Woman on the Run (DVD)

Frank Johnson, walking his dog alone on a dark and deserted San Francisco street, witnesses a gangland murder. The police ask him to testify to the Grand Jury, but instead he goes into hiding. Trailing him is Inspector Ferris and Johnson's wife, Eleanor (Ann Sheridan), who thinks her husband is running away from their failing marriage. Newspaperman Danny Leggett (Dennis O'Keefe) joins in the hunt, promising to pay Eleanor $1,000 if she'll give him Frank's story when they find him.

Eleanor and the reporter start gathering clues to Frank's whereabouts. An unexplained suicide and unidentified corpse keep them on the run, dodging the police, private eyes and the mysterious killer - all of them trying to get to Frank first. Along the way Eleanor finds out things about her husband's life that she never knew. By the time she realizes where he's hiding and who's really behind the gangster hit, it might be too late.

Ann Sheridan, whose film career started in the early 1930s, got her big break in 1937, appearing in The Great O'Malley with Humphrey Bogart. In 1938, she appeared with James Cagney in Angels with Dirty Faces followed by a succession of film noir mysteries and dramas including, They Made Me a Criminal, with John Garfield and numerous others.

• mystery