Woman on the Run

An older, wiser Ann Sheridan co-stars with the city of San Francisco in Norman Foster’s Woman on the Run, a fun, lively noir that follows an estranged wife’s search for her runaway husband through the sites of the Golden City, including Union Square, the Embarcadero, and the Japanese Gardens. (Why the filmmakers altered the more appropriate title of Sylvia Tate’s short story, “Man on the Run,” is unclear.) When Frank Johnson (Ross Elliott) witnesses a mob killing while out walking his dog one night, he knows the murderer saw him, so he immediately flees his neighborhood out of fear that he’s the next target for elimination. Despite her outward indifference, his cynical, unsatisfied wife Eleanor (Sheridan) sets out to find him by visiting some of their favorite places, all while attempting to evade the police, led by Inspector Martin Ferris (Robert Keith), who relentlessly stay on her tail. When pushy newspaper reporter Daniel Legget (Dennis O’Keefe) offers to help her in exchange for an exclusive, she allows it, but Legget’s motives might go far beyond journalism. The film famously culminates in a spectacular roller coaster sequence in which a trapped, helpless Eleanor shouts from the heights of the roaring ride to warn of the murderer’s approach, all of her stolid self-control finally lost in the chaotic whirl of amusement, just down the midway a mechanical woman howling an endless, maniacal laugh.