Return of the Thin Man

September 10, 2012
Hammett completists and film fans will best appreciate this collection containing the story treatments that became After the Thin Man (1936) and Another Thin Man (1939), the sequels to the original Hollywood hit, The Thin Man (1934), starring William Powell and Myrna Loy as imbibing investigators Nick and Nora Charles, abetted by their adorable dog, Asta. Written in movie shorthand (“Nick and Nora exchange suspicious glances”), these treatments don’t represent Hammett’s artistic peak, though there’s the occasional nugget (“He is having the first ‘clean’ love affair of his life and thinks this slut is Joan of Arc”). Hammett scholar Richard Layman and Hammett’s granddaughter, Julie M. Rivett, provide background on such matters as negotiations with MGM. Amazingly, the alcoholic author reported he spent 10 months sober while writing one of these bibulous scripts. In the 1939 effort, one of the two words uttered by the infant Nick Jr. is drunk. A short unproduced treatment from 1938 titled “Sequel to the Thin Man” rounds out the book. Agent: Joy Harris, Joy Harris Literary.

February 25, 2013
Legendary novelist Dashiell Hammett’s 1934 crime classic, The Thin Man, was the basis for several very popular films featuring hard-drinking, retired private detective Nick Charles and his lovely socialite wife Nora. Fans of the novel and movies will no doubt relish the chance to listen to the author’s novella-length scenarios for the book’s first two sequels, After the Thin Man and Another Thin Man. But they may be a little disappointed with this audio edition. Narrators Peter Ganim and Nicola Barber do capture the charming, boozy banter of Nick and Nora—but the on-screen portrayal of the duo by William Powell and Myrna Loya is so familiar, so distinctive, and so perfect that performing the material again (regardless of quality) seems a dubious endeavor. Scott Brick’s narration—crisp, properly hardboiled, and highly energized—creates a subtle, pleasing atmosphere for the proceedings. Acting as a sort of audio host, he compliments the actors with an on-point rat-a-tat delivery. A Mysterious Press hardcover.

October 1, 2012
Yet another trip to the Hammett archive discloses the two screen stories on which the films After the Thin Man (1936) and Another Thin Man (1939) were based, along with a bonus, an unproduced (and probably unproducible) outline for a Sequel to The Thin Man. The biggest surprise here is how closely the husband-and-wife team of Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett hewed to Hammett's novella-length stories in preparing the two films' screenplays. Fans of the films will find virtually all the suspects and plot twists already present in Hammett, together with much of the banter between retired detective Nick Charles and his socialite wife, Nora, all wrapped up in the lightly comic tone established by The Thin Man (1934). Who would have thought that Hammett himself wrote Nick's burlesque response to the invitation from Nora's aunt's butler to "walk this way," or that Goodrich and Hackett were mainly responsible for streamlining and simplifying Hammett's twisty storylines and providing more business for Nora, whom Hammett tends to slight in favor of her more active husband? After the Thin Man--which takes the couple back to San Francisco to meet the corpse of Nora's former gardener, and eventually that of her cousin Selma's missing husband--is the more amusing, more inventive, and more satisfyingly mystifying of the two. Another Thin Man--which, borrowing much of its material from Hammett's story "The Farewell Murder," presents the couple with an infant son before they're summoned to the Long Island estate of imperious Colonel Burr MacFay, the ex-partner of Nora's late father, whose choleric conviction that he's going to be murdered is eventually proved correct--offers more for Nora to do, though in an altogether more domestic role. Judicious editors Richard Layman and Julie M. Rivett provide a notable addendum to the Hammett canon, even if both tales and their brief addendum read like screen treatments and the volume's title perpetuates the canard that the thin man is Nick Charles.

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