Nora Charles
Nick and Nora Charles are fictional characters created by Dashiell Hammett in his novel ''The Thin Man''. The characters were later adapted for film in a series of films between 1934 and 1947; for radio from 1941 to 1950; for television from 1957 through 1959; as a Broadway musical in 1991; and as a stage play in 2009. Synopsis Nick and Nora are a married couple who solve murder mysteries while exchanging sharp and smart repartee. The tremendous popularity of the characters made them a media archetype, as the bantering, romantically involved detective duo has become a well-used trope in literature, stage, screen, and television ever since. Novel The characters first appear in Dashiell Hammett's best-selling last novel ''The Thin Man'' (1934). Nick is a 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 relationsh ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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William Powell
William Horatio Powell (July 29, 1892 – March 5, 1984) was an American actor. A major star at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, he was paired with Myrna Loy in 14 films, including the ''The Thin Man (film), Thin Man'' series based on the Nick and Nora Charles characters created by Dashiell Hammett. Powell was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor three times: for ''The Thin Man (film), The Thin Man'' (1934), ''My Man Godfrey'' (1936), and ''Life with Father (film), Life with Father'' (1947). Early life Born in Pittsburgh in 1892, William Powell was the only child of Nettie Manila (née Brady) and Horatio Warren Powell, who worked as an accountant."Obituaries: William Powell, star of 'Thin Man' films", ''Chicago Tribune'', March 6, 1984, p. N6. Retrieved via ProQuest Historical Newspapers through subscription access at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library, January 31, 2022. In 1907, young William moved with his family to Kansas City, Missouri, where he graduated ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Nob Hill
Nob Hill is a neighborhood of San Francisco, California, United States that is known for its numerous luxury hotels and historic mansions. Nob Hill has historically served as a center of San Francisco's upper class. Nob Hill is among the highest-income neighborhoods in the United States, as well as one of the most desirable and expensive real estate markets in the country. Nob Hill is a luxury destination in San Francisco, owing to its numerous Michelin-starred restaurants, boutiques, cultural institutions, art galleries, and historic landmarks. The neighborhood is named after one of San Francisco's original "Seven Hills". Location The actual peak of Nob Hill lies approximately at the intersection of Jones and Sacramento Streets. North of Nob Hill is Russian Hill. West of the district is Pacific Heights. To the south of Nob Hill is the Union Square shopping district, Civic Center district, and the Tendernob neighborhood. East of Nob Hill is Chinatown and the Financial D ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Murder On The Orient Express
''Murder on the Orient Express'' is a work of detective fiction by English writer Agatha Christie featuring the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. It was first published in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club on 1 January 1934. In the United States, it was published on 28 February 1934, under the title of ''Murder in the Calais Coach,'' by Dodd, Mead and Company. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and Sixpence (British coin), sixpence (7/6) and the US edition at $2. The elegant train of the 1930s, the Orient Express, is stopped by heavy snowfall. A murder is discovered, and Poirot's trip home to London from the Middle East is interrupted to solve the case. The opening chapters of the novel take place primarily in Istanbul. The rest of the novel takes place in Yugoslavia, with the train trapped between Vinkovci and Slavonski Brod, Brod. The US title of ''Murder in the Calais Coach'' was used to avoid confusion with the 1932 Graham Greene novel ''Stamboul Train'', ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Agatha Christie
Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, (; 15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976) was an English writer known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. She also wrote the world's longest-running play, the murder mystery ''The Mousetrap'', which has been performed in the West End since 1952. A writer during the "Golden Age of Detective Fiction", Christie has been called the "Queen of Crime". She also wrote six novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. In 1971, she was made a Dame (DBE) by Queen Elizabeth II for her contributions to literature. ''Guinness World Records'' lists Christie as the best-selling fiction writer of all time, her novels having sold more than two billion copies. Christie was born into a wealthy upper middle class family in Torquay, Devon, and was largely home-schooled. She was initially an unsuccessful writer with six co ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Comstock Lode
The Comstock Lode is a lode of silver ore located under the eastern slope of Mount Davidson, a peak in the Virginia Range in Virginia City, Nevada (then western Utah Territory), which was the first major discovery of silver ore in the United States and named after American miner Henry Comstock. After the discovery was made public in 1859, it sparked a silver rush of prospectors to the area, scrambling to stake their claims. The discovery caused considerable excitement in California and throughout the United States, the greatest since the California Gold Rush in 1849. Mining camps soon thrived in the vicinity, which became bustling commercial centers, including Virginia City and Gold Hill. The Comstock Lode is notable not just for the immense fortunes it generated and the large role those fortunes had in the growth of Nevada and San Francisco, but also for the advances in mining technology that it spurred, such as square set timbering and the Washoe process for extracting silv ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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White Anglo-Saxon Protestant
In the United States, White Anglo-Saxon Protestants or WASPs are an ethnoreligious group who are the white, upper-class, American Protestant historical elite, typically of British descent. WASPs dominated American society, culture, and politics for most of the history of the United States. From the 1950s, the New Left criticized the WASP hegemony and disparaged them as part of "The Establishment". Although the social influence of wealthy WASPs has declined since the 1940s, the group continues to play a central role in American finance, politics and philanthropy. ''Anglo-Saxon'' refers to people of British ancestry, but ''WASP'' is sometimes used more broadly by sociologists and others to include all Protestant Americans of Northern European or Northwestern European ancestry. ''WASP'' is also used for elites in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. The 1998 ''Random House Unabridged Dictionary'' says the term is "sometimes disparaging and offensive". Naming The Angles and Saxons ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Backstory
A backstory, background story, back-story, or background is a set of events invented for a plot, presented as preceding and leading up to that plot. It is a literary device of a narrative history all chronologically earlier than the narrative of primary interest. In acting, it is the history of the character before the drama begins, and is created during the actor's preparation. It is the history of characters and other elements that underlie the situation existing at the main narrative's start. Even a purely historical work selectively reveals backstory to the audience. Usage As a literary device, backstory is often employed to lend depth or believability to the main story. The usefulness of having a dramatic revelation was recognized by Aristotle, in ''Poetics''. Backstories are usually revealed, partially or in full, chronologically or otherwise, as the main narrative unfolds. However, a story creator may also create portions of a backstory or even an entire backstory ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Schnauzer
A Schnauzer (), plural ''Schnauzer'', lit. translation "snouter") is a dog breed type that originated in Germany from the 14th to 16th centuries. The term comes from the German word for "snout" and means colloquially "moustache",Schnauzer at '''' or "whiskered snout", because of the dog's distinctively bearded snout. Initially it was called Wire-Haired , while Schnauzer was adopted in 1879. Breeds There are three[...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Thin Man (film)
''The Thin Man'' is a 1934 American Pre-Code Hollywood, pre-Code comedy-mystery directed by W. S. Van Dyke and based on the 1934 The Thin Man, novel of the same name by Dashiell Hammett. The film stars William Powell and Myrna Loy as Nick and Nora Charles, a leisure-class couple who enjoy copious drinking and flirtatious banter. Nick is a retired private detective who left his very successful career when he married Nora, a wealthy heiress accustomed to high society. Their Fox Terrier (Wire), wire-haired fox terrier Asta was played by canine actor Skippy (dog), Skippy. In 1997, the film was added to the United States National Film Registry having been deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." 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 titular "Thin Man" is not Nick Charles, but the man Charles is initially hired to find – Clyde Wynan ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Comedy Of Manners
In English literature, the term comedy of manners (also anti-sentimental comedy) describes a genre of realistic, satirical comedy of the Restoration period (1660–1710) that questions and comments upon the manners and social conventions of a greatly sophisticated, artificial society. The satire of fashion, manners, and outlook on life of the social classes, is realised with stock characters, such as the braggart soldier of Ancient Greek comedy, and the fop and the rake of English Restoration comedy.George Henry Nettleton, Arthu''British dramatists from Dryden to Sheridan''p.149 The clever plot of a comedy of manners (usually a scandal) is secondary to the social commentary thematically presented through the witty dialogue of the characters, e.g. ''The Importance of Being Earnest'' (1895), by Oscar Wilde, which satirises the sexual hypocrisies of Victorian morality. The comedy-of-manners genre originated in the New Comedy period (325–260 BC) of Classical Greece (510–323 BC ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Glass Key
''The Glass Key'' is a novel by American writer Dashiell Hammett. First published as a serial in '' Black Mask'' magazine in 1930, it then was collected in 1931 (in London; the American edition followed 3 months later). It tells the story of a gambler and racketeer, Ned Beaumont, whose devotion to Paul Madvig, a crooked political boss, leads him to investigate the murder of a local senator's son as a potential gang war brews. Hammett dedicated the novel to his onetime lover Nell Martin. There have been two US film adaptations (1935 and 1942) of the novel. A radio adaptation starring Orson Welles aired on March 10, 1939, as part of his '' Campbell Playhouse'' series. The book was also a major influence on the Coen brothers' 1990 film ''Miller's Crossing'', which features a similar scenario. The Glass Key Award (in Swedish, ''Glasnyckeln''), named after the novel, has been presented annually since 1992 for the best crime novel by a Scandinavian writer. Plot summary The story rev ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |