I’m always amazed at how many microbudget, public domain B-movies are floating around out there on streaming services like Amazon, and it’s probably a good thing, because the odds are good no one would see them otherwise. One movie that just popped up on my Recs is 1940’s Hold That Woman!, a PRC film that’s surprisingly exciting, but still plays it safe.
The movie opens at the Los Angeles branch of Skip Tracers, Limited where the boss, Bill Lannigan (John Dilson) is praising Miles Hanover (Dave O’Brien) for his stellar record of catching people who are behind on their account payments. When it comes to Miles’ fellow skip tracer, Jimmy Parker (James Dunn), however, Bill is not so glowing. Twenty accounts detected and only three caught. Why can’t Jimmy be more like Miles? Jimmy has thirty days to redeem himself or he’s out.
Jimmy’s got a date with Mary Mulvaney (Frances Gifford), but first he’s got to stop off at a lady’s apartment and reposses her radio. After he talks his way up by pretending to be Lulu’s British friend, Ronnie, Jimmy makes a beeline for the drawing room to grab the radio. The woman, Lulu Driscoll (Rita La Roy) is not so amenable to the idea and calls the police. No one buys the idea of Jimmy being a skip tracer because they all say he doesn’t have the right accent, and they send him off to the police station with a lot of “Pip pip” and “Cheerio.”
Mary, unfortunately, gets put in jail as well, and what neither she nor Jimmy know is that Lulu’s radio contains some jewels that were stolen from Corinne Hill (Anna Lisa), a big movie star. That’s why Lulu is so bent on keeping the radio.
That will all come later, though. The case against them is dismissed because Lulu doesn’t show up. Mary’s parents are highly affronted that their daughter spent the night in jail, although there’s not much they can say when Mary stubbornly trails out after Jimmy. Jimmy’s not terribly put out, though, because he spots a house he thinks will be perfect for he and Mary.
First of all, Jimmy’s got to go to a meeting at the office with the other skip chasers, including Miles, who’s sitting right next to Bill like a prize thoroughbred. Whoever can get the radio back and recover Corinne Hill’s jewelry will get a big payout and lots of perks.
Miles is sure he’s got the reward in the bag. Jimmy’s not too worried, either. He and Mary have time to get married and stop by an estate sale to get some furniture for their new apartment. It’s no biggie. They don’t have to catch the bad guys until three-thirty in the afternoon.
I’m not going to ruin the ending, but among the many fun bits are Miles up a tree, Corrinne and Miles tied up in a trunk, an epic car chase, and a police dispatcher who looks remarkably like H.V. Kaultenborn. Oh, and Jimmy and Mary still have to tell Mary’s parents that they’ve tied the knot. Whew.
Hold That Woman! is another example of how movies can be made about anything, even debt collection and repossession. Their portrayal of the profession seems pretty much correct as well. It’s funny how many people in the movie were trying to avoid Jimmy and his fellow skiptracers. When the crowd in the apartment building, for instance, find out what Jimmy does for a living, about two thirds of them hide their jewelry.
The movie’s logic is a little fuzzy as well. For some reason Mary’s dad is really down on Jimmy being a skiptracer, considering him just above the level of pond scum, yet when Jimmy and his co-workers have to go after the bad guys the police are right behind them waiting to round the baddies up, and Mary’s dad still doesn’t like Jimmy. I’m going to chalk it up to fatherly protectiveness.
Other than that, Hold That Woman! is not terrible for a movie made by one of the poorest studios on Poverty Row, Producers Releasing Corporation. Unlike their other budget movies, Hold That Woman! has extras and a decent story, the acting isn’t bad, and it’s clever. Real-life husband and wife James Dunn and Frances Gifford are a lot of fun in their roles.
Still, the lack of funds is obvious, especially in the car chase scene at the end of the movie. The filmmakers probably couldn’t afford to have a lot of cars bashing and crashing on the street, so the chase ends with everyone pulling over into a vacant lot without a scratch or a dent in sight. I wonder if the lot was chosen beforehand or it was a spontaneous decision.
It might not be a bad movie, but Hold That Woman!‘s problem when it was released seems to be a plain old lack of enthusiasm, at least from the media, but they didn’t hate the film, either. One of its few reviews (read another here), which appeared in the November 23, 1940 edition of the Motion Picture Herald, were favorable, calling Hold That Woman! “an easygoing, unpretentious film that has its amusing moments,” noting that the audience “viewed the film with interest.”
The audience may have enjoyed the movie, but like many no-budget wonders, Hold That Woman! seems to have dropped out of sight almost as soon as it was released. It wasn’t completely down and out, though, as it found new life once TV came in, helping fill out schedules that badly needed programming. Chicago residents, for example, had three chances to see Hold That Woman! in 1954 alone, joining other such films as Tanks A Million and Charlie Chan’s Murder Cruise. It would come back for an encore on January 5, 1955.
Yep, it’s always interesting to see what pops up on Amazon. Hold That Woman! isn’t the first Poverty Row movie I’ve seen on there and it won’t be the last, but it may be one of the best so far.
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I can’t believe we’re already more than halfway through the year, but here we are. Thanks for reading, all, and I hope to see you Thursday for another review…
Hold That Woman! is available on DVD and is free to stream for Prime Customers.
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