WOMAN ON THE RUN. Universal Pictures, 1950. Ann Sheridan, Dennis O’Keefe, Robert Keith, John Qualen, Frank Jenks, Ross Elliott, Joan Fulton, J. Farrell MacDonald, Steven Geray, Victor Sen Yung. Screenplay: Alan Campbell and Norman Foster, based on the short story “Man on the Run” by Sylvia Tate (American Magazine, April 1948). Director: Norman Foster.

   This is the best movie I’ve seen so far this year. And I have a feeling that when the end of December comes around, there’s a good chance I’ll still be able to say that. I’m sure it will be in the Top Ten. Just wait and see.

   While Ann Sheridan is the woman on the run that the title says this movie is about, it is really her husband, Tom Johnson (Ross Elliott), who’s on the run, and it is her job to find him, if only the police wouldn’t keep getting in the way. It seems that he was the sole witness to a gangland killing, and once he realizes that his life is in danger, off he goes, no matter how much protection the police say they will give him.

   It is a puzzle at first when Mrs. Johnson does not seem at all heart-broken over her husband’s disappearance. She is cold, bitter and cynical, all in one. It turns out that their marriage was not a happy one, but egged on by an eager newspaper reporter (Dennis O’Keefe), who promises her a sizable cash reward for the story, she avoids the police and goes on her husband’s trail.

   It should come as no surprise that she learns about her husband surprises her, and she soon begins to follow the path he has left for her in earnest. This was a good part for Ann Sheridan, and she makes the most of it, even though (once again) the movie is in black-and-white, and she is almost always wearing a trenchcoat (feminine style).

   I rather wish that the killer who’s on the husband’s trail wasn’t revealed so soon, just past halfway through, but this is still a tense, near edge-of-the-seat kind of story, filmed on location in downtown San Francisco, Fisherman’s Wharf, and the Santa Monica Pier. (The scenes on and around the roller coaster are wonderful.) And Ann Sheridan’s transformation from a hard-boiled not-much-of-a wife to an woman who sees at last who her husband really is, is well worth the price of admission.