She's a glorious mess, a secretly smoking playwright whose attire/uniform is the fashion equivalent of class warfare: Fur, polo dress and loafers -- I mean, really.

While you'd be hard pressed to consider Margot Tenenbaum a "woman" in all her self-loathing, self-serious austerity, she's feminine and mysterious and renders those around her impotent without really trying. When she leaves the Green Line bus and approaches Bomber (Luke Wilson) to the cadence of Nico's "These Days" time takes on another dimension. Don't we all wish we had those powers?

There's something discourteous about Depression-era socialites, but it's hard not to love this party girl. Nora Charles was pretty, playful and usually drunk, but since her husband shared in her proclivity for martinis she fit in swimmingly. There are few women who'd follow their ex-detective husbands around, solving crimes for the fun, but it was the Depression and she was rich. Audiences so liked the team of Nick and Nora Charles that MGM ultimately produced five Thin Man detective comedies.