AFTER THE THIN MAN (1936) – Dashiell Hammett’s Screenplay vs the Movie

AFTER THE THIN MAN (1936) – Previously, Balladeer’s Blog covered the neglected Sam Spade short stories that Dashiell Hammett wrote HERE. This time around I will look at the story treatment that Hammett provided the studio with regarding After the Thin Man. I feel this treatment is better than the actual shooting script and wish he had released it first as a longish short story. 

It’s shorter and less prone to the silly diversions that stretched the film version to such an unnecessary length. As you would expect, there are other differences besides the running time.

HAMMETT’S TREATMENT: The story starts out the same way as the subsequent movie. It is New Year’s Eve as Nick and Nora Charles’ train arrives back in San Francisco a few days after their highly publicized investigation of the Wynant Murder aka “The Thin Man” case. We get familiar bantering and eccentric behavior between the tipsy married couple. 

The press is on hand to greet the pair – and their dog Asta – same as the movie. Nick prevents Nora having her purse snatched by a man he recognizes as a pickpocket from his days as a detective in San Francisco. Before long the couple arrive by cab at their plush home.

Happily, Hammet’s treatment contained only a brief bit of comedic interplay surrounding Nick and Nora’s bemusement about the way the servants have a party going – ostensibly for Nick and Nora’s return, but many guests don’t even know the couple and are obviously just there for free food and booze. Hammett’s shorter depiction of the party schtick works better in my opinion.   

Unfortunately, Hammett’s version DOES include the overly cutesy bit regarding Asta’s female mate and their puppies, one of which resembles the male dog next door. I was hoping that this was just a later addition.  

A reluctant Nick gets dragged along to a New Year’s Eve party at the home of Nora’s wealthy aunt Katherine Forrest who, like the rest of her moneyed family, looks down on Nick for his “lowly” background as a detective. From The Thin Man novel, we know that Nick left the private investigative business to manage the vast business interests that Nora had inherited back before they got married.  

Not only did Hammett’s treatment have a much briefer version of the party at the Charles home, but he also has the first murder scene take place much more quickly. The freeloaders party is still going on and our main characters haven’t even left for Nora’s aunt’s party yet, when the doorbell rang, three shots rang out and the Charles’ former gardener-turned-bootlegger Pedro Dominges dropped dead from bullet wounds as the door was opened. His dying words are “Miss Selma Young.”

Lt. Abrams of homicide shows up in the wake of the uniformed cops and, after Nora gets a phone call from her cousin Selma Forrest Landis, she definitively talks Nick into going along to Aunt Katherine’s party where Selma wants to talk to Nora about her latest marital problems.

Nick insists “ I won’t go sober” and Nora gives him the okay to drink. Lt. Abrams clears the Charleses to leave the scene and they head for Aunt Katherine’s.

As in the later movie, Selma’s troubles with her husband result in Nora volunteering Nick to find her missing husband Robert. The Charleses leave Aunt Katherine’s party to hit a nightclub where Selma’s husband Robert frequently hung out because his latest mistress is a singer there.

The characters in the treatment and the shooting script are basically the same. Besides Selma herself we have: 

Robert Landis: Selma’s alcoholic, forever cheating husband. He planned to get money from Selma’s long-ago fiance David and run off with his mistress, the singer Polly. Robert is shot to death, seemingly by Selma, when he goes home to pack a bag before leaving with his payoff money and Polly. Nora wants Nick to clear Selma of the murder.      

Polly Byrnes: The singer that Landis is having an affair with. She secretly planned with her boss, the nightclub owner, to run off together with the payoff money and leave Robert behind with nothing.

David Graham: Selma Landis’s long-ago suitor, who still carries a torch for her and offered Robert a fortune in negotiable bonds to run off so he could restart his romance with Selma once she divorced Robert for abandonment.

Phil Byrnes: Polly’s brother, a small-time hood looking for bigger things and always sponging off Polly because he’s perpetually broke. He totes a gun and has shifty connections to both David AND Dancer. 

Dancer: Owner of the nightclub where Polly sings. We learn he uses Polly to romance men to get what she can out of them and split the proceeds with him. The negotiable bonds are worth enough for him and Polly to skip town forever. Dancer is a veteran tough guy known to most of the San Francisco criminal world.  

Lum Kee: Dancer’s partner at the nightclub. The duo are involved in human trafficking and the drug trade by way of the Chinese waiters, cooks and waitresses that work for their nightclub. Lum Kee is revealed to be gay at one point in the treatment but not in the movie.

Pedro Dominges: The aforementioned gardener turned bootlegger who was shot to death at the Charles’ place. He was Polly’s landlord at the shady hotel he ran.

And of course, Lt. Abrams of homicide.

So who killed Robert? Who killed Pedro? And just who is Selma Young? I’ll avoid spoilers for people who have never seen the resulting film.  

Fans of Nick and Nora may be disappointed that the ending revelation that Nora is pregnant was not in Hammett’s original story. I was far from disappointed that his treatment did not include the overdose of broad comic relief that the movie had. I prefer for the laughs to come from the sloshed wit of the Charleses.

And ya have to laugh at the already inebriated Nick treating us to the original “walk this way” gag when he follows the arthritic butler at Aunt Katherine’s. Dudley Moore’s homage in Arthur comes close but doesn’t top it.

And yes, I’m fine with the treatment’s closing joke in which Asta pees on the floor. At least I liked it more than Nora being pregnant, since my view is that the remaining movies in the series got way too goofy when the baby arrived. Hammett did not write those remaining films.