Showing posts with label oscars film. Show all posts
Showing posts with label oscars film. Show all posts
Sunday, March 15, 2026
Friday, March 13, 2026
🎬🎭📘🎥Friday's Film Adaptation🎥📘🎭🎬: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Look for The Land of Sweet Forever, a posthumous collection of newly discovered short stories and previously published essays and magazine pieces by Harper Lee, coming October 21, 2025.
Voted America's Best-Loved Novel in PBS's The Great American Read
Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning masterwork of honor and injustice in the deep South—and the heroism of one man in the face of blind and violent hatred
One of the most cherished stories of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has been translated into more than forty languages, sold more than forty million copies worldwide, served as the basis for an enormously popular motion picture, and was voted one of the best novels of the twentieth century by librarians across the country. A gripping, heart-wrenching, and wholly remarkable tale of coming-of-age in a South poisoned by virulent prejudice, it views a world of great beauty and savage inequities through the eyes of a young girl, as her father—a crusading local lawyer—risks everything to defend a black man unjustly accused of a terrible crime.
PART ONE
When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow. When it healed, and Jem's fears of never being able to play football were assuaged, he was seldom self-conscious about his injury. His left arm was somewhat shorter than his right; when he stood or walked, the back of his hand was at right angles to his body, his thumb parallel to his thigh. He couldn't have cared less, so long as he could pass and punt.
When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them, we sometimes discussed the events leading to his accident. I maintain that the Ewells started it all, but Jem, who was four years my senior, said it started long before that. He said it began the summer Dill came to us, when Dill first gave us the idea of making Boo Radley come out.
I said if he wanted to take a broad view of the thing, it really began with Andrew Jackson. If General Jackson hadn't run the Creeks up the creek, Simon Finch would never have paddled up the Alabama, and where would we be if he hadn't? We were far too old to settle an argument with a fist-fight, so we consulted Atticus. Our father said we were both right.
Being Southerners, it was a source of shame to some members of the family that we had no recorded ancestors on either side of the Battle of Hastings. All we had was Simon Finch, a fur-trapping apothecary from Cornwall whose piety was exceeded only by his stinginess. In England, Simon was irritated by the persecution of those who called themselves Methodists at the hands of their more liberal brethren, and as Simon called himself a Methodist, he worked his way across theAtlantic to Philadelphia, thence to Jamaica, thence to Mobile, and up the Saint Stephens. Mindful of John Wesley's strictures on the use of many words in buying and selling, Simon made a pile practicing medicine, but in this pursuit he was unhappy lest he be tempted into doing what he knew was not for the glory of God, as the putting on of gold and costly apparel. So Simon, having forgotten his teacher's dictum on the possession of human chattels, bought three slaves and with their aid established a homestead on the banks of the Alabama River some forty miles above Saint Stephens. He returned to Saint Stephens only once, to find a wife, and with her established a line that ran high to daughters. Simon lived to an impressive age and died rich.
It was customary for the men in the family to remain on Simon's homestead, Finch's Landing, and make their living from cotton. The place was self-sufficient: modest in comparison with the empires around it, the Landing nevertheless produced everything required to sustain life except ice, wheat flour, and articles of clothing, supplied by river-boats from Mobile.
Simon would have regarded with impotent fury the disturbance between the North and the South, as it left his descendants stripped of everything but their land, yet the tradition of living on the land remained unbroken until well into the twentieth century, when my father, Atticus Finch, went to Montgomery to read law, and his younger brother went to Boston to study medicine. Their sister Alexandra was the Finch who remained at the Landing: she married a taciturn man who spent most of his time lying in a hammock by the river wondering if his trot-lines were full.
When my father was admitted to the bar, he returned to Maycomb and began his practice. Maycomb, some twenty miles east of Finch's Landing, was the county seat of Maycomb County. Atticus's office in the courthouse contained little more than a hat rack, a spittoon, a checkerboard and an unsullied Code of Alabama. His first two clients were the last two persons hanged in the Maycomb County jail. Atticus had urged them to accept the state's generosity in allowing them to plead Guilty to second-degree murder and escape with their lives, but they were Haverfords, in Maycomb County a name synonymous with jackass. The Haverfords had dispatched Maycomb's leading blacksmith in a misunderstanding arising from the alleged wrongful detention of a mare, were imprudent enough to do it in the presence of three witnesses, and insisted that the-son-of-a-bitch-had-it-coming-to-him was a good enough defense for anybody. They persisted in pleading Not Guilty to first-degree murder, so there was nothing much Atticus could do for his clients except be present at their departure, an occasion that was probably the beginning of my father's profound distaste for the practice of criminal law.
During his first five years in Maycomb, Atticus practiced economy more than anything; for several years thereafter he invested his earnings in his brother's education. John Hale Finch was ten years younger than my father, and chose to study medicine at a time when cotton was not worth growing; but after getting Uncle Jack started, Atticus derived a reasonable income from the law. He liked Maycomb, he was Maycomb County born and bred; he knew his people, they knew him, and because of Simon Finch's industry, Atticus was related by blood or marriage to nearly every family in the town.
Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the courthouse sagged in the square. Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer's day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men's stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.
People moved slowly then. They ambled across the square, shuffled in and out of the stores around it, took their time about everything. A day was twenty-four hours long but seemed longer. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County. But it was a time of vague optimism for some of the people: Maycomb County had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself.
We lived on the main residential street in town--Atticus, Jem and I, plus Calpurnia our cook. Jem and I found our father satisfactory: he played with us, read to us, and treated us with courteous detachment.
Calpurnia was something else again. She was all angles and bones; she was nearsighted; she squinted; her hand was wide as a bed slat and twice as hard. She was always ordering me out of the kitchen, asking me why I couldn't behave as well as Jem when she knew he was older, and calling me home when I wasn't ready to come. Our battles were epic and one-sided. Calpurnia always won, mainly because Atticus always took her side. She had been with us ever since Jem was born, and I had felt her tyrannical presence as long as I could remember.
Our mother died when I was two, so I never felt her absence. She was a Graham from Montgomery; Atticus met her when he was first elected to the state legislature. He was middle-aged then, she was fifteen years his junior. Jem was the product of their first year of marriage; four years later I was born, and two years later our mother died from a sudden heart attack. They said it ran in her family. I did not miss her, but I think Jem did. He remembered her clearly, and sometimes in the middle of a game he would sigh at length, then go off and play by himself behind the car-house. When he was like that, I knew better than to bother him.
When I was almost six and Jem was nearly ten, our summertime boundaries (within calling distance of Calpurnia) were Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose's house two doors to the north of us, and the Radley Place three doors to the south. We were never tempted to break them. The Radley Place was inhabited by an unknown entity the mere description of whom was enough to make us behave for days on end; Mrs. Dubose was plain hell.
That was the summer Dill came to us.
Early one morning as we were beginning our day's play in the back yard, Jem and I heard something next door in Miss Rachel Haverford's collard patch. We went to the wire fence to see if there was a puppy--Miss Rachel's rat terrier was expecting--instead we found someone sitting looking at us. Sitting down, he wasn't much higher than the collards. We stared at him until he spoke:
"Hey."
"Hey yourself," said Jem pleasantly.
"I'm Charles Baker Harris," he said. "I can read."
"So what?" I said.
"I just thought you'd like to know I can read. You got anything needs readin' I can do it. . . ."
"How old are you," asked Jem, "four-and-a-half?"
"Goin' on seven."
"Shoot no wonder, then," said Jem, jerking his thumb at me. "Scout yonder's been readin' ever since she was born, and she ain't even started to school yet. You look right puny for goin' on seven."
"I'm little but I'm old," he said.
Jem brushed his hair back to get a better look. "Why don't you come over, Charles Baker Harris?" he said. "Lord, what a name."
"'s not any funnier'n yours. Aunt Rachel says your name's Jeremy Atticus Finch."
Jem scowled. "I'm big enough to fit mine," he said. "Your name's longer'n you are. Bet it's a foot longer."
"Folks call me Dill," said Dill, struggling under the fence.
Release Date: December 25, 1962
Release Time: 129 minutes
Director: Robert Mulligan
Cast:
Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch
Mary Badham as Jean Louise "Scout" Finch
Phillip Alford as Jeremy "Jem" Finch
John Megna as Charles Baker "Dill" Harris
Frank Overton as Sheriff Heck Tate
Rosemary Murphy as Miss Maudie Atkinson
Ruth White as Mrs. Dubose
Brock Peters as Tom Robinson
Estelle Evans as Calpurnia
Paul Fix as Judge John Taylor
Collin Wilcox as Mayella Violet Ewell
James Anderson as Robert E. Lee "Bob" Ewell
Alice Ghostley as Miss Stephanie Crawford
Robert Duvall as Arthur "Boo" Radley
William Windom as Horace Gilmer, District Attorney
Crahan Denton as Walter Cunningham
Richard Hale as Nathan Radley
Awards:
35th Academy Awards - April 8, 1963
Best Picture - Alan J. Pakula - Nominated
Best Director - Robert Mulligan - Nominated
Best Actor - Gregory Peck - Won
Best Supporting Actress - Mary Badham - Nominated
Best Adapted Screenplay - Horton Foote - Won
Best Art Direction - Alexander Golitzen, Henry Bumstead and Oliver Emert - Won
Best Cinematography - Russell Harlan - Nominated
Best Original Score - Elmer Bernstein - Nominated
17th BAFTAs - 1964
Best Film from any Source - Nominated
Best Foreign Actor - Gregory Peck - Nominated
20th Golden Globes - March 5, 1963
Best Motion Picture – Drama - Nominated
Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama - Gregory Peck - Won
Best Director – Motion Picture - Robert Mulligan - Nominated
Best Original Score – Motion Picture - Elmer Bernstein - Won
Best Film Promoting International Understanding - Won
AFIs 100 Years . . .
100 Movies - #34
100 Heroes & Villains -- Atticus Finch - #1 Hero
Film Scores - #17
100 Cheers - #2
100 Movies: 10th Anniversary Edition - #25
10 Top 10 - #1 Courtroom Drama
Harper Lee was born in 1926 in Monroeville, Alabama. She attended Huntingdon College and studied law at the University of Alabama. She is the author of the acclaimed To Kill a Mockingbird, and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and numerous other literary awards and honours. She died on 19 February 2016.
KOBO / AUDIBLE / GOOGLE PLAY
IMDB / AUDIOBOOKS / B&N / BOOKSHOP
iTUNES / WIKI / CHIRP / HARPER COLLINS
KOBO / iTUNES / iTUNES AUDIO
BOOKBUB / WIKI / GOODREADS TBR
Film
Friday, February 28, 2025
🎬🎭📘🎥Friday's Film Adaptation🎥📘🎭🎬: The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett
Nick and Nora Charles are Hammett's most enchanting creations, a rich, glamorous couple who solve homicides in between wisecracks and martinis. At once knowing and unabashedly romantic, The Thin Man is a murder mystery that doubles as a sophisticated comedy of manners.
It's been over 20 years since I read this book but it was definitely an enjoyable read. Nick and Nora are the epitome of romantic comedic detectives. The pair has the kind of relationship we all hope to find.
RATING:
Chapter One
1
I was leaning against the bar in a speakeasy on Fifty-second Street, waiting for Nora to finish her Christmas shopping, when a girl got up from the table where she had been sitting with three other people and came over to me. She was small and blonde, and whether you looked at her face or at her body in powder-blue sports clothes, the result was satisfactory. "Aren't you Nick Charles?" she asked.
I said: "Yes."
She held out her hand. "I'm Dorothy Wynant. You don't remember me, but you ought to remember my father, Clyde Wynant. You-"
"Sure," I said, "and I remember you now, but you were only a kid of eleven or twelve then, weren't you?"
"Yes, that was eight years ago. Listen: remember those stories you told me? Were they true?"
"Probably not. How is your father?"
She laughed. "I was going to ask you. Mamma divorced him, you know, and we never hear from him-except when he gets in the newspapers now and then with some of his carryings on. Don't you ever see him?"
My glass was empty. I asked her what she would have to drink, she said Scotch and soda. I ordered two of them and said: "No, I've been living in San Francisco."
She said slowly: "I'd like to see him. Mamma would raise hell if she found it out, but I'd like to see him."
"Well?"
"He's not where we used to live, on Riverside Drive, and he's not in the phone book or city directory."
"Try his lawyer," I suggested.
Her face brightened. "Who is he?"
"It used to be a fellow named Mac-something-or-other-Macaulay, that's it, Herbert Macaulay. He was in the Singer Building."
"Lend me a nickel," she said, and went out to the telephone. She came back smiling. "I found him. He's just round the corner on Fifth Avenue."
"Your father?"
"The lawyer. He says my father's out of town. I'm going round to see him." She raised her glass to me. "Family reunions. Look, why don't-"
Asta jumped up and punched me in the belly with her front feet. Nora, at the end of the leash, said: "She's had a swell afternoon-knocked over a table of toys at Lord & Taylor's, scared a fat woman silly by licking her leg in Saks's, and's been patted by three policemen."
I made introductions. "My wife, Dorothy Wynant. Her father was once a client of mine, when she was only so high. A good guy, but screwy."
"I was fascinated by him," Dorothy said, meaning me, "a real live detective, and used to follow him around making him tell me about his experiences. He told me awful lies, but I believed every word."
I said: "You look tired, Nora."
"I am. Let's sit down."
Dorothy Wynant said she had to go back to her table. She shook hands with Nora; we must drop in for cocktails, they were living at Courtland, her mother's name was Jorgensen now. We would be glad to and she must come see us some time, we were at the Normandie and would be in New York for another week or two. Dorothy patted the dog's head and left us.
We found a table. Nora said: "She's pretty."
"If you like them like that."
She grinned at me. "You got types?"
"Only you, darling-lanky brunettes with wicked jaws."
"And how about the red-head you wandered off with at the Quinns' last night?"
"That's silly," I said. "She just wanted to show me some French etchings."
2
The next day Herbert Macaulay telephoned me. "Hello, I didn't know you were back in town till Dorothy Wynant told me. How about lunch?"
"What time is it?"
"Half past eleven. Did I wake you up?"
"Yes," I said, "but that's all right. Suppose you come up here for lunch: I've got a hangover and don't feel like running around much. . . . O.K., say one o'clock." I had a drink with Nora, who was going out to have her hair washed, then another after a shower, and was feeling better by the time the telephone rang again. A female voice asked: "Is Mr. Macaulay there?"
"Not yet."
"Sorry to trouble you, but would you mind asking him to call his office as soon as he gets there? It's important." I promised to do that.
Macaulay arrived about ten minutes later. He was a big curly-haired, rosy-cheeked, rather good-looking chap of about my age-forty-one-though he looked younger. He was supposed to be a pretty good lawyer. I had worked on several jobs for him when I was living in New York and we had always got along nicely. Now we shook hands and patted each other's backs, and he asked me how the world was treating me, and I said, "Fine," and asked him and he said, "Fine," and I told him to call his office.
He came away from the telephone frowning. "Wynant's back in town," he said, "and wants me to meet him."
I turned around with the drinks I had poured. "Well, the lunch can-"
"Let him wait," he said, and took one of the glasses from me.
"Still as screwy as ever?"
"That's no joke," Macaulay said solemnly. "You heard they had him in a sanatorium for nearly a year back in '29?"
"No."
He nodded. He sat down, put his glass on a table beside his chair, and leaned towards me a little. "What's Mimi up to, Charles?"
"Mimi? Oh, the wife-the ex-wife. I don't know. Does she have to be up to something?"
"She usually is," he said dryly, and then very slowly, "and I thought you'd know."
So that was it. I said: "Listen, Mac, I haven't been a detective for six years, since 1927." He stared at me. "On the level," I assured him, "a year after I got married, my wife's father died and left her a lumber mill and a narrow-gauge railroad and some other things and I quit the Agency to look after them. Anyway I wouldn't be working for Mimi Wynant, or Jorgensen, or whatever her name is-she never liked me and I never liked her."
"Oh, I didn't think you-" Macaulay broke off with a vague gesture and picked up his glass. When he took it away from his mouth, he said: "I was just wondering. Here Mimi phones me three days ago-Tuesday-trying to find Wynant; then yesterday Dorothy phones, saying you told her to, and comes around, and-I thought you were still sleuthing, so I was wondering what it was all about."
"Didn't they tell you?"
"Sure-they wanted to see him for old times' sake. That means a lot."
"You lawyers are a suspicious crew," I said. "Maybe they did-that and money. But what's the fuss about? Is he in hiding?"
Macaulay shrugged. "You know as much about it as I do. I haven't seen him since October." He drank again. "How long are you going to be in town?"
"Till after New Year's," I told him and went to the telephone to ask room service for menus.
3
Nora and I went to the opening of Honeymoon at the Little Theatre that night and then to a party given by some people named Freeman or Fielding or something. I felt pretty low when she called me the next morning. She gave me a newspaper and a cup of coffee and said: "Read that."
I patiently read a paragraph or two, then put the paper down and took a sip of coffee. "Fun's fun," I said, "but right now I'd swap you all the interviews with Mayor-elect O'Brien ever printed-and throw in the Indian picture-for a slug of whis-"
"Not that, stupid." She put a finger on the paper. "That."
INVENTOR'S SECRETARY
MURDERED IN APARTMENT
Julia Wolf's bullet-riddled body found;
Police seek her employer, Clyde Wynant
The bullet-riddled body of Julia Wolf, thirty-two-year old confidential secretary to Clyde Miller Wynant, well-known inventor, was discovered late yesterday afternoon in the dead woman's apartment at 411 East Fifty-fourth St. by Mrs. Christian Jorgensen, divorced wife of the inventor, who had gone there in an attempt to learn her former husband's present address.
Mrs. Jorgensen, who returned Monday after a six-year stay in Europe, told police that she heard feeble groans when she rang the murdered woman's door-bell, whereupon she notified an elevator boy, Mervin Holly, who called Walter Meany, apartment-house superintendent. Miss Wolf was lying on the bedroom floor with four .32-caliber bullet-wounds in her chest when they entered the apartment, and died without having recovered consciousness before police and medical aid arrived.
Herbert Macaulay, Wynant's attorney, told the police that he had not seen the inventor since October. He stated that Wynant called him on the telephone yesterday and made an appointment, but failed to keep it; and disclaimed any knowledge of his client's whereabouts. Miss Wolf, Macaulay stated, had been in the inventor's employ for the past eight years. The attorney said he knew nothing about the dead woman's family or private affairs and could throw no light on her murder.
The bullet-wounds could not have been self-inflicted, according to . . .
The rest of it was the usual police department handout.
"Do you suppose he killed her?" Nora asked when I put the paper down again.
"Wynant? I wouldn't be surprised. He's batty as hell."
"Did you know her?"
"Yes. How about a drop of something to cut the phlegm?"
"What was she like?"
"Not bad," I said. "She wasn't bad-looking and she had a lot of sense and a lot of nerve-and it took both to live with that guy."
"She lived with him?"
"Yes. I want a drink, please. That is, it was like that when I knew them."
"Why don't you have some breakfast first? Was she in love with him or was it just business?"
"I don't know. It's too early for breakfast."
When Nora opened the door to go out, the dog came in and put her front feet on the bed, her face in my face. I rubbed her head and tried to remember something Wynant had once said to me, something about women and dogs. It was not the woman-spaniel-walnut-tree line. I could not remember what it was, but there seemed to be some point in trying to remember. Nora returned with two drinks and another question: "What's he like?"
"Tall-over six feet-and one of the thinnest men I've ever seen. He must be about fifty now, and his hair was almost white when I knew him. Usually needs a haircut, ragged brindle mustache, bites his fingernails." I pushed the dog away to reach for my drink.
"Sounds lovely. What were you doing with him?"
"A fellow who'd worked for him accused him of stealing some kind of invention from him. Rosewater was his name. He tried to shake Wynant down by threatening to shoot him, bomb his house, kidnap his children, cut his wife's throat-I don't know what all-if he didn't come across. We never caught him-must've scared him off. Anyway, the threats stopped and nothing happened."
Nora stopped drinking to ask: "Did Wynant really steal it?"
"Tch, tch, tch," I said. "This is Christmas Eve: try to think good of your fellow man."
4
That afternoon I took Asta for a walk, explained to two people that she was a Schnauzer and not a cross between a Scottie and an Irish terrier, stopped at Jim's for a couple of drinks, ran into Larry Crowley, and brought him back to the Normandie with me. Nora was pouring cocktails for the Quinns, Margot Innes, a man whose name I did not catch, and Dorothy Wynant. Dorothy said she wanted to talk to me, so we carried our cocktails into the bedroom.
She came to the point right away. "Do you think my father killed her, Nick?"
"No," I said. "Why should I?"
"Well, the police have- Listen, she was his mistress, wasn't she?"
I nodded. "When I knew them."
She stared at her glass while saying, "He's my father. I never liked him. I never liked Mamma." She looked up at me. "I don't like Gilbert." Gilbert was her brother.
"Don't let that worry you. Lots of people don't like their relatives."
"Do you like them?"
"My relatives?"
"Mine." She scowled at me. "And stop talking to me as if I was still twelve."
"It's not that," I explained. "I'm getting tight."
"Well, do you?"
I shook my head. "You were all right, just a spoiled kid. I could get along without the rest of them."
"What's the matter with us?" she asked, not argumentatively, but as if she really wanted to know.
"Different things. Your-"
Harrison Quinn opened the door and said: "Come on over and play some Ping-Pong, Nick."
"In a little while."
"Bring Beautiful along." He leered at Dorothy and went away.
She said: "I don't suppose you know Jorgensen."
"I know a Nels Jorgensen."
"Some people have all the luck. This one's named Christian. He's a honey. That's Mamma-divorces a lunatic and marries a gigolo." Her eyes became wet. She caught her breath in a sob and asked: "What am I going to do, Nick?" Her voice was a frightened child's.
I put an arm around her and made what I hoped were comforting sounds. She cried on my lapel. The telephone beside the bed began to ring. In the next room "Rise and Shine" was coming through the radio. My glass was empty. I said: "Walk out on them."
She sobbed again. "You can't walk out on yourself."
"Maybe I don't know what you're talking about."
"Please don't tease me," she said humbly.
Nora, coming in to answer the telephone, looked questioningly at me. I made a face at her over the girl's head. When Nora said "Hello" into the telephone, the girl stepped quickly back away from me and blushed. "I-I'm sorry," she stammered, "I didn't-"
Nora smiled sympathetically at her. I said: "Don't be a dope." The girl found her handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes with it.
Nora spoke into the telephone. "Yes . . . I'll see if he's in. Who's calling, please?" She put a hand over the mouthpiece and addressed me: "It's a man named Norman. Do you want to talk to him?"
I said I didn't know and took the telephone. "Hello."
A somewhat harsh voice said: "Mr. Charles? . . . Mr. Charles, I understand that you were formerly connected with the Trans-American Detective Agency."
"Who is this?" I asked.
"My name is Albert Norman, Mr. Charles, which probably means nothing to you, but I would like to lay a proposition before you. I am sure you will--"
"What kind of a proposition?"
"I can't discuss it over the phone, Mr. Charles, but if you will give me half an hour of your time, I can promise--"
"Sorry," I said. "I'm pretty busy and--"
"But, Mr. Charles, this is--"
Then there was a loud noise: it could have been a shot or something falling or anything else that would make a loud noise. I said, "Hello," a couple of times, got no answer, and hung up.
1
I was leaning against the bar in a speakeasy on Fifty-second Street, waiting for Nora to finish her Christmas shopping, when a girl got up from the table where she had been sitting with three other people and came over to me. She was small and blonde, and whether you looked at her face or at her body in powder-blue sports clothes, the result was satisfactory. "Aren't you Nick Charles?" she asked.
I said: "Yes."
She held out her hand. "I'm Dorothy Wynant. You don't remember me, but you ought to remember my father, Clyde Wynant. You-"
"Sure," I said, "and I remember you now, but you were only a kid of eleven or twelve then, weren't you?"
"Yes, that was eight years ago. Listen: remember those stories you told me? Were they true?"
"Probably not. How is your father?"
She laughed. "I was going to ask you. Mamma divorced him, you know, and we never hear from him-except when he gets in the newspapers now and then with some of his carryings on. Don't you ever see him?"
My glass was empty. I asked her what she would have to drink, she said Scotch and soda. I ordered two of them and said: "No, I've been living in San Francisco."
She said slowly: "I'd like to see him. Mamma would raise hell if she found it out, but I'd like to see him."
"Well?"
"He's not where we used to live, on Riverside Drive, and he's not in the phone book or city directory."
"Try his lawyer," I suggested.
Her face brightened. "Who is he?"
"It used to be a fellow named Mac-something-or-other-Macaulay, that's it, Herbert Macaulay. He was in the Singer Building."
"Lend me a nickel," she said, and went out to the telephone. She came back smiling. "I found him. He's just round the corner on Fifth Avenue."
"Your father?"
"The lawyer. He says my father's out of town. I'm going round to see him." She raised her glass to me. "Family reunions. Look, why don't-"
Asta jumped up and punched me in the belly with her front feet. Nora, at the end of the leash, said: "She's had a swell afternoon-knocked over a table of toys at Lord & Taylor's, scared a fat woman silly by licking her leg in Saks's, and's been patted by three policemen."
I made introductions. "My wife, Dorothy Wynant. Her father was once a client of mine, when she was only so high. A good guy, but screwy."
"I was fascinated by him," Dorothy said, meaning me, "a real live detective, and used to follow him around making him tell me about his experiences. He told me awful lies, but I believed every word."
I said: "You look tired, Nora."
"I am. Let's sit down."
Dorothy Wynant said she had to go back to her table. She shook hands with Nora; we must drop in for cocktails, they were living at Courtland, her mother's name was Jorgensen now. We would be glad to and she must come see us some time, we were at the Normandie and would be in New York for another week or two. Dorothy patted the dog's head and left us.
We found a table. Nora said: "She's pretty."
"If you like them like that."
She grinned at me. "You got types?"
"Only you, darling-lanky brunettes with wicked jaws."
"And how about the red-head you wandered off with at the Quinns' last night?"
"That's silly," I said. "She just wanted to show me some French etchings."
2
The next day Herbert Macaulay telephoned me. "Hello, I didn't know you were back in town till Dorothy Wynant told me. How about lunch?"
"What time is it?"
"Half past eleven. Did I wake you up?"
"Yes," I said, "but that's all right. Suppose you come up here for lunch: I've got a hangover and don't feel like running around much. . . . O.K., say one o'clock." I had a drink with Nora, who was going out to have her hair washed, then another after a shower, and was feeling better by the time the telephone rang again. A female voice asked: "Is Mr. Macaulay there?"
"Not yet."
"Sorry to trouble you, but would you mind asking him to call his office as soon as he gets there? It's important." I promised to do that.
Macaulay arrived about ten minutes later. He was a big curly-haired, rosy-cheeked, rather good-looking chap of about my age-forty-one-though he looked younger. He was supposed to be a pretty good lawyer. I had worked on several jobs for him when I was living in New York and we had always got along nicely. Now we shook hands and patted each other's backs, and he asked me how the world was treating me, and I said, "Fine," and asked him and he said, "Fine," and I told him to call his office.
He came away from the telephone frowning. "Wynant's back in town," he said, "and wants me to meet him."
I turned around with the drinks I had poured. "Well, the lunch can-"
"Let him wait," he said, and took one of the glasses from me.
"Still as screwy as ever?"
"That's no joke," Macaulay said solemnly. "You heard they had him in a sanatorium for nearly a year back in '29?"
"No."
He nodded. He sat down, put his glass on a table beside his chair, and leaned towards me a little. "What's Mimi up to, Charles?"
"Mimi? Oh, the wife-the ex-wife. I don't know. Does she have to be up to something?"
"She usually is," he said dryly, and then very slowly, "and I thought you'd know."
So that was it. I said: "Listen, Mac, I haven't been a detective for six years, since 1927." He stared at me. "On the level," I assured him, "a year after I got married, my wife's father died and left her a lumber mill and a narrow-gauge railroad and some other things and I quit the Agency to look after them. Anyway I wouldn't be working for Mimi Wynant, or Jorgensen, or whatever her name is-she never liked me and I never liked her."
"Oh, I didn't think you-" Macaulay broke off with a vague gesture and picked up his glass. When he took it away from his mouth, he said: "I was just wondering. Here Mimi phones me three days ago-Tuesday-trying to find Wynant; then yesterday Dorothy phones, saying you told her to, and comes around, and-I thought you were still sleuthing, so I was wondering what it was all about."
"Didn't they tell you?"
"Sure-they wanted to see him for old times' sake. That means a lot."
"You lawyers are a suspicious crew," I said. "Maybe they did-that and money. But what's the fuss about? Is he in hiding?"
Macaulay shrugged. "You know as much about it as I do. I haven't seen him since October." He drank again. "How long are you going to be in town?"
"Till after New Year's," I told him and went to the telephone to ask room service for menus.
3
Nora and I went to the opening of Honeymoon at the Little Theatre that night and then to a party given by some people named Freeman or Fielding or something. I felt pretty low when she called me the next morning. She gave me a newspaper and a cup of coffee and said: "Read that."
I patiently read a paragraph or two, then put the paper down and took a sip of coffee. "Fun's fun," I said, "but right now I'd swap you all the interviews with Mayor-elect O'Brien ever printed-and throw in the Indian picture-for a slug of whis-"
"Not that, stupid." She put a finger on the paper. "That."
INVENTOR'S SECRETARY
MURDERED IN APARTMENT
Julia Wolf's bullet-riddled body found;
Police seek her employer, Clyde Wynant
The bullet-riddled body of Julia Wolf, thirty-two-year old confidential secretary to Clyde Miller Wynant, well-known inventor, was discovered late yesterday afternoon in the dead woman's apartment at 411 East Fifty-fourth St. by Mrs. Christian Jorgensen, divorced wife of the inventor, who had gone there in an attempt to learn her former husband's present address.
Mrs. Jorgensen, who returned Monday after a six-year stay in Europe, told police that she heard feeble groans when she rang the murdered woman's door-bell, whereupon she notified an elevator boy, Mervin Holly, who called Walter Meany, apartment-house superintendent. Miss Wolf was lying on the bedroom floor with four .32-caliber bullet-wounds in her chest when they entered the apartment, and died without having recovered consciousness before police and medical aid arrived.
Herbert Macaulay, Wynant's attorney, told the police that he had not seen the inventor since October. He stated that Wynant called him on the telephone yesterday and made an appointment, but failed to keep it; and disclaimed any knowledge of his client's whereabouts. Miss Wolf, Macaulay stated, had been in the inventor's employ for the past eight years. The attorney said he knew nothing about the dead woman's family or private affairs and could throw no light on her murder.
The bullet-wounds could not have been self-inflicted, according to . . .
The rest of it was the usual police department handout.
"Do you suppose he killed her?" Nora asked when I put the paper down again.
"Wynant? I wouldn't be surprised. He's batty as hell."
"Did you know her?"
"Yes. How about a drop of something to cut the phlegm?"
"What was she like?"
"Not bad," I said. "She wasn't bad-looking and she had a lot of sense and a lot of nerve-and it took both to live with that guy."
"She lived with him?"
"Yes. I want a drink, please. That is, it was like that when I knew them."
"Why don't you have some breakfast first? Was she in love with him or was it just business?"
"I don't know. It's too early for breakfast."
When Nora opened the door to go out, the dog came in and put her front feet on the bed, her face in my face. I rubbed her head and tried to remember something Wynant had once said to me, something about women and dogs. It was not the woman-spaniel-walnut-tree line. I could not remember what it was, but there seemed to be some point in trying to remember. Nora returned with two drinks and another question: "What's he like?"
"Tall-over six feet-and one of the thinnest men I've ever seen. He must be about fifty now, and his hair was almost white when I knew him. Usually needs a haircut, ragged brindle mustache, bites his fingernails." I pushed the dog away to reach for my drink.
"Sounds lovely. What were you doing with him?"
"A fellow who'd worked for him accused him of stealing some kind of invention from him. Rosewater was his name. He tried to shake Wynant down by threatening to shoot him, bomb his house, kidnap his children, cut his wife's throat-I don't know what all-if he didn't come across. We never caught him-must've scared him off. Anyway, the threats stopped and nothing happened."
Nora stopped drinking to ask: "Did Wynant really steal it?"
"Tch, tch, tch," I said. "This is Christmas Eve: try to think good of your fellow man."
4
That afternoon I took Asta for a walk, explained to two people that she was a Schnauzer and not a cross between a Scottie and an Irish terrier, stopped at Jim's for a couple of drinks, ran into Larry Crowley, and brought him back to the Normandie with me. Nora was pouring cocktails for the Quinns, Margot Innes, a man whose name I did not catch, and Dorothy Wynant. Dorothy said she wanted to talk to me, so we carried our cocktails into the bedroom.
She came to the point right away. "Do you think my father killed her, Nick?"
"No," I said. "Why should I?"
"Well, the police have- Listen, she was his mistress, wasn't she?"
I nodded. "When I knew them."
She stared at her glass while saying, "He's my father. I never liked him. I never liked Mamma." She looked up at me. "I don't like Gilbert." Gilbert was her brother.
"Don't let that worry you. Lots of people don't like their relatives."
"Do you like them?"
"My relatives?"
"Mine." She scowled at me. "And stop talking to me as if I was still twelve."
"It's not that," I explained. "I'm getting tight."
"Well, do you?"
I shook my head. "You were all right, just a spoiled kid. I could get along without the rest of them."
"What's the matter with us?" she asked, not argumentatively, but as if she really wanted to know.
"Different things. Your-"
Harrison Quinn opened the door and said: "Come on over and play some Ping-Pong, Nick."
"In a little while."
"Bring Beautiful along." He leered at Dorothy and went away.
She said: "I don't suppose you know Jorgensen."
"I know a Nels Jorgensen."
"Some people have all the luck. This one's named Christian. He's a honey. That's Mamma-divorces a lunatic and marries a gigolo." Her eyes became wet. She caught her breath in a sob and asked: "What am I going to do, Nick?" Her voice was a frightened child's.
I put an arm around her and made what I hoped were comforting sounds. She cried on my lapel. The telephone beside the bed began to ring. In the next room "Rise and Shine" was coming through the radio. My glass was empty. I said: "Walk out on them."
She sobbed again. "You can't walk out on yourself."
"Maybe I don't know what you're talking about."
"Please don't tease me," she said humbly.
Nora, coming in to answer the telephone, looked questioningly at me. I made a face at her over the girl's head. When Nora said "Hello" into the telephone, the girl stepped quickly back away from me and blushed. "I-I'm sorry," she stammered, "I didn't-"
Nora smiled sympathetically at her. I said: "Don't be a dope." The girl found her handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes with it.
Nora spoke into the telephone. "Yes . . . I'll see if he's in. Who's calling, please?" She put a hand over the mouthpiece and addressed me: "It's a man named Norman. Do you want to talk to him?"
I said I didn't know and took the telephone. "Hello."
A somewhat harsh voice said: "Mr. Charles? . . . Mr. Charles, I understand that you were formerly connected with the Trans-American Detective Agency."
"Who is this?" I asked.
"My name is Albert Norman, Mr. Charles, which probably means nothing to you, but I would like to lay a proposition before you. I am sure you will--"
"What kind of a proposition?"
"I can't discuss it over the phone, Mr. Charles, but if you will give me half an hour of your time, I can promise--"
"Sorry," I said. "I'm pretty busy and--"
"But, Mr. Charles, this is--"
Then there was a loud noise: it could have been a shot or something falling or anything else that would make a loud noise. I said, "Hello," a couple of times, got no answer, and hung up.
Release date: May 25, 1934
Running time: 93 minutes
Director: WS Van Kyke
Cast:
William Powell as Nick Charles
Myrna Loy as Nora Charles
Skippy as Asta
Maureen O'Sullivan as Dorothy Wynant
Nat Pendleton as Lt. John Guild
Minna Gombell as Mimi Wynant Jorgenson
Porter Hall as Herbert MacCaulay
Henry Wadsworth as Tommy
William Henry as Gilbert Wynant
Harold Huber as Arthur Nunheim
Cesar Romero as Chris Jorgenson
Natalie Moorhead as Julia Wolf
Edward Ellis as Clyde Wynant
Edward Brophy as Joe Morelli
Awards:
7th Academy Awards - February 27, 1935
Best Picture - Nominated
Best Actor - William Powell - Nominated
Best Adapted Screenplay - Albert Hackett & Frances Goodrich - Nominated
Best Director - WS Van Dyke - Nominated
Best Actor - William Powell - Nominated
Best Adapted Screenplay - Albert Hackett & Frances Goodrich - Nominated
Best Director - WS Van Dyke - Nominated
Sequels:
After the Thin Man (1936)
Another Thin Man (1939)
Shadow of the Thin Man (1941)
The Thin Man Goes Home (1945)
Song of the Thin Man (1947)
Nick Charles: Oh, it's all right, Joe. It's all right. It's my dog. And, uh, my wife.
Nora Charles: Well you might have mentioned me first on the billing.
Nora Charles: How many drinks have you had?
Nick Charles: This will make six Martinis.
Nora Charles: [to the waiter] All right. Will you bring me five more Martinis, Leo? Line them right up here.
Nora Charles: Well you might have mentioned me first on the billing.
********
Nick Charles: This will make six Martinis.
Nora Charles: [to the waiter] All right. Will you bring me five more Martinis, Leo? Line them right up here.
********
Nick Charles: I haven't the time. I'm much too busy seeing that you don't lose any of the money I married you for.
********
[Nick has revived Nora after knocking her out to keep her from being accidentally shot by Joe Morelli]
Nora Charles: You darn fool! You didn't have to knock me out. I knew you'd take him, but I wanted to see you do it.
Lieutenant John Guild: [laughs] There's a girl with hair on her chest.
********
Lieutenant John Guild: You got a pistol permit?
Nick Charles: No.
Lieutenant John Guild: Ever heard of the Sullivan Act?
Nora Charles: Oh, that's all right, we're married.
********
Nick Charles: I'm a hero. I was shot twice in the Tribune.
Nora Charles: I read where you were shot 5 times in the tabloids.
Nick Charles: It's not true. He didn't come anywhere near my tabloids.
********
Marion: I don't like crooks. And if I did like 'em, I wouldn't like crooks that are stool pigeons. And if I did like crooks that are stool pigeons, I still wouldn't like you.
********
Nora Charles: Waiter, will you serve the nuts? I mean, will you serve the guests the nuts?
Originally Written Review December 2014:
What can I say about The Thin Man? First off, it's a Christmas movie to me, not a year goes by that I don't watch it during the month of December. William Powell and Myrna Loy are the perfect acting couple and in my opinion no one could ever play Nick and Nora Charles better. Asta the dog is a, well I hate to repeat myself but, perfect addition to the Charles clan. The wit, the supporting cast, the dialogue, and of course the mystery. This is a film, and the subsequent sequels, that has everything. No holiday season is complete without Nick and Nora Charles, more than once some years😉😉.
RATING:
Also wrote as Peter Collinson, Daghull Hammett, Samuel Dashiell, Mary Jane Hammett
Samuel Dashiell Hammett was an American author of hardboiled detective novels and short stories. Among the enduring characters he created are Sam Spade (The Maltese Falcon), Nick and Nora Charles (The Thin Man), and the Continental Op (Red Harvest and The Dain Curse). In addition to the significant influence his novels and stories had on film, Hammett "is now widely regarded as one of the finest mystery writers of all time" and was called, in his obituary in the New York Times, "the dean of the... 'hard-boiled' school of detective fiction."
GOOGLE PLAY / AMAZON / iTUNES
KOBO / AUDIBLE / INDIE BOUND
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)