Madame poursuit Monsieur

At the very beginning of this film, Nina Tennyson (Leona Maricle) tells lover Henrie Saffron (Erik Rhodes) that she is going to marry millionaire Kenneth Nolan (Joel McCrea) "so you and I can live happily ever afterwards." She explains that she is going to marry Nolan for his money and then leave him. Henrie say, "Holy Mackerel, what a way to make a living." "Do you know any other way to make a living," she wisecracks.

Besides his fiancé, Nolan's father, B.J. Nolan (Charles Winninger) is also after his money. He has started a suburban housing community called "Nolan Heights" and creditors are going to ruin him if his son doesn't invest in the project. His son has specifically been ordered in his mother's will, not to invest in his father's hair-brained schemes. Thus both father and son are in trouble.

At this moment, Virginia Travis (Mariam Hopkins) shows up looking for a job as an architect for Nolan's "Nolan Heights" housing project. She gives a wild and hilarious introductory speech:

"I know what you're thinking that I'm a girl. Yes, Mr. Nolan, but I have a man's courage, a man's vision, a man's attack...For seven years, I studied like a man, researched like a man. There is nothing feminine about my mind. Seven year ago I gave up a perfectly nice engagement with a charming, wealthy old man because I chose a practical career. I left him at the church to become an architect and today I'm ready and he's dead. Here I am Mr. Nolan with the key to Nolan Heights. I've found a way to make us both rich. I can make you a fortune. Why I have a million dollars right here in my hand."

At this point, she faints dead away. A doctor is called and he explains that she fainted due to hunger. She hadn't eaten in 48 hours. "49 hours," Virginia corrects him, coming out of her faint.

This is a very sweet movie where all the main characters are both con-artists and lovers.

I think Mariam Hopkins is brilliant in her performance and deserved an academy award. Unlike Katherine Hepburn, who appears loving, but feather-brained, in the popular screwball comedy, "Bringing Up Baby (1939), Hopkins manages to be both loving and smart.

Everybody is flawed and a little bit of a screwball in this comedy. That makes it a very wise comedy, indeed.

Woman (Miriam Hopkins as Virginia) chases Man (Joel McCrea as Kenneth) for father (Charles Winninger as B.J.). Woman wants to get Man to invest some of deceased mother's money in father's business venture; but, father is notorious for losing money on hair-brained schemes. Little does anyone know, but real evil schemers are posing as Man's best friends in order to steal his fortune...

The production looks engaging, but the story fails to engage. The players don't play drunk well. Notable as Broderick Crawford's first appearance - as gopher "Hunk"; other than running errands, Mr. Crawford gets pinned to the floor by Mr. McCrea.

*** Woman Chases Man (4/28/37) John G. Blystone ~ Miriam Hopkins, Joel McCrea, Charles Winninger, Broderick Crawford

I'm not sure why this film doesn't work. It has everything I love about screwball comedies in it, and the wonderful Joel McCrea is gorgeous.

Where does it go wrong? I'm not quite as knocked out by Preston Sturges as the rest of the world because I think he's too prone to pointlessly noisy madcap chase scenes, and more often that not his endings suck a lot, but Preston Sturges' screwballs really work (apart from the chases and the endings) and this film doesn't. The difference, then, must be script. Sturges' scripts are superb, glittering things, that you just want to eat with a spoon, and Woman Chases Man is a fairly charming film with a lifeless script.

Miriam Hopkins is Virginia Travis, the starving, ambitious, headstrong architect trying to get an assignment from broke millionaire BJ Nolan (Charles Winninger). Joel McCrea is Nolan's sensible, conservative son, who must be convinced to help Virginia on a scheme. Note Erik Rhodes as "Henri Saffron".. .he does the same, silly foreign accent that he did as the interloper in all those Fred Astaire films. There are some clever lines in the script, but a lot of it is just over- the- top sight gags and three stooges-type pratfall humor. Much of the time, it feels like the timing is off, or something. Some bad editing in several places, where scenes are held out too long, right before or after a film cut. This was one of the last films directed by John Blystone - he died the next year. According to IMDb, there were numerous writers working on this (fixing it?), including Dorothy Parker and Ben Hecht. It's watchable, but can't give it very high marks.

Charming screwball farce played by two of the greatest performers of the 1930s, Miriam Hopkins and Joel Mcrea, with a terrific supporting cast and a director with a fine sense of the absurd.

Hopkins, who suffered no fools and hurt her own career by it, loved working with McCrea and they made a quick series of five films together 1934-1937, all fairly successful at the box office and all great movies well worth viewing, with this one being the last. McCrea was moving into the greatest period of his career, 1937-1946, a time when nearly all his films were big hits. Late in life he credited Ginger Rogers and Barbara Stanwyck as the greatest actresses he worked with in his career, but he also spoke very highly of Hopkins and credited her with helping his career besides being a great screen partner. His wife Frances Dee was very popular with other actresses and the McCrea ranch was the locale for many script readings and scene preps, with Rogers, Stanwyck, Bette Davis and Hepburn being regular visitors.

In this movie, Hopkins is so caught up by the shenanigans in the scene in the tree that she briefly loses her polished acting voice and you can clearly hear her native Savannah, Georgia drawl. And no wonder - it's hilarious!