When The Thin Man Got Thinner-With “The Thin Man Goes Home” Film Adaptation Of Dashiell Hammett’s The Thin Man In Mind   

By Film Critic Sam Lowell

[Take the following as something of a disclaimer since I have decided to embark of a look at several of the Thin Man films that came out in the 1940s. These days now that I am, well, let’s call the situation semi-retired from reviewing films I made no pretense to viewing film series like the famous 1940s The Thin Man film series under discussion here in chronological order. Now I go by happenstance. That happenstance got worked out this way on this series. I happened to see a DVD copy of Shadow Of The Thin Man highlighted at my local library for some reason. Since I have spent a fair amount of time recently reviewing black and white films I grabbed this one. I loved to watch such films in my younger days, my teenage days,  when I would go to the Majestic Theater box of popcorn in hand in Riverdale some distance from Boston where I would spent many Saturday afternoons watching double features. That is the genesis of this out of order series of reviews for which I take full responsibility. S.L.]     

Recently in a review of the fourth in the famous Myrna Loy-William Powell seemingly never-ending The Thin Man series, Shadow Of The Thin Man and again later commenting on the original film adaptation, I mentioned that a long time ago, or it now seems a long time ago, I had a running argument with the late film critic Henry Dowd about the alleged decline in manly film detectives after the time of Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade and Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe in the 1940s. By that Henry meant tough guy, no holds barred, non-filter cigarette smoking, Luckies or Camels, bottom of the desk drawer hard shell whiskey neat drinking, who didn’t mind taking or giving a punch, or taking or giving a  random slug for the cause detectives. He had based his opinion strictly on viewing the films of the famous detective couple Nick and Nora Charles.           

Henry Dowd believed that with the rise of The Thin Man series that previous characterization of a model detective, his previous characterization Henry was given to the imperative tone, switched from the hard whiskey drinking guy to a soft martini swigging suave guy with a soft manner and an aversion to taking risks, certainly to taking punches or slugs. Hell, in that film under review at the time not only had Nick been married to Nora but they had a kid, not to mention that damn dog Asta, a regular entourage to weigh a guy down. Back in the day what had surprised Henry in our public prints argument had been when I told him that the same guy, Dashiell Hammett, who had written the heroic tough guy detective Sam Spade had also written the dapper Nick and charming Nora characters. Henry did not believe me until I produced my tattered copy of Hammett’s The Thin Man which had started the whole film series. Thereafter he kept up the same argument except placing The Thin Man as an aberration probably do to Hammett’s known heavy drinking or that he was trying to soften his own Stalinist-etched persona with such an obvious bourgeois couple. Jesus.       

My objection to Henry’s “decline of the manly” detective theory back then had not been so much about the social manners or the social class of the couple in the series, a reversion to the parlor detective genre before Hammett and Chandler brought the genre out of the closet and onto the streets, as the thinness of the plots as they rolled out each new product. I continue to tout the original film in series The Thin Man as the one everybody should view and take in the rest if you have restless hour and one half or so to whittle away.  

I had held my viewing of Shadow up as a case in point. And the same is true of the film being reviewed here The Thin Man Goes Home. The story line is basically Nicks’ revenge for his doctor father’s disapproval of his choice of a career in law enforcement and private detection rather than the gentile medical profession. And his drinking-centered urban lifestyle as well. He and Nora travel to the quiet oasis from crime Podunk town where he had grown up for a vacation. Apparently in Podunk the mere appearance of a famous ex-private detective was enough to bring local society down with a bang. Make that bang-bang since a murder of a young factory worker cum artist is what drives Nick to beat everybody including the public coppers to the punch-to finding the murderer and the reason for his death and well as ultimately the death of his Apple Annie mother who was trying to protect him. The usual cast of characters show up with their own grab bag of motives to do the rotten deed.    

In the end the town, probably like a million other towns had its fair share of the jealous, of the crooked and those who craved hard cash. Without giving too much of the not too much to give away the struggle for the hard cash centered on grabbing plans for a new style propeller from the local defense factory and sell them to the highest bidder-meaning foreign interests. Naturally such unpatriotic behavior had to be stopped. And Nick proved his medal (Nora pretty much stood around and looked beautiful in his one) to his father who coughed up a “good work” comment at the end. So you can see even every ready Hollywood was running out of serious work for our fair couple to feast on.      

Enough said except that I also mentioned that if one had just one film in the series then you had to opt for the original one based far more closely on that tattered copy of Hammett’s crime novel. Those were the days when Nick, still besotted by Nora, but not knocked over by her could work up the energy to do more than mix martinis. (Or to revive the old Dowd argument before Hammett let the bottle get to him or while working under the umbrella of Popular Front days directed from red Moscow).