Wealthy socialite Melsa Manton (Barbara Stanwyck) is taking her pooches for a walk in the dead of the night when she stumbles upon a dead body and a car fleeing the scene of the crime. She alerts the police but the corpse has disappeared by the time they arrive, and the lieutenant, knowing of her madcap reputation, believes she was playing a practical joke. After newspaper editor Peter Ames (Henry Fonda) takes her to task in print, she sues him for libel and enlists the aid of her society friends in tracking down the body and finding the killer. Eventually, Ames comes around to believing Melsa's story and aids her in her search. It isn't long before the two antagonists find they're attracted to each other -- but they have to catch the murderer before they can settle down and live happily ever after. Fonda and Stanwyck would team up again in You Belong to Me and The Lady Eve.

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Gilt-edged performances from the two stars display something of the chemistry that exploded between them in The Lady Eve. Stanwyck's madcap heiress stumbles across a murder, only to have the body vanish and a dyspeptic cop (Levene) shrug it off as one of her notorious pranks, while journalist Fonda denounces her as an obnoxious example of the idle rich. Instantly on her mettle, Stanwyck rounds up her circle of equally scatty girlfriends and, ignoring a death threat or two, proceeds to solve the mystery with some help from the repentant Fonda. The whodunit tangles tend to overstay their welcome, but Nick Musuraca's dark-toned camerawork leavens the screwball comedy with genuine menace; and Philip G Epstein's dialogue provides a witty undertow of fun poked at the class war (what with Hattie McDaniel playing an anything but downtrodden black maid: 'In my home, the revolution is here,' Stanwyck grumbles). The final clinch even manages a neat subversion of 'correct' attitudes, when Fonda suggests an extended honeymoon since Stanwyck can afford it. 'I wanted to live on your income,' she coos meltingly. 'That's foolish,' he retorts, 'who's going to live on yours?'

Excerpt from TimeOut located HERE