Mystery Monday: The Thin Man

Mystery Monday: The Thin Man

I was introduced to The Thin Man series during my teen years. My father and I spent many a Saturday night watching classics on the television. The on-screen chemistry of William Powell and Myrna Loy was so natural, I often forgot I was watching a scripted movie. Hollywood producers and directors must have agreed, because Powell and Loy were paired in fourteen films, most of which were highly successful.

Before The Thin Man was a movie, it was a book by Dashiell Hammett. Originally published in the December 1933 issue of Redbook magazine, it came out in book form the following month.  Hammett never published sequels to the story, although he did help with the screenplays for two of the movies based on his beloved Nick and Nora Charles.

Dashiell Hammett is considered one of the greatest writers of the Golden Age of Detective fiction, and in fact, many would call him the finest mystery writers of all-time. He authored dozens of novels and short stories, and his characters Sam Spade (The Maltese Falcon) and Nick and Nora Charles (The Thin Man) are some of the most well-known characters in the mystery world.

Shadow of the Thin Man came out in 1941, two weeks prior to the attack at Pearl Harbor. It had been two years since Another Thin Man had been released, and audiences were anxious for the next installment. Despite the film’s success, The Thin Man Goes Home would not come out until after the war. In January 1942, Myrna Loy left Hollywood to volunteer with the Red Cross.