Robert is at the LiChi Club, a Chinese nightclub, where he has been in an affair with Polly, the club's star performer. Unknown to Robert, Polly and club owner Dancer plan to steal the money that David will pay Robert. Polly's brother Phil Byrnes wants money from her, but Dancer throws him out, just as Nick and Nora arrive looking for Robert.
They tell Robert about David's offer and he agrees to it. After being paid off, Robert goes back into Aunt Katherine's home to retrieve some clothes and say goodbye to Selma, who begs him not to leave. Nick sees Dancer and nightclub co-owner Lum Kee each leave the club separately at the same time. Robert leaves at the stroke of midnight and is shot dead in the foggy street. David finds Selma standing over Robert, a pistol in her hand. Lt. Abrams considers Selma the prime suspect, and her fragile mental state only strengthens his belief. Selma insists that she never fired her gun, but her claim cannot be backed up as David had thrown the gun into San Francisco Bay, thinking she was guilty. Nick begins to investigate to find the actual murderer.
Someone throws a rock with a note tied to it through Nick and Nora's window. The note accuses Polly and Dancer of conspiring to kill Robert while revealing that Phil Byrnes is an ex-con and Polly's husband. Lt. Abrams has found several checks from Robert to Polly, including one for $20,000, but Nick carefully compares them and sees that all but one are forgeries.
Nick and Lt. Abrams find Phil murdered in his hotel room. Nick investigates Polly's apartment and discovers that someone using the name Anderson had bugged it from the apartment above. While in the upper apartment, Nick hears Dancer enter Polly's home. Nick pursues Dancer into the basement, but Dancer fires a round of bullets at Nick and disappears. Nick discovers the body of the building custodian, Pedro. Nora identifies Pedro as the former gardener from her father's estate. She finds a photo in Pedro's room of him with their other servants. Lt. Abrams says someone tried to call Nick from the building just before Pedro was killed.
Nick has Lt. Abrams gather all the suspects in the Anderson apartment. Dancer and Polly confess that they had intended to use a forged check to steal Robert's money but claim that they are innocent of murder. David says that he has not seen Pedro in six years but remembers his long white mustache. But Nick notices that in the picture from six years ago that Nora had found, Pedro had a small, dark mustache, and Nick infers that David saw Pedro recently.
Nick now reconstructs the murder. David is revealed to be Anderson. He hated Robert for taking Selma from him, and also secretly hated Selma for leaving him. He rented the apartment so that he could eavesdrop on Polly and Robert and kill them in the apartment. Instead, he killed Robert on the street and tried to frame Selma for the murder. While spying on Polly, he overheard Phil's real identity and Phil's plan to blackmail David. David murdered Phil and threw the message rock as a diversion.
However, Pedro had recognized David as the mysterious Anderson, so David killed him as well. David brandishes a pistol and threatens to kill Selma and then himself. Lum Kee flings his hat in David's face, allowing Nick and Lt. Abrams to overpower him. This surprises Nora because Nick had Lum Kee's brother sent to prison for bank robbery, but Lum Kee explains: "I don't like my brother. I like his girl. You my friend."
Nick and Nora leave San Francisco by train for the East Coast, accompanied by Selma. Later, alone with Nora, Nick notices that she is knitting a baby's sock and suddenly realizes that she is pregnant. Nora gently chides him, saying, "And you call yourself a detective."
Esther Howard as the woman at LiChi Club who says "Hello, handsome" to Nick (uncredited)
Production
The film's storyline was written by Dashiell Hammett based on his characters Nick and Nora, but not on a particular novel or short story. Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich wrote the original screenplay.
The film was the second of six feature films based on the characters of Nick and Nora:
After the Thin Man grossed a domestic and foreign total of $3,165,000: $1,992,000 from the U.S. and Canada and $1,173,000 elsewhere. It returned a profit of $1,516,000.[1]
Radio adaptation
An hour-long radio adaptation of After the Thin Man was presented on the CBSLux Radio Theatre on June 17, 1940. Powell and Loy reprised their roles.[4]
References in other media
The film is name-checked by the 1938 American mystery novel The Listening House by Mabel Seeley during an interlude in which the book's protagonist goes to see a film called After the Dark Man.
