I was worried, but the Thin Man series ends swell with a jazz-themed return to the formula and the kind of comedy that made the series great. Song of the Thin Man has Nick and Nora back in New York, again trying to solve a murder in order to prove the innocence of a friend. In this case, the friend is Phil Brant, who owns a gambling ship and has an argument with Tommy Drake, who leads the club’s jazz band. When Drake turns up dead in Brant’s office, Nick grabs his cocktail shaker and goes to work.
Instead of Nick drunkenly and good-naturedly suffering the company of snooty rich folk, Song shakes things up a bit by having him drunkenly and good-naturedly suffering the company of hepcats. It’s brilliant, because his reaction to both is nearly identical, but the hepcats are infinitely less irritating (and so, more entertaining) than wealthy snobs. Also, Nora’s even more of a treat than usual once she gloms onto the hepcats’ lingo and starts using it correctly, much to Nick’s befuddlement.
Nick Jr. appears again in this installment, but he’s about 10 or 11 years old and not played for cute anymore. Dean Stockwell (TV’s Quantum Leap) plays him and carries his own as a bona fide member of the wisecracking family. At bedtime one night, he asks for a story. “No story for you tonight,” Nick says, “You’ve got to get some sleep.” Says Stockwell, “But your stories always put me to sleep,” delivering the line almost as perfectly as William Powell reacts to it.
The Thin Man series is famous for presenting marriage as something that people might actually want to do. With Song of the Thin Man, it does the same thing for parenting. —Michael May