Woman Chases Man

Recently, while browsing through the Roku Channel (I really hate that name, since there's a bunch of channels in addition to all the streaming stuff) app, I was alerted to a new-to-me movie that sounded interesting, with a cast including several old stars whose movies I tend to enjoy, so I watched it. That movie was Woman Chases Man.

Kenneth Nolan (Joel McCrea) is a wealthy young man on a transatlantic liner coming home from Europe, about to surprise his fahter B.J. (Charles Winninger) when he gets home with the news that he's about to pop the question to Nina (Leona Maricle, and if you haven't heard that name before that might be a sign as to which character Kenneth will wind up with in the final reel) Tennyson. However, Dad surprises him first, with a collect radio call to the liner (in the days when this sort of thing would have been monstrously expensive) asking for money. However, Kenneth has heard it before.

Meanwhile, waiting outside B.J.'s office are a bunch of process servers. B.J. is no longer rich; his late wife had half of the couple's money, and when she died, she made certain the son got half of it so he'd have something to start on and so that B.J. wouldn't spend it all. B.J. isn't a bad guy; it's just that he has a habit of picking hare-brained inventions that won't work in real life and wind up costing him a bunch of money. The latest scheme, at least, doesn't sound so bad: a property development of planned houses for the lower social classes, to be called Nolan Heights. But he needs $100,000 to keep the creditors at bay.

Not knowing this is Virginia Travis (Miriam Hopkins). She goes to the building here B.J.'s office is along with a letter of introduction telling Nolan that she's an architect who would be good for the Nolan Heights project. Not that she has any clue that Nolan doesn't have the money to hire her, or anybody else, on. However, her moxie is able to drive the process servers away so the elder Nolan is going to see her. She faints, being in as bad a financial state as B.J. is and not having eaten in two days.

All this gives Dad an idea. Virginia should use her feminine wiles on Kenneth to get him to propose to her, or at least to sign a check for that $100,000 that Dad needs. That latter isn't going to be so easy, since as I said earlier Kenneth has seen all of the schemes up close and seen his father fritter away his money. Kenneth isn't about to let him blow the other half of the money that Mom had when she died. The former -- getting Kenneth to fall in love -- isn't going to be easy either, since as we know Kenneth is bring his girlfriend home with him.

Except that we eventually learn Nina isn't wealthy, and the "Uncle" Henri she's traveling with is really her boyfriend. She's just a gold-digger. And, since we know who the two leads are, we know where it's all going to go. As is so often the case with a movie like Woman Chases Man, the movie is more about how the characters get where we all know they're going.

Unfortunately, Woman Chases Man is one of the weaker screwball comedies I've seen. The situations are even phonier than in most screwball comedies, and the characters are almost all people it's hard to have sympathy with, the possible exception being Kenneth. But even he does a 180 just in time for the final reel. Of note, as a friend of Virginia's pressed into service as a butler, is a young Broderick Crawford.

Woman Chases Man isn't a particularly good movie. But at least it's mercifully short. And the print Roku showed had relatively few commercials -- I think 8½ minutes for a 70-minute movie. Traditional cable channels would probably have had 20 minutes.