AS SEEN ON TV: ASTA

ASTA

AS SEEN IN:

'The Thin Man'

ADAPTED FROM:

"The Thin Man"

BY:

Dashiell Hammett

PORTRAYED BY:

Asta Junior

TV STATUS:

Multiverse Recastaway

[BookWorld, the Cineverse, Toobworld]

TV DIMENSION:

Earth Prime-Time

From Wikipedia:

Asta was the playful pet dog of Nick and Nora Charles, tugging them around town on his walks, hiding from danger, and sniffing out corpses. ("Asta, you're not a terrier, you're a police dog," Nick tells him.) The character later appeared in the sequels "After the Thin Man", "Another Thin Man", "Shadow of the Thin Man", "The Thin Man Goes Home", "Song of the Thin Man", as well as the 1950s television show 'The Thin Man'.

The original character of Asta in Dashiell Hammett's book of "The Thin Man" was not a male Wire-Haired Fox Terrier, but a female Schnauzer. Due to the enormous popularity of the Asta character as played by Skippy, interest in pet terriers skyrocketed. Asta's enduring fame is such that the name is a frequent answer in The New York Times crossword puzzles (crosswordese), in response to clues such as "Thin Man dog" or "Dog star."

Although Skippy played Asta in the first two "Thin Man" films, other terriers, trained by the Weatherwax family and by Frank Inn, took on the role in subsequent films of the series, and in the television show.

O'BSERVATIONS:

Making such a drastic change in Asta -from a female schnauzer to a male fox terrier - would be like changing Jim in "Tom Sawyer" into a white man. (Or into a robot as has been done in an edition of the book.) I wonder how Hammett felt about that. (Probably didn't give a damn so long as the checks kept coming in.....)

BCnU!