Created by Wilson Collison
In the screwball thriller There’s Always a Woman (1938, Columbia), BILL REARDON (Melvyn Douglas) quits his comfy job an investigator with the District Attorney’s office to open up his own detective agency at the urging of his pushy but ditzy wife SALLY REARDON (Joan Blondell).
But the agency never quite turns a profit, and William decides to go back to work for the DA.
However, as Sally is closing up the office, in struts Mrs. Fraser (Mary Astor), some high society dame who thinks her husband is cheating on her with his ex-wife, who’s also remarried. Sally figures it’s easy money, so she poses as “Operative 7” and accepts the case, figuring then she can then persuade her husband to keep the agency going.
But when the client’s husband is murdered (you knew this was coming, right?), Sally decides to investigate, unaware her husband has just been assigned to the same case by the D.A. Complications and hilarity purportedly ensue in this, the first of a proposed series featuring the competing married sleuths (any similarities to MGM’s super successful The Thin Man franchise were probably coincidental, right?).
Truth to tell, though, while the premise had potential, there’s an air of frantic desperation in the comedy, as though everybody was trying too hard. Douglas (“the poor man’s William Powell,” according to the Girl Detective) and Blondell overplay their hands. Where Nick and Nora were all subtlety, sophistication and style, Sally and Bill were more more akin to a Punch and Judy show. I found Sally as the ditsy blonde more irritating than amusing
The first film did well enough, however, that a sequel was soon released. Blondell, however, having recently given birth, was unable to appear in the sequel, There’s That Woman Again (1939), so Virginia Bruce took on the role of Sally.
Not that it fared much better. At the time, critic Frank S. Nugent of The New York Times had faint praise for it, proclaiming that “None of There’s That Woman Again stands analysis,” and suggested “It is a case, in brief, of flimsy whimsy; but we recommend clemency in your approach to it. At least, it’s a harmless way of killing time.”
So harmless, in fact, that there were no further sequels. Which, Nugent snarks, spared us from “There’s Always a Woman Again, That Woman Takes a Trip and That Woman Is Here Again.”
TRIVIA
- Look for Rita Hayworth in a very brief cameo in There’s Always a Woman as a secretary.
SHORT STORIES
- “There’s Always a Woman” (1937, American Magazine; by Wilson Collison)
FILMS
- THERE’S ALWAYS A WOMAN | Buy the DVD | Watch it now!
(1938, Columbia)
81 minutes
Black & white
Based on a story by Wilson Collison
Screenplay by Gladys Lehman
Uncredited: Phillip Rapp, Morrie Ryskind, Joel Sayre
Directed by Alexander Hall
Starring Joan Blondell as SALLY REARDON
and Melvyn Douglas as BILL REARDON
Also starring Mary Astor, Frances Drake, Jerome Cowan, Robert Paige - THERE’S THAT WOMAN AGAIN
(1939, Columbia)
72 minutes
Black & white
Based on a play by Gladys Lehman and Wilson Collison
Screenplay by Ken Englund, Philip G. Epstein, James Edward Grant
Directed by Alexander Hall
Starring Virginia Bruce as SALLY REARDON
and Melvyn Douglas as BILL REARDON
Also starring Margaret Lindsay, Stanley Ridges, Gordon Oliver, Tom Dugan, Don Beddoe
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.
