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,
Carter DeHaven Carter DeHaven Carter DeHaven (born Francis O'Callaghan; October 5, 1886 – July 20, 1977) was an American movie and stage actor, movie director, and writer. DeHaven started his career in vaudeville and started acting in movies in 1915. He regularly starred in comedy shorts up until 1923. He worked for Paramount in 1920, and some of his films were directed by Charley Chase. A 1923 short "Character Studies" uses editing as DeHaven "transform" himself into the spitting image of various major film stars of the era: Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Douglas Fairbanks, Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle and 13-year-old Jackie Coogan. This