Nick and Nora Charles the bantering, romantically involved detective duo has become a well-used trope in literature, stage, screen, and television ever since. The characters first appear in Dashiell Hammett's best-selling last novel "The Thin Man" (1934). Nick is an alcoholic former private detective who retired when he married Nora, a wealthy Nob Hill heiress. Hammett reportedly modeled Nora on his longtime partner Lillian Hellman, and the characters' boozy, flippant dialogue on their relationship. (The novel also mentions that Nick was once a Pinkerton detective, as was Hammett.) The novel is considered one of the seminal texts of the hard-boiled subgenre of mystery novels,
Fatty and Mabel Adrift Fatty and Mabel Adrift Fatty and Mabel Adrift is a 1916 Keystone short comedy film starring Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, Mabel Normand, and Al St. John. The story involves Arbuckle as a farm boy marrying his sweetheart, Normand. They have their honeymoon with Fatty's dog Luke, at a cottage on the seashore. At high tide that night, Al St. John (Fatty's rival) and his confederates set the cottage adrift. Fatty and Mabel awaken the next morning to find themselves surrounded by water in their bedroom, and the house afloat. "Variety" gave the films a positive review, commenting that "the picture is