Woman on the Run (1950)

Film: Woman on the Run (1950)
Stars: Ann Sheridan, Dennis O'Keefe, Robert Keith, Ross Elliott
Director: Norman Foster
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2019 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress of Hollywood's Golden Age.  This month, our focus is on Ann Sheridan-click here to learn more about Ms. Sheridan (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We end our time with Ann Sheridan much where Ann Sheridan ended her film career, at Universal.  After a brief, successful time as a freelance actress, where she made I Was a Male War Bride, she was signed to Universal after making Woman on the Run for the studio, for which she was an uncredited producer.  Sheridan's time at Universal was relatively brief, and nothing compared to her work at Warner Brothers, starring in increasingly minor films before turning over to supporting roles as the decade progressed, and finally television (she had a recurring role on Another World) before dying at the young age of 51 from cancer.  While she did eventually shoot a Technicolor picture with Douglas Sirk (by my count her last proper leading role), I figured we'd end with Woman on the Run, where not only she enjoyed top billing, but she earned it with an atypical role as a woman increasingly desperate to find her husband.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film centers on Eleanor (Sheridan), a woman in a seemingly loveless marriage to her husband Frank (Elliott), who is currently on the run after seeing a mob hit on a witness.  Eleanor is being dogged by two men, a reporter named Danny (O'Keefe) and a police detective called Ferris (Keith) who are taking different tacts with Eleanor, Danny a softer touch (hoping to get an interview with Frank before he goes into witness protection) and Ferris trying to go after him, even if it risks his safety.  Eleanor appears jaded about her husband at first, but after tracking the clues down where his location is, we learn that he's still madly in love with her even though their marriage has grown stale, and she realizes that she wants to give life with him another chance.  Unfortunately, in a mid-film twist, we come to learn that Danny isn't a reporter, but in fact the murderer whose face Frank saw at the beginning of the picture, and in a climactic scene Sheridan is trapped on a roller coaster while her husband is being strangled by O'Keefe, trying to take advantage of Frank's heart problem.  It's a 1950's movie with a major star, so he lives, but it's gritty (and low-budget) enough that the suspense is there & works to make it the best moments of the film.

The movie is quite fun, and a great potboiler of a detective story.  The banter, especially between Sheridan and Keith, is sharp & brisk, and I adored the early scenes of the film where she is clearly a woman who doesn't give a crap about anything, least of all her husband.  The movie is brisk (the run time of 77 minutes feels just about right), and while there are occasionally some side stories that don't work (particularly the sequences at the Asian restaurant), it's a compelling mystery & one where you don't entirely see the twist coming until the music changes and you know something is terribly, terribly wrong.

The best part about this, for me, though, was Sheridan.  After spending a month with her, I'd been waiting for a proper lead role that would cement her for me as I quite liked her but never felt she properly fit as a leading woman, and Woman on the Run puts all of her gifts to use.  While The Man Who Came to Dinner is my favorite of all of the pictures I saw of hers this month, this is the one I loved because of Sheridan.  She plays Eleanor as witty, run-down, and desperate to find some sort of change in her life, and the film manages to actually care about her character's progression while never sacrificing her verve and comic timing.  Look at the way her eventual reunion with her husband plays here compared to the latter scenes of I Was a Male War Bride, where the glittery character we saw earlier becomes a doting wife.  Here, she's still snapping back at Frank, giving us great dialogue while also showing that she's progressed to loving him again. One of the reasons I came up with this series personally was so that I had a better understanding of what to expect in an Ann Sheridan picture, from a famous actress I knew nothing about; when I name-check her in the future, it will be Woman on the Run that will come to mind as a "perfect Ann Sheridan role," to recommend to anyone seeking her out.  And on Friday, we'll start a similar journey with a woman who enjoyed a similar run of success as Sheridan-stay tuned!