A Murder Mystery for Christmas

Though it is not necessarily a Christmas movie, the 1934 classic The Thin Man is set around Christmas time and even has some climatic moments during the Christmas holidays. The film was based on the book The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett, who based much of the relationship between comedic and loving couple Nick and Nora Charles on his own relationship with acclaimed playwright Lillian Hellman. The film went on to create Myrna Loy and William Powell as a comedic duo in the Thin Man series of six films, combining humor and mystery.

Nick Charles (William Powell) comes to New York with wife and dog Asta in tow, only to be lured back into the detective business by his sweet, funny, and curious wife Nora (Myrna Loy), the NYPD, and the case of a murderer who Nick might know. Dorothy Wymant (Maureen O'Sullivan) comes to Nick, asking him to help track down her father and Nick’s old friend, Clyde Wymant (Edward Ellis). Soon after Wymant goes missing, his girlfriend Julia Wolf (Natalie Moorhead) is murdered and Chris Jorgenson (Cesar Romero), Wymant’s ex wife Mimi’s (Minna Gombell) new husband, goes missing as well. Everyone believes that Wymant is behind the crime, except for Nick, who has a hunch. During the course of the film, Nick is attacked on Christmas Eve by gangster Joe Morelli (Edward Brophy), getting questionable info from Wymant’s lawyer MacCaulay (Porter Hall), and is surrounded by a loony cast of characters who all could have had a hand in the crime. It is up for Nick to reveal the truth at a dinner party he and his wife are throwing, with a real murder mystery as the main entertainment.

The film was originally intended to be a “B” picture, but gained so much fame it became a profitable series. The “Thin Man” in question was supposed to be Edward Ellis’s character of Wymant but so many audience members and critics assumed that Nick was the Thin Man, and so the name stuck. The films have considerably infiltrated the pop culture and the pair of Nick and Nora Charles was parodied in the 1976 mystery comedy Murder by Death, in which Dame Maggie Smith and David Niven played Dora and Dick Charleston.

The film has a large following and his become somewhat of a cult classic, if not a classic film. The Thin Man series has its own fan site and you can learn more about Nick, Norah, and the original book series here. Filmsite.org does a great review and synopsis, which can be found here. And I also have two reviews for your second or third opinion, this one from cinematical.com and this review from Roger Ebert himself from his site. If you want a good mystery for Christmas, The Thin Man is the way to go, but don’t blame me if you get addicted to Nick and Nora. Just in case you want a watch, here is the cleverly done original trailer for the film: