Miss catastrophe

Bill Reardon (Melvyn Douglas) is a struggling private detective. His wife Sally (Joan Blondell) had push him into quitting a well paying investigating job in the DA office. He goes off to get his old job back. Famous socialite Lola Fraser comes in looking to hire an investigator and Sally promptly takes the job pretending to be an investigator. She starts investigating behind her husband's back which gets complicated when the DA office gets involved in a murder case.

The one and only issue I have is Bill's constant physical fake-outs against his wife. He keeps pretending to hit her and missing by the barest margin. He even throws something at her. It's another era and it's supposed to be funny. It's like Ralph Kramden. It hasn't aged well. Otherwise, the combative rapid-fire banter is fun.

My wife tells me that she liked THERE'S ALWAYS A WOMAN as much as THE THIN MAN (and its progeny). I don't put them in the same league – and chances are, you won't either – but my wife tells me that she liked that the woman (Joan Blondell) was the detective and the smart one. (The "smart" part can be debated, as it is not constant, but this film was made in the 1930s.) The cast was very good, but there is no William Powell. I don't care how many awards he won, Melvyn Douglas is no William Powell. And neither is Joan. (There is no Myrna Loy/subordinate wife character, which takes us back to why my wife liked this so.) If you are reading this review, chances are you'll like this film. It has the charm we can always find in comedies of this period, and Joan is wonderful as always. (And for THIN MAN fans, there is a period of suitable drinking.)

The Quick Pitch: Husband, who works for the DA, and wife, who is secretly running her husband's old detective agency, compete to see who can solve a murder.

As my rating indicates, I generally enjoyed There's Always a Woman. It's no Thin Man, as it's often compared and as Columbia Pictures had hoped it would be, but the movie is decent enough entertainment. The mystery may not be much, but this kind of light-hearted, who-done-it is never deep on plot. The film looks good and moves at a good pace. The direction is snappy with very little in the way downtime. Joan Blondell really shines as Sally Reardon. She's cute, funny, and sassy. She dominates the screen anytime she appears. Co-star Melvyn Douglas is good in his own right and makes a good straight man for Blondell, but he can't compete with her screen presence. There are a variety of other solid actors in the supporting cast, most notably Mary Astor, in what is pretty much the same role she played a few years later in The Maltese Falcon.

The thing that bothered me the most about There's Always a Woman was the casual depiction of spousal abuse. Maybe attitudes have changed since 1938, but I don't enjoy seeing a woman having her hair pulled or being hit by her husband. It didn't come off as funny or playful, just mean. Without those moments, I would have definitely rated There's Always a Woman higher.

6/10

Joan Blondell and Melvyn Douglas are Bill and Sally Reardon in "There's Always a Woman," a 1938 screwball comedy. Douglas is a former detective with the D.A.'s office who has opened his own office. However, there are no clients after a few months, so he returns to the D.A. Sally, his wife, is supposed to close the office, but when a Mrs. Fraser (Mary Astor) enters, Sally passes herself as a detective and gets the case - plus a retainer. It then becomes a competition between husband and wife to see which one will solve the case, which becomes more complicated, involving murder and blackmail.

It's hard not to love Joan Blondell is just about anything, and she's excellent in this. She and Douglas make a good team, though in the sequel, it's Virginia Bruce who steps into her role.

The script is witty, and the acting is excellent from all involved. This is no "Thin Man" - there were a few of these husband-wife detective movies that came out after the success of "The Thin Man" - in fact, one try at a series featuring Joel Sloane, a rare book dealer, and his wife, Garda, starred Melvyn Douglas in 1938. None quite measured up, but often these films were entertaining. "There's Always a Woman" is definitely a good one.

Party mystery, part screwball comedy There's Always A Woman features Melvyn Douglas and Joan Blondell as a man who opened a private detective agency and his ever helpful wife.

Douglas had worked for the DA's office as an investigator and felt he was in a career rut so he opened a private agency. As clients haven't been flocking to his office he's ready to go back to work for DA Thurston Hall, But Blondell says she wants to keep the agency open just in case.

No sooner does Douglas get his job back than in walks a client Mary Astor. She plunks down 3 century notes.which pays a lot of back rent and she wants Frances Drake who has been carrying on with husband Lester Matthews.

She does some surveillance in a madcap sort of way at a nightclub. The next day Matthews is shot to death and Robert Paige who had made some threats at him is arrested.

Douglas gets the investigation at the DA's office and Blondell keeps going on her investigation. She's from the Lucy Ricardo school of criminology and will have an awful lot of 'splaining' to do eventually.

Three years later Mary Astor and Jerome Cowan who plays a gambler in There's Always A Woman would be part of the immortal cast of The Maltese Falcon. And ironically in this film both would have the same function.

Columbia might have made more of these had its stars not been tied to other studios. But Blondell was with Warner Brothers and Douglas with MGM. The two had a good chemistry and Blondell is a hoot.

A good combination of genres is There's Always A Woman.