during filming.[13]: 91 

Although she had great compliments for Powell's charm and wit, Maureen O'Sullivan (who played the daughter of Wynant) later said she did not enjoy making the picture because her part was so small and the production was so rushed.

The scene of Nick shooting the ornaments off the tree was added after Powell playfully picked up an air gun and started shooting ornaments the art department was putting up.

Loy wrote that the biggest problem during shooting was the climactic dinner party scene in which Nick reveals the killer. Powell complained that he had too many lines to learn and could barely decipher the complicated plot he was unraveling. It was the one scene when several retakes were necessary, which brought up an entirely new problem. The script called for oysters to be served to the dinner guests and, in take after take, the same plate of oysters was brought out under the hot lights. Loy recalled that "they began to putrefy. By the time we finished that scene, nobody ever wanted to see another oyster".[13]: 89–90 

Remove ads

Reception

Summarize
Perspective

The film was released on May 25, 1934, to overwhelmingly positive reviews, with special praise for the chemistry between Loy and Powell. Mordaunt Hall of The New York Times called it "an excellent combination of comedy and excitement", and the film appeared on the Times year-end list of the ten best of the year.[9] Variety reported that "The Thin Man was an entertaining novel, and now it's an entertaining picture. For its leads the studio couldn't have done better than to pick Powell and Miss Loy, both of whom shade their semi-comic roles beautifully".[14] Film Daily raved: "The screen seldom presents a more thoroughly interesting piece of entertainment than this adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's popular novel. The rapid fire dialogue is about the best heard since talkies, and it is delivered by Powell and Miss Loy to perfection".[15] John Mosher of The New Yorker wrote that Loy and Powell played their parts "beautifully", adding: "All the people of the book are there, and I think the final scenes of the solution of the mystery are handled on a higher note than they were in print".[16] Louella Parsons called it "the greatest entertainment, the most fun and the best mystery-drama of the year".[9] The Chicago Tribune said that it was "exciting", "amusing" and "fat with ultra, ultra-sophisticated situations and dialog". It also called Powell and Loy "delightful".[17] Harrison Carroll of The Los Angeles Herald-Express wrote that it was "one of the cleverest adaptations of a popular novel that Hollywood has ever turned out".[9]

The film was such a box-office success that it spawned five sequels:

The Thin Man was voted one of the ten best pictures of 1934 by Film Daily's annual poll of critics.[18]

In 2002, critic Roger Ebert added the film to his list of Great Movies.[19] Ebert praised William Powell's performance in particular, stating that Powell "is to dialogue as Fred Astaire is to dance. His delivery is so droll and insinuating, so knowing and innocent at the same time, that it hardly matters what he's saying".[20]

The Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa cited The Thin Man as one of his favorite films.[21][22]

The film is 32nd on the American Film Institute's 2000 list AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs[23] and was nominated for the following lists:

Nick Charles: "It's not true. He didn't come anywhere near my tabloids".[27]

The February 2020 issue of New York Magazine lists The Thin Man as among "The Best Movies That Lost Best Picture at the Oscars."[29]

Accolades

More information Award, Category ...
Remove ads

Box office

The Thin Man earned total theater rentals of $1,423,000, with $818,000 from the US and Canada and $605,000 in other foreign rentals, resulting in a profit of $729,000.[1][2]

Trailer

Trailer for The Thin Man

The trailer contained specially filmed footage in which Nick Charles (William Powell) is seen on the cover of the Dashiell Hammett novel The Thin Man. Nick Charles then steps out of the cover to talk to fellow detective Philo Vance (also played by Powell) about his latest case. Charles mentions he hasn't seen Vance since The Kennel Murder Case, a film in which Powell played Vance, released in October 1933, just seven months prior to the release of The Thin Man. Charles goes on to explain to Vance that his latest case revolves around a "tall, thin man" (referring to Clyde Wynant's character), just before clips of the film are shown.

Remove ads

Adaptations

The Thin Man was dramatized as a radio play on an hour-long broadcast of Lux Radio Theatre on June 8, 1936. William Powell, Myrna Loy, Minna Gombell, Porter Hall, William Henry, and Thomas Jackson reprised their film roles, and W. S. Van Dyke was host.[31][32]

Home media

Long available on VHS and DVD, The Thin Man was released on Blu-ray Disc by the Warner Archive Collection on July 30, 2019. The 1080p high-definition master was made from a 4K restoration based on new transfers of the picture's best surviving film elements, with digital correction of a multitude of defects seen in earlier home-media releases. Blu-ray.com reported that the film "looks exceptional and, aside from a true 4K option, will likely never get a better home video release". Extras include the theatrical trailer, the 1936 Lux Radio Theatre broadcast, and the 1958 second-season premiere of the NBC television series.[33][34]

Remove ads

In popular culture

See also

References

External links

Loading related searches...

Wikiwand - on

Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.

Remove ads
Remove ads