Davy Meets The Thin Man

I’ve seen this movie too many times to count, but Davy caught it for the first time the other night, and hoo-boy was he impressed! He saw Nick Charles as a sort of 20th Century version of himself, a good-natured, wise-cracking hero in a fedora instead of a coonskin and packing a .38 instead of a longrifle. And he claims Myrna Loy is the spitting image of his Polly. If he second wife Elizabeth had looked like Myrna, says he, he might never have run off to the Alamo. Now I’ll have to show him the whole series.
Not that I mind, of course. Unlike most films, where once is plenty (or sometimes too much), these are movies I never tire of. It’s like listening to some of my favorite songs. They just seem to get richer and better with each playing, until every note is ingrained in my brain. There comes a time, of course, when I never have to play those songs again, because I can play them in my head whenever I want. But that hasn’t happened yet with the Thin Man movies, and ain’t likely to.
This serves as a reminder it’s time to read the book again, which I admire at least as much as the movie. As I haven’t had a case of Hammettmania in several years, I only recently heard there’s a previously unpublished, earlier draft of the story now in print. That certainly merits investigation. And there’s all those great Continental Op stories waiting for me in my old Dell Mapbacks. And all that stuff by Jonathan Latimer, Frederick Nebel, Norbert Davis, Carroll John Daly, Cleve F. Adams, Robert Reeves, Howard Browne, Richard Sale, Robert Leslie Bellem and others I have in storage. Could be it’s time for hardboiled revival in general. I have a feeling Davy will enjoy it.

The herald below has some fun stuff in the fine print. Click on the photo to see the BIG version.