Of course, this film has nothing to do with the Thin Man series over at MGM, but it does give us a detective with a similar moniker - "The Fat Man" AKA Brad Runyan who is doing plenty of gourmet cooking and eating when he isn't solving mysteries.
Things start with a bang as a man enters the hotel room of a dentist attending a convention, knocks him unconscious, throws his body out of his high rise room to make it look like an accident, and steals a dental plate the dentist was planning to show at the convention. So the dentist's assistant (Jayne Meadows) goes to Runyan and tells him she feels like she is being watched, plus the dentist had made an appointment with Runyan for reasons unknown. When someone tries to attack the assistant, Runyan decides to stick with this case, whatever it is.
He starts with the man whose x-ray plate was stolen - Roy Clark (Rock Hudson). The assistant talks about how when he first showed up he was poorly dressed, didn't even have enough money to make a complete payment on his dental work. When he reappeared at his follow-up dental appointment, he was dressed to the nines and gave the dentist a generous tip for doing the original work on credit. He drove off in a nice car as opposed to being on foot before.
And from that sketchy information, the Fat Man solves the mystery. This is far from a top drawer noir, and in fact it has a 50s TV show feel about it. The Fat Man was a popular radio show, and maybe this feature film was a way to transfer it from radio to television, but it never really took off.
J. Scott Smart is good and convincing in his role as "The Fat Man", and he should be since he played that part on radio. He even shows himself light on his feet on the dance floor! Rock Hudson, even in this early and rather small role really stands out as far as screen presence.
The film does have a rather interesting and unexpected ending, and is worthwhile if you are interested in the noir cycle of American film in the 40s and 50s. With an original story penned by Dashiell Hammett and direction by that master of the macabre, William Castle. Also with Clinton Sundberg as Runyan's right hand man, mainly on the culinary front.
