His Girl Friday ***** (1940, Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Bellamy) – Classic Movie Review 1256

Director Howard Hawks’s 1940 classic slice of screwball comedy greatness reworks the vintage 1928 stage play The Front Page (first filmed as The Front Page in 1931) with a sex swap angle resulting from Columbia studio boss and executive producer Harry Cohn agreeing to a remake only if a new angle could be found.

Grant plays always smooth, cynical and grouchy, usually truly irascible, devious and unpleasant newspaper editor Walter Burns, whose ace reporter (unlike in the play) is now female, Hildy Johnson, and played by Rosalind Russell. [Despite the gender swap, they kept the character’s name from the original.]

She is his ex-wife who announces her intention to quit working for the newspaper to settle down as a home body by marrying stuffy, staid, straight-laced insurance agent Bruce Baldwin. Bruce is played by Ralph Bellamy, who gives a loyal, stalwart, supportive performance in yet another drippy part.

Just back from a Reno divorce from Walter, who actually admits he was a bad husband, Hildy has also come to tell him she is taking the afternoon train to Albany, where next day she will marry Bruce and live with his mother for at least for the first year.

Grant’s Walter Burns schemes to stop the wedding by getting Hildy Johnson to report on one last murder case of a crazy radical Earl Williams (John Qualen), whom Walter says he believes, despite appearances and the view of the police, is really innocent. 

Williams is on Death Row, convicted of killing a cop and Walter convinces her to write a final story on his case. The newspaper has been championing Williams, supporting his claim that the shooting was an accident and that he’s not crazy. Now that Walter’s got Hildy involved again, can he hold the front page on both the story and the marriage?

It’s hysterical material, taken by both stars and director at express-train speed, with a brilliant screenplay by Charles Lederer that’s packed and overflowing with witty lines and memorable moments. The ideally cast Grant and Russell are at their cleverest and most hilarious, sharing perfect screen chemistry – they’re a dazzling team. Grant makes his character charming, but there is no doubt that he is a louse, giving the movie a nice zing and edge.

After the two stars, who should get the most praise – screen-writer Lederer, original playwrights Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, director Hawks, or the wonderful character actors?  They include Gene Lockhart (outstanding as Sheriff Peter B Hartwell), Helen Mack, Porter Hall, Ernest Truex, Cliff Edwards, Clarence Kolb, Roscoe Karns, John Qualen, Billy Gilbert, Frank Jenks, Abner Biberman, Frank Orth and Alma Kruger.

Anyway, whatever, it is one of those rarest of movies – absolutely perfect and totally irresistible – and you would not want to change a thing. Grant has all the best lines in the screenplay, though that prompted Russell to hire a writer to improve her own part, and both stars ended up ad-libbing inspiredly.

Because of a failure to renew the copyright registration, the film entered the public domain in 1968.

Director Billy Wilder re-filmed The Front Page in 1974 (following its hit revival on the London stage at the National Theatre), and then Switching Channels (1988) had another try with the gender swap idea, with Burt Reynolds in the Walter Burns role, Kathleen Turner in the Hildy Johnson role and Christopher Reeve as Bruce.

And what comes round goes round. His Girl Friday was adapted to stage by playwright John Guare and presented at the National Theatre London from May to November 2003, with Alex Jennings as Burns and Zoë Wanamaker as Hildy. Guare’s adaptation was produced at The La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, California, in 2013.

A Broadway revival of 1928 stage play The Front Page opened at New York’s Broadhurst Theatre on 20 September 2016, with Nathan Lane, John Slattery and John Goodman.

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© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1256

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The His Girl Friday original theatrical poster