Hollywood Collection: His Girl Friday
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Hollywood Collection: His Girl Friday Overviews
The Front Page, Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's classic 1928 newspaper play, has had three official film versions and contributed structural DNA to half the movies ever made about professional camaraderie and fierce love-hate friendships. Lewis Milestone's 1931 movie is well respected (Billy Wilder's 1974 version isn't), but this is one case where the remake towers brilliantined head and blocked shoulders above the original.
Howard Hawks had the inspired notion of making Hildy Johnson--the ace newsman whom demonic editor Walter Burns is trying to keep from quitting and getting married--a she instead of a he. What's more, she's not only Walter's star reporter but also his ex-wife. When Hildy (Rosalind Russell) comes to tell Walter (Cary Grant) she's leaving the newspaper business, he bamboozles her into carrying out one last assignment--a death-row interview with a little nebbish (John Qualen) convicted of killing a policeman. It sounds like a snap, but before you can say screwball comedy, the press room of the Criminal Courts Building has become ground zero for all the lunacy a jailbreak, a shooting, an impromptu suicide, a corrupt city administration, and the most Machiavellian "hero" in the American cinema can supply.
His Girl Friday is one of the, oh, five greatest dialogue comedies ever made; Hawks had his cast play it at breakneck speed, and audiences hyperventilate trying to finish with one laugh so they can do justice to the four that have accumulated in the meantime. Russell, not Hawks's first choice to play Hildy, is triumphant in the part, holding her own as "one of the guys" and creating an enduring feminist icon. Grant is a force of nature, giving a performance of such concentrated frenzy and diamond brilliance that you owe it to yourself to devote at least one viewing of the movie to watching him alone. But then you have to go back (lucky you) and watch it again for the sake of the press-room gang--Roscoe Karns, Porter Hall, Cliff Edwards, Regis Toomey, Frank Jenks, and others--the kind of ensemble work that gets character actors onto Parnassus. --Richard T. Jameson
Hollywood Collection: His Girl Friday RelateItems
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Hollywood Collection: His Girl FridayCustomerRewiew
Hildegard "Hildy" Johnson (played by Rosalind Russell) is a hard-boiled reported for The Morning Post, but she is ready to hang it all up and marry Bruce Baldwin (Ralph Bellamy), an insurance agent who is about as stable as a brick wall and almost as exciting. But, Hildy's editor, Walter Burns (Cary Grant) does not want to see her go, and he is not above using trickery to keep her. Burns arranges to have Baldwin arrested over and over again, but if there is one thing that will keep Hildy on the job it is the lure of the big scoop. And when a man on death-row escapes and bumps into Hildy the big scoop is hers for the taking.
Even though this movie was released in 1940, it still has an interesting story, and the badinage between Grant and Russell makes the entire movie come alive. This is one of my favorite old-time movies, and it is easy to see how it made it onto the American Film Institute's list of top 100 comedy movies, 100 Years... 100 Laughs. If you like great badinage, then this movie is for you. I give it my highest recommendations!
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