Nick and Nora Charles - Homages

Homages

• A large number of television detective pairings were based on Nick and Nora Charles, including McMillan and Wife, Hart to Hart, The Avengers, Remington Steele, and Moonlighting.
• Nick and Nora were the inspirations for two comic book couples: the adoptive parents of Mary Marvel, Nick and Nora Bromfield, as well as the relationship between Ralph Dibny (DC Comics' Elongated Man) and his wife Sue Dibny.
• Neil Simon's 1976 movie Murder by Death parodied Nick and Nora as Dick and Dora Charleston, with their dog Myron.
• Jack from David Ives' 1990 play Ancient History refers to himself and his girlfriend Ruth as Nick and Nora.
• Donald Strachey and his partner Timothy Callahan in the Donald Strachey novels are called the gay Nick and Nora.
• The popular Nick & Nora fashion brand specializing in pajamas.
• A pair of dogs in the comic strip The Middletons are named Nick and Nora Charles.
• The 2008 young adult novel, and later film, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist pays homage to the duo.
• The long running suspense series In Death, created by Nora Roberts under the pseudonym of J.D. Robb, pays homage to Nick and Nora through the banter of NYPSD Lieutenant Eve Dallas and her rich husband Roarke. Also, in Conspiracy in Death (April 1999) Roarke makes a pointed comment about playing Nick to Eve's Nora.
• Nick and Nora Charles are mentioned in Jonathan Franzen's short story "Two's Company" as "the funniest married couple" and "hopeless drunks."
• An episode of Looney Tunes featuring Elmer Fudd and Sylvester the cat shows Elmer tossing a book titled "The Thin Man" out the window at Sylvester who in turns tosses back a second book titled "Another Thin Man".
• In an episode of Mathnet, mathnetters Pat Tuesday & George Frankly posed as Nick & Nora Chuck (a spoof of Nick & Nora Charles) to catch a jewel thief (James DePaiva).

In Philip Kerr's mystery novel, "If the Dead Rise Not" (Penguin, 2009), set in 1934 early Nazi Germany, the hard-bitten detective hero, Bernhard Gunther falls in love with an American Jewish writer, Noreen Charalambides, (who has an alcoholic but loving husband, Nick). Nick Charles' original name was Charalambides. In real life, Dashiell Hammett modelled Nora Charles after Lillian Hellman, his American,Jewish, writer lover.