Hand-annotated typescript of a plot and chapter outline by Dashiell Hammett for the original version of The Thin Man, two pages (both headed "The Thin Man"), 8.5 x 11, no date but circa 1930 [a small pocket-calendar page from May 1930, struck through and marked "Sept" is affixed to the lower left corner of the summary].
The plot summary begins: "Walter Irving Wynant, the thin man, is an eccentric novelist whose secretary, Columbia Forrest, has a past with which he is acquainted. He lives with her and two servants on a mountain near the village of Hell Bend, a few hours' ride from San Francisco. The girl's lover comes to live near them when he is released from an eastern pen, taking the name Ross Lane. When Wynant, who has come more and more under the girl's influence, discovers that she is about to gyp him and go away with Lane he threatens them with arrest and is killed by Lane." They go on to bring in accomplices and pretend that Wynant is still alive—forging checks, completing unfinished manuscripts, and keeping his old apartment. As pressure builds and the deception unwinds, Lane kills the girl and frames the deceased Wynant as the killer. Hammett writes fifteen words of revision and addition on the summary page, changing the surnames "Benham" and "Graeme" to "Hopkins" and "Fremont," and noting: "Fremonts think Wynant killed girl. Lane told Hopkinses Wynant was away." The chapter outline, divided at center in pencil by Hammett with "——2——," offers a detailed framework for the structure of the first nine chapters of the story, which would amount to some sixty-five pages. In very good to fine condition, with chipping to the edges.
Hammett set aside this original version of The Thin Man during a yearlong sojourn in Hollywood, and embarked on a greatly altered version when he returned to it. As he wrote to a friend, 'I put [the] 65 ['Thin Man'] pages aside and went to Hollywood for a year. One thing and/or another intervening after that, I didn't return to work on the story until a couple of years had passed—and then I found it easier…to start anew.' The new novel, which became the basis for a successful six-part film series starring William Powell and Myrna Loy, was finished in May 1933, and published in January 1934.
In Shadow Man: The Life of Dashiell Hammett, biographer Richard Layman observes: 'The original 'Thin Man' is a promising fragment of a mystery novel. It is set in San Francisco and in the mountains north of the city. The detective is John Guild, with Associated Detective Bureaus, Inc. Guild becomes involved in the case when an insurance company that employs his agency reports a claim from a San Francisco bank on an altered check…Guild's search for Clyde Wynant [changed from the above Walter Irving Wynant], who deposited the check, leads him into a bizarre murder case…Hammett seems to have been setting up the type of mystery he used in the completed Thin Man—a missing person is implicated in a series of crimes when he is, in fact, dead. The missing man in both the fragment and the finished novel is named Clyde Wynant, and the two Wynants are similar in character. The name John Guild is used for a police detective in the completed novel, in which Nick Charles solves the crime.'
Past sales history: Christie's, Printed Books and Manuscripts including Americana, June 8, 1990.
