His Girl Friday

Screwball comedies are the antidote to the blues, and His Girl Friday is the best medicine I know. Rapid-fire dialog, crackling chemistry between the stars. It's smart, funny, cynical and touching all at once, a rip-roaring piece of entertainment. I could watch it again and again.

Reporter Hildegard "Hildy" Johnson (Rosalind Russell) is finished with the newspaper business, and even more done with former husband Walter Burns (Cary Grant), charming rogue and newspaper editor. She's off to marry a nice, safe insurance salesman and live the life of a respectable Albany housewife - or so she thinks. Hildy makes one last visit to the newsroom of the Chicago Morning Post, where it's clear Walter misses his star reporter and his wife, in that order.

He's ready to run any number of elaborate scams to get her back on the job. He's got a juicy story to tempt her back: the pending execution of a mild-mannered nebbish who killed a black policeman more or less by accident, with the outcome of a mayoral race in the balance. Now, he's just got to get Hildy's fiance out of the way.

The movie speeds along at breakneck pace with famously overlapping dialog and a cast of cynical reporters, corrupt politicians and exasperated jailers. Clever plot twists tumble by, each funnier than the next, as Hildy gets the story while Walter keeps her poor fiance and his mother occupied. The outcome is never in doubt -- getting there is all the fun.

Along the way, we see a bygone era when every big town had several fiercely competing newspapers that took sides politically, and muck-raking reporters didn't let the facts stand in the way of a good story. Aside from a few unpleasant references to "pickaninnies," and other dated, offensive lines, it's fun from start to finish.

Grant is a little slice of heaven as Walter, protesting his innocence and trumpeting his role as the defender of the common man, while manipulating everything and everybody around him to get what he wants. He does all kinds of despicable things, and we're rooting for him every step of the way.

Russell is delightful, vulnerable yet strong in a physically demanding role. She's got Walter's number, and she really believes she wants to go to Albany. But her writing is sheer poetry and she still starts up at the sound of a fire siren, a natural-born newshound ready for the chase. As she and Walter snap and spar, play verbal ping pong and try to outwit each other, it's clear the fireworks between them are meant to go on forever.

Ralph Bellamy is perfect, pudding-bland as Hildy's long-suffering fiance, Bruce Baldwin. He thinks Walter's just terrific, and he can't quite figure out why he keeps losing his money, missing his train and eventually getting arrested. (Walter directs his pickpocket henchman to steal Bruce's wallet. "He looks like that fellow, you know, that actor - Ralph Bellamy.")

John Qualen delivers a moving performance as the sad, bewildered little prisoner, Earl Williams. So does Helen Mack, who plays his sweetheart, prostitute Molly Malloy. All the supporting cast members are strong, but vaudeville comic Billy Gilbert delivers the single most hilarious turn as Pettibone, the dogged, dim-witted emissary of the Governor, come to deliver an unwanted pardon for Williams to the warden.

His Girl Friday was actually a remake, the second film based on Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s hugely successful 1928 stage play The Front Page. Originally, Hildy’s character was a man, as in the 1933 version with Adolphe Menjou. The first movie was darker, with Menjou's Walter Burns a distinctly unlikeable cynic.

Director Howard Hawks’ decision to change the star reporter to a woman in His Girl Friday was more than a remake. It was a transformation. The romantic relationship lightened the mood all the way to bubbly, allowing for witty double entendre between Grant and Russell, without losing the pathos of the Earl-and-Molly subplot or the cynical take on the new business.

The American Film Institute may have picked Some Like it Hot as the greatest screwball comedy of all time, but my vote goes to His Girl Friday. The movie has fallen into the public domain, and can be streamed on many online movie sites for free. There's no excuse to miss it.

If you liked His Girl Friday...

You may like other Cary Grant comedies, or films like Charade, To Catch a Thief, and North by Northwest.

Just the Facts:

Year: 1940, Black and White
Director: Howard Hawks
Running Time: 92 minutes
Studio: Columbia