HAPPILY EVER AFTER

For Nick and Nora marriage and murder go together like Scotch and soda.

After the Thin Man, sequel to 1934’s seminal mystery-comedy The Thin Man, was the 1930s equivalent of a holiday event movie, premiering on Christmas Day 1936 with sky high expectations. It’s also set during the holidays, with its events bracketing New Year’s Eve. Because of the setting, general atmosphere, and romantic interplay between leads William Powell and Myrna Loy as spouses Nick and Nora Charles, the movie is pleasantly transporting, a good watch for the yuletide season. Most couples can’t even decide on pizza toppings together, but Nick and Nora laughingly solve murders.

Here in movie two, Nick and Nora return home to San Francisco after solving movie one’s baffling NYC murder case, only to find Nora’s cousin involved in a love triangle that leads to a fatal shooting. Once again, functional alcoholic Nick sifts his way through a roster of suspects that include James Stewart, Elissa Landi, and Joseph Calleia, as Nora remains the sharp marital foil who, to quote the screenplay, doesn’t scold, doesn’t nag, and looks far too pretty in the mornings. She also can drink like a fish, a crucial skill when wedded to Nick. Everything climaxes with Nick explaining the crime to a roomful of suspects, one of whom, as required by the format, completely loses his shit when unmasked as the killer.

Unsurprisingly, audiences made After the Thin Man a hit, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences favored it with two Oscar nominations for best screenplay. It’s definitely clever. That was job one for the follow-up to the pithy The Thin Man, an all-time classic. Hiring the same writing and directorial team from the debut was a no-brainer for MGM. The entire group was elsewhere by the time the series ended—which may be one reason why it ended. But the decline of the franchise is a long way off yet. After the Thin Man is a fine night’s entertainment. Watch it with a full flute of bubbly and your Christmas lights twinkling.

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1937—Carothers Patents Nylon

Wallace H. Carothers, an American chemist, inventor and the leader of organic chemistry at DuPont Corporation, receives a patent for a silk substitute fabric called nylon. Carothers was a depressive who for years carried a cyanide capsule on a watch chain in case he wanted to commit suicide, but his genius helped produce other polymers such as neoprene and polyester. He eventually did take cyanide—not in pill form, but dissolved in lemon juice—resulting in his death in late 1937.

1933—Franklin Roosevelt Survives Assassination Attempt

In Miami, Florida, Giuseppe Zangara attempts to shoot President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, but is restrained by a crowd and, in the course of firing five wild shots, hits five people, including Chicago, Illinois Mayor Anton J. Cermak, who dies of his wounds three weeks later. Zangara is quickly tried and sentenced to eighty years in jail for attempted murder, but is later convicted of murder when Cermak dies. Zangara is sentenced to death and executed in Florida’s electric chair.

1929—Seven Men Shot Dead in Chicago

Seven people, six of them gangster rivals of Al Capone’s South Side gang, are machine gunned to death in Chicago, Illinois, in an event that would become known as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Because two of the shooters were dressed as police officers, it was initially thought that police might have been responsible, but an investigation soon proved the killings were gang related. The slaughter exceeded anything yet seen in the United States at that time.

1935—Jury Finds Hauptmann Guilty

A jury in Flemington, New Jersey finds Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, the son of Charles Lindbergh. Hauptmann is sentenced to death and executed in 1936. For decades, his widow Anna, fights to have his named cleared, claiming that Hauptmann did not commit the crime, and was instead a victim of prosecutorial misconduct, but her claims are ultimately dismissed in 1984 after the U.S. Supreme Court refuses to address the case.

Cover art by Roswell Keller for the 1948 Pocket Books edition of Ramona Stewart's Desert Town.
Rare Argentinian cover art for The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells.

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