LITTLE BIG SCREEN: NICK & NORA AND CHARLIE CHAN

'MURDER, SHE WROTE'

"NIGHT OF THE TARANTULA" 

In order to get into a locked room, in which a key was still in the lock, Jessica Fletcher put a paper doily under the door and then poked the key out of the lock so that she could slide it out from under the door.

Olivia Waverley: 

Where on earth did you learn that?

Jessica Fletcher: 

I think it was "The Thin Man Returns". 

Or was it "Charlie Chan in Hong Kong"?

Here is the list of "Thin Man" movies which starred William Powell and Myrna Loy:

• The Thin Man (1934)
• After the Thin Man (1936)
• Another Thin Man (1939)
• Shadow of the Thin Man (1941)
• The Thin Man Goes Home (1945)
• Song of the Thin Man (1947)

And these are the "Charlie Chan" movies during its classic period when Charlie was portrayed by Warner Oland, Sidney Toler, and then Roland Winters: 

• Charlie Chan Carries On (1931)
• The Black Camel (1931)
• Charlie Chan's Chance (1932)
• Charlie Chan's Greatest Case (1933)
• Charlie Chan's Courage (1934)
• Charlie Chan in London (1934)
• Charlie Chan in Paris (1935)
• Charlie Chan (1935)
• Charlie Chan in Shanghai (1935)
• Charlie Chan's Secret (1936)
• Charlie Chan at the Circus (1936)
• Charlie Chan at the Race Track (1936)
• Charlie Chan at the Opera (1936)
• Charlie Chan at the Olympics (1937)
• Charlie Chan on Broadway (1937)
• Charlie Chan at Monte Carlo (1937)
• Charlie Chan in Honolulu (1938)
• Charlie Chan in Reno (1939)
• Charlie Chan at Treasure Island (1939)
• City in Darkness (1939)
• Charlie Chan in Panama (1940)
• Charlie Chan's Murder Cruise (1940)
• Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum (1940)
• Murder Over New York (1940)
• Dead Men Tell (1941)
• Charlie Chan in Rio (1941)
• Castle in the Desert (1942)
• Charlie Chan in the Secret Service (1944)
• Charlie Chan in The Chinese Cat (1944)
• Black Magic (1944)
• The Jade Mask (1945)
• The Scarlet Clue (1945)
• The Shanghai Cobra (1945)
• The Red Dragon (1945)
• Dark Alibi (1946)
• Shadows Over Chinatown (1946)
• Dangerous Money (1946)
• The Trap (1946)
• The Chinese Ring (1947)
• Docks of New Orleans (1948)
• Shanghai Chest (1948)
• The Golden Eye (1948)
• The Feathered Serpent (1948)
• The Sky Dragon (1949)

But there's no "The Thin Man Returns".  There's no "Charlie Chan In Hong Kong".

Nick and Nora Charles and Charlie Chan, along with his Number One Son, exist in Earth Prime-Time ('The Thin Man' and 'The Adventures Of Charlie Chan'.)  Both movie franchises are Zonks in the Toobworld Dynamic, but not so much for Charlie Chan.  By the time we saw him in Toobworld, he was old enough to have built up a reputation as a crime-solver to bring him to the attention of Hollywood producers, even back when he was in his thirties.

With the Charleses(?), they were too young when seen in the 1950s to have been the subject of a movie in 1934.  Nick was only eleven years old!  And yet that movie definitely existed back then - we've seen its poster in the apartment of 'Remington Steele' and it was discussed by the "Bomb Girls' working in a WWII munitions factory.

I think the easiest, simplest splainin could be that the movies were based on the lives of Nick's parents.  (It's just a coincidence - Toobworld is rife with coincidences! - that Nick would grow up to marry a woman named Nora just like dear old Dad.  Not at all creepy.....)

I'd like to think that both "The Thin Man Returns" and "Charlie Chan In Hong Kong" were later entries in their franchises, perhaps from the late 1950s, early 1960s.  And on top of that, I think they were based on the lives of the televersions of Nick and Nora Charles and of Charlie Chan.

BCnU!