After the Thin Man

After the Thin Man is a 1936 American comedy-mystery film, the second of MGM's Thin Man series, directed by W. S. Van Dyke and starring William Powell and Myrna Loy as the married sleuths Nick and Nora Charles.¹ Written by Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett, and Dashiell Hammett from Hammett's original story, it was produced by Hunt Stromberg and released on 25 December 1936.¹ The story picks up directly after The Thin Man (1934): the couple returns by train to San Francisco with their wire-haired terrier Asta and is drawn into a murder case involving Nora's cousin Selma.²

Production

Van Dyke, nicknamed "One-Take Woody" for his speed, directed the first film and three of its five sequels: After the Thin Man (1936), Another Thin Man (1939), and Shadow of the Thin Man (1941); the last two entries were made after his death in 1943.⁸ Production of the sequel ran from late September to 31 October 1936.¹ Portions were shot on location in San Francisco, and the base of the city's Coit Tower served as the exterior of the Charles home.¹ The nightclub in the film was loosely modeled on the Forbidden City, a well-known San Francisco night spot of the late 1930s through the 1950s.¹

The crew included cinematographer Oliver T. Marsh, editor Robert J. Kern, production designer Cedric Gibbons, and composers Herbert Stothart and Edward Ward.¹ For actress Dorothy McNulty it was her first film in more than five years, after stage work on Broadway in the early 1930s; she changed her name to Penny Singleton in 1938 and became better known as the lead of Columbia's Blondie series.¹ A Hollywood Reporter item of 30 October 1934 had said Hammett would take a small acting part, but by the time production began almost two years later the plan had apparently been dropped.¹ IMDb lists an estimated budget of $683,000.⁹

Reception

The film earned an Academy Award nomination for Writing, and IMDb records four other wins alongside that nomination.^{4 • 9} Its Metascore stands at 76 from 12 critic reviews, with 83 percent positive.⁴ Rotten Tomatoes shows 96 percent from 28 reviews and a 90 percent audience score.⁶ Variety judged that it had the same stars and the same breezy Van Dyke style and "almost as many sparkling lines of dialog" as its predecessor, but not the same freshness and originality.⁴ The Chicago Tribune called it the second-best of the series after the first entry, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch noted James Stewart in one of his earliest roles.¹⁰ A Critical Survey of Mystery and Detective Fiction describes it as almost as good as the first film but with little connection to Hammett's original character, since MGM's sequels moved past the novel on which The Thin Man was based.¹¹

Place in the series

The Thin Man (1934) was a hit that revived the careers of Powell and Loy and earned four Academy Award nominations; five sequels followed, of which this was the first.⁸ The title of the original film referred to the missing man of the case, not to Nick Charles, but the sequels treated Nick as the "Thin Man" thereafter.¹¹ The film also continued the series' comic formula, with running gags about drinking and the mischievous terrier Asta that later entries reused.⁶ Today the film streams on services including Artiflix and can be rented or bought on Amazon Video in some markets.¹²

References

1. After the Thin Man (1936), AFI Catalog of Feature Films
2. "After the Thin Man" – Warner Archive Collection – blends mystery and martinis, HighDefWatch
3. After the Thin Man – Full Cast & Crew, TV Guide
4. After the Thin Man (1936) Reviews, Metacritic
5. After The Thin Man (1936), Filmfansite
6. After the Thin Man, Rotten Tomatoes
7. After the Thin Man – Story Structure Analysis, Helping Writers Become Authors
8. The Thin Man, TCM article by Margarita Landazuri
9. After the Thin Man (1936), IMDb
10. After the Thin Man (1936) – Metacritic reviews via IMDb
11. Critical Survey of Mystery and Detective Fiction, film section
12. After the Thin Man – watch online, JustWatch

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Franchise and series entries as standalone works › Teen and comedy series film entries › Entries released before 1990

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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