Song of the Thin Man confesses to both killings and pulls out a gun. An enraged Phyllis shoots him first, but her husband is only wounded. Then, despite Nick's pleas, she fires again and again, finishing the job. This "Thin Man" movie differs in several respects from the others in the series, and was one of two films in the series not directed by W. S. Van Dyke, who died in 1943. The script was one of three not written by the husband and wife team of Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich, who had worked with Dashiell Hammett to develop the Nick and Nora characters
Ballad of a Thin Man at that time. Obviously there must have been a tremendous amount of them for me to write "that" particular song. It was like, 'Oh man, here's the thousandth Mister Jones'." In the John Lennon-penned Beatles song "Yer Blues", Lennon describes the character as feeling "suicidal, just like Dylan's Mr. Jones". Dylan critic Mike Marqusee writes that "Ballad of a Thin Man" can be read as "one of the purest songs of protest ever sung", with its scathing take on "the media, its interest in and inability to comprehend [Dylan] and his music." For Marqusee, the song became the anthem of