The Woman Chaser was published by Newsstand Library as a paperback original in 1960. Richard Hudson is a successful used-car dealer in Los Angeles — aggressive, amoral, and supremely confident. He decides, on a whim, to make a film. Not a Hollywood film — an art film, a work of personal vision, something real. He raises the money, hires a crew, and produces a twenty-minute film about a truck driver who runs over a child. The film is brilliant.
Nobody wants it. The studios won’t distribute it. The censors won’t approve it. The investors want their money back. Hudson, who has sacrificed everything — his business, his marriage, his relationship with his mother (which is disturbingly close) — for this film, cannot accept that the world is indifferent to his masterpiece. His response escalates from frustration to rage to violence, and Willeford charts the escalation with the same clinical precision he brings to all his protagonists’ descents.
The novel is a satire of Hollywood, of the American Dream, and of the masculine ego at its most destructive. Hudson is not a sympathetic character — he is selfish, manipulative, and probably insane — but Willeford makes his obsession comprehensible. The desire to create something authentic in a world of fakery is not contemptible, even when the person who feels it is.
Robinson Devor directed a film adaptation in 1999, starring Patrick Warburton.
Collecting The Woman Chaser
First edition (Newsstand Library, 1960): Paperback original.
Market values:
- First edition paperback, fine: $200–$500
- Later hardcover reprints: $30–$80