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1934 film by W. S. Van Dyke

The film's screenplay was written by Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich, a married couple. In 1934, the film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. The eponymous "Thin Man" is not Nick Charles, but the man Charles is initially hired to find – Clyde Wynant (part way through the film, Charles describes Wynant as a "thin man with white hair"). The "Thin Man" moniker was thought by many viewers to refer to Nick Charles and, after a time, it was used in the titles of sequels as if referring to Charles. It was followed by five sequels.

Dorothy Wynant discusses her upcoming wedding with her father Clyde. She is surprised that her fiancé knows all about her family yet still wants to marry her. Later, her father discovers that bonds worth $50,000, intended as a wedding present for his daughter, are missing. The only other person who knows the combination of the safe in which they were kept is his secretary, Julia. When he confronts Julia about the missing bonds, she confesses that she cashed them in and has only $25,000 left. He threatens to call the police unless she comes up with the other $25,000. Nick Charles is a retired detective and he once did a job for Clyde. Nick and his wealthy wife, Nora, live in San Francisco but are visiting New York City for Christmas, staying in a glamorous apartment like suite at the Hotel Normandie. While in New York, Nick is pressed back into service by Dorothy, as her father, the "Thin Man" of the movie title, was supposed to have left on a secret business trip with a promise to return home before his daughter's wedding, but he has mysteriously disappeared. She convinces Nick to take the case, with the assistance of his socialite wife, who is eager to see him in action. What appears to be a missing person situation rapidly turns into a murder case, when Julia Wolf, Clyde's former secretary and girlfriend, is found dead, and evidence points to Clyde as the prime suspect. Dorothy refuses to believe that her father is guilty. Nick and Police Lieutenant Guild visit Nunheim, a frequent source for the lieutenant. After being pressed for information, Nunheim excuses himself momentarily, only to slip away down the fire escape. He arranges a meeting with the yet unidentified murderer (someone whose face is not yet shown) to collect $5,000 from him. When Nunheim arrives, however, he is immediately shot four times and killed. On a hunch, Nick soon visits Wynant's closed shop in the dead of night and unearths a skeletonized, but fully dressed, body, buried under the floor. In the dark shop, Wynant's bookkeeper, Tanner, suddenly appears. After that, the police—whom Nick had called once he found the body—arrive and concludes that Wynant committed the murders of Julia and now this newly discovered body. They assume that the remains belong to the "Fat Man"—a long ago enemy of Wynant's—because of its oversized clothing with a belt buckle bearing an "R" (for "Rosebreen", that notorious figure's surname). But Nick has already all but solved the case—and soon invites the full cast of suspects to an elegant dinner party. There, as planned, the murderer is exposed. Nick—who had accompanied the medical examiner when he X rayed the buried body—theorizes that the clothes were planted to hide the body's true identity, as the X ray revealed telltale shrapnel, presumably from an old war wound, in one leg, the exact same injury that had plagued the "Thin Man": the missing Wynant. Nick deduces that the real culprit murdered Clyde once he discovered that the killer had been embezzling from him, and then the culprit murdered his own accomplice, Julia Wolf, because she knew about Clyde's murder, and after that, he murdered Nunheim since he had witnessed Julia's murder and was blackmailing him. Nick unfurls more of his theory to the dinner guests. Herbert MacCauley, Clyde's attorney, panics and tries to shoot Nick. Nick punches him out and declares MacCauley to be the murderer. Finally, Nick and Nora, along with Dorothy and her new husband, Tommy, celebrate as they ride a luxury train back to California. Nora, in the lower bunk, wants to sleep with Asta, but Nick tosses Asta to the upper bunk and joins Nora himself. Asta looks down on the couple and covers his eyes with his paw.

The film was based on the novel of the same name by Dashiell Hammett, released in January 1934. Hammett's novel drew on his experiences as a union busting Pinkerton detective in Butte, Montana. Hammett based Nick and Nora's banter upon his rocky on again, off again relationship with playwright Lillian Hellman. MGM paid Hammett $21,000 for the screen rights to the novel. The screenplay was written by Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich, who had been married for three years. Director W. S. Van Dyke encouraged them to use Hammett's writing as a basis only, and to concentrate on providing witty exchanges for Nick and Nora.

Van Dyke convinced MGM executives to let Powell and Loy portray the lead characters despite concerns that Powell was too old and strait laced to play Nick Charles and that Loy had become typecast in exotic femme fatale roles. Skippy played Asta, the dog of Nick and Nora. Skippy was subsequently cast in two screwball comedy classics, The Awful Truth (1937) and Bringing Up Baby (1938).

Award Category Nominee(s) Result Academy Awards Best Picture Hunt Stromberg Best Director W. S. Van Dyke Best Actor William Powell Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich

The Thin Man earned total theater rentals of $1,423,000, with $818,000 from the US and Canada and $605,000 in other foreign rentals, resulting in a profit of $729,000.

Long available on VHS and DVD, The Thin Man was released on Blu ray Disc by the Warner Archive Collection on July 30, 2019. The 1080p high definition master was made from a 4K restoration based on new transfers of the picture's best surviving film elements, with digital correction of a multitude of defects seen in earlier home media releases. Blu ray. com reported that the film "looks exceptional and, aside from a true 4K option, will likely never get a better home video release". Extras include the theatrical trailer, the 1936 Lux Radio Theatre broadcast, and the 1958 second season premiere of the NBC television series.

The TV series The Thin Man ran from 1957 through 1959, starring Peter Lawford and Phyllis Kirk. In the 1976 comedy spoof movie Murder by Death, the characters of Nick and Nora Charles became Dick and Dora Charleston, played by David Niven and Maggie Smith. In the 2005 animated film Hoodwinked!, the character Nicky Flippers, a frog detective voiced by David Ogden Stiers, was based on Nick Charles. Creators Rachel Cohn and David Levithan named their lead characters in the 2008 film Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist as an homage to the characters in The Thin Man. The 2022 science fiction novel The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal is a sci fi take on the Nick and Nora characters, but set in space.