Dear Cinephiles,

Burns: “You can’t quit the newspaper business.”
Hildy: “You can’t sell me that, Walter.”
Burns: “Who says I can’t? You’re a newspaper man.”
Hildy: “That’s why I’m quitting. I want to go some place where I can be a woman.”

That dialogue is from the sidesplitting “His Girl Friday” (1940) that after repeated viewings remains still as modern and fresh as ever and has the capacity to get me to laugh out loud – even after I know what’s coming and can recite its lines verbatim. You owe it to yourself to discover this Swiss-watch perfection of a screwball comedy – and even if you’ve seen it – trust me – it will make you giggle all over again.

The film centers on star reporter “Hildy” Johnson (Rosalind Russell), who wants to quit so she can get married and have a quiet life and move to Albany. Her former husband and hardboiled editor Walter Burns (Cary Grant) doesn’t want to lose her in his professional or personal life – so he goes about sabotaging her wedding arrangements and convinces her to cover a big story involving an escaped accused murderer, Earl Williams, and hide him in a rolltop desk while everybody else tries to find him.

The film was an adaptation of the hit Broadway play “The Front Page” by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur which had already been made into a film in 1931. What this version did was make the reporter “Hildy” into a woman. “His Girl Friday” was directed by Howard Hawks – one of the greatest directors and most versatile ever – responsible for classic films in genres ranging from film noir, screwball comedy, science fiction, musical comedy, and Western– including “Scarface” (1932), “Twentieth Century” (1934), “Bringing Up Baby” (1938), “Only Angels Have Wings” (1939), “To Have and Have Not” (1944), “The Big Sleep” (1946), “Red River” (1948), “Monkey Business” (1952), “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” (1953) and “The Thing from Another World” (1951), among many others. Hawks recurrently showed women in his movies with such particular traits that they became to be known as the Hawksian woman archetype. They were not dependent on men and not sexualized. They were very intelligent and had wit. They were goal-oriented and were not afraid to go for it. They had earned the respect of their male colleagues and were seen as “one of the boys.” Their outfits have masculine traits – pants and suits. The two best examples are Lauren Bacall in “To Have and Have Not” – and of course fast-talking Rosalind Russell in “His Girl Friday.” Notice her costumes in the film – the way she hangs out in the press room with her colleagues – and in one moment where she needs to chase a witness – she literally leaps and tackles him in heels.

Another style of Hawks that is on display in “His Girl Friday” is how he subverts a genre. He grabs a serious subject – like the death penalty – and portrays it in a humorous way. The story that Hildy is chasing involves a man wrongly accused – Earl Williams – of shooting an African American policeman. The corrupt Mayor who is running for re-election want Williams executed for it will get him the votes needed to stay in office. Stealthily, this raucous comedy will deal with race, politics, police corruption and the death penalty – themes that remain relevant today. There are two concurrent plots taking place. There’s the romance between Hildy and Burns – and the mystery involving the crime committed.

The dialog in “His Girl Friday” is delicious and comes at you fast and furiously. The characters will overlap their lines – talking over one another. Hawks wanted this comedy to be the fastest on record – so he requested his actors to speed up the delivery. He also encouraged ad-libbing and improvisation – and wanted things to be unexpected and assertive. Grant does two phenomenal and cheeky adlibs. Pointing to Hildy’s fiancée who is played by Ralph Bellamy, he utters “He looks like that fellow in the movies, you know … Ralph Bellamy!” Later when he’s describing the horrible fate of one his enemies – he mentions his name is “Archie Leach”- which is Grant’s real name.

Cary Grant was fantastic in screwball comedies and this is his best – and Rosalind Russell – who was not the first casting choice for Hildy – excels and this is probably her best performance. What is still revolutionary about this comedy is the gender politics. Notice how Hawks frames them on the screen – they’re side by side – they are equals. This movie is hilarious.

Burns: “Sorta wish you hadn’t done that, Hildy.”
Hildy: “Done what?”
Burns: “Divorced me. Makes a fella lose all faith in himself. Gives him a… almost gives him a feeling he wasn’t wanted.”
Hildy: “That’s what divorces are for!”

Love,
Roger

His Girl Friday
Available to stream on Amazon Prime, Vudu, EPIX, The Roku Channel, DIRECTV, Watch TCM, Kanopy, Popcorn Flix, Sling TV, Pluto TV, Tubi,IMDb TV and Hoopla. Available to rent on YouTube, iTunes, Google Play, Microsoft, FandangoNOW, Vudu, Flix Fling, and PANTAFLIX.

Screenplay by Charles Lederer. Based on the play “The Front Page” written by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur
Directed by Howard Hawks
Starring Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Bellamy, Gene Lockhart, Porter Hall, Ernest Truex and Cliff Edwards
92 minutes

The Writing Team Behind The Inspiration for “His Girl Friday”
“MacArthur and Hecht began their long partnership and earned critical acclaim with “The Front Page” (1928), a farce about a star reporter who is drawn into his own story. This play was three times adapted for film, in 1931, 1974, and most notably—starring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell—as “His Girl Friday” (1940). MacArthur and Hecht also achieved success with “Twentieth Century” (produced 1932; filmed 1934 by Howard Hawks), a lively satire of the entertainment industry that takes place on an express train between Chicago and New York City. Their other collaborations include “Jumbo” (1934), “Ladies and Gentlemen” (produced 1939), and “Swan Song” (produced 1946). The pair also wrote many successful screenplays in the 1930s, among them “Crime Without Passion” (1934), “The Scoundrel” (1935), which won an Academy Award for best original story, “Soak the Rich” (1936), “Gunga Din” (1939), and “Wuthering Heights” (1939).” (britannica.com)

Casting “His Girl Friday”
“…Hawks’ first choice for the divorced editor was the leading man from his last three films, Cary Grant. After a few years as a suave leading man, Grant had risen to stardom as a wise-cracking divorcee in “The Awful Truth” (1937). He’d almost quit the film, however, over director Leo McCarey’s habit of throwing out the script and having the actors ad-lib scenes. By the time he went to work for Hawks, another master of improvisation, he was a master at winging it. Hawks got Grant to play against type as the milquetoast harassed by Katharine Hepburn in “Bringing Up Baby” (1938), then cast him as a he-man flyer in “Only Angels Have Wings” (1939). For “His Girl Friday” Grant played a rougher version of his usual sophisticated image, no great stretch for a man who grew up in the slums of London. He even added lines about himself, including a joking reference to “Archie Leach,” his real name, and a reference to a man hiding in a desk as a “Mock Turtle,” the character he had played in the 1933 version of “Alice in Wonderland.”

The female lead in “His Girl Friday” was one of the juiciest roles ever written for a woman and one of the few female characters from Hollywood’s golden age to be treated as an equal to her male lead. Yet Hawks ran into a lot of trouble casting it. His first choice was Carole Lombard, who had become a star in his screwball farce, Twentieth Century (1934). By 1940, however, she was too expensive and the studio, Columbia, couldn’t afford her. The script then went to Katharine Hepburn, Irene Dunne, Claudette Colbert, Jean Arthur, Margaret Sullavan and Ginger Rogers, all of whom turned it down. Rosalind Russell jumped at the role. It fit perfectly with her move into fast-paced comedy that had started with “The Women” (1939). She knew she wasn’t Hawks’ first choice, however, and after a few days on the set felt he was treating her like an also-ran. “You don’t want me, do you?” she asked him. “Well, you’re stuck with me, so you might as well make the most of it.” (tcm.com)

About Director Howard Hawks
“…Born Howard Winchester Hawks on May 30, 1896 in Goshen, IN, he was the youngest son of Frank Winchester Hawks, a successful local businessman, and Helen, the daughter of C.W. Howard, a wealthy paper industrialist from Wisconsin. The Hawks followed C.W. to Wisconsin in 1998, where Frank joined the family business, before they ultimately relocated to the more temperate climes of Pasadena, CA when Howard was 14 years old. His family’s affluence guaranteed him admittance to the exclusive preparatory school, Philips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, and later to Cornell University, where he majored in mechanical engineering. It was on break from Cornell, during the summers of 1916-17, that Hawks gained his first experience with movie making. Working in the props department at Famous Players-Lasky (later Paramount Pictures), the young man’s enthusiasm and bravado helped him quickly rise through the studio ranks. After serving with the Army Air Corps in France during World War I, Hawks indulged his love for adventure as an aviator, and utilized his engineering education by designing several race cars. Eventually, he returned to California and the still-young film industry, where he worked as an independent contractor on various production jobs before being hired as a writer, story editor and producer at Paramount Pictures. It was there that he wrote his first screenplay for the silent film “Tiger Love” (1924).

Having worked on dozens of scripts – usually uncredited – for Paramount, Hawks pushed the studio repeatedly for the chance to direct, but was turned down each time. Finally, an executive at Fox Studios gave him his big break, leading to Hawks’ directorial debut on the silent movie “The Road to Glory” (1926), which he also wrote. He would go on to direct a total of eight silent films, including the marital farce “Fig Leaves” (1926) and the exotic melodrama “Fazil” (1928), but it was with the coming of sound that Hawks really hit his stride. He used dialogue and sound instinctively, with his characters frequently delivering their lines at a rapid-fire pace. Hawks’ first “talkies” included the wartime aerial combat drama “The Dawn Patrol” (1930) – featuring Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. in his film debut – and the cautionary prison tale “The Criminal Code” (1931), featuring a pre-Frankenstein Boris Karloff. Along with legendary screenwriter Ben Hecht, he set the template for the popular gangster movie genre with “Scarface” (1932), which starred Paul Muni as an Al Capone-like thug with unquenchable aspirations. The seminal film not only launched the careers of Muni and supporting player George Raft, but influenced future filmmaker Brian De Palma so much that he would helm an updated remake starring Al Pacino some 50 years later. As a freelance director, Hawks continued to explore old interests and new territory with such diverse projects as the auto racing drama “The Crowd Roars” (1932), and the prototypical screwball comedy that made that genre’s queen, Carole Lombard, a star, “Twentieth Century” (1934).

Soon after, he helmed another screwball comedy, “Bringing Up Baby” (1938), which gave birth to the irreverent, free-spirited “Hawksian” woman in the form of Katherine Hepburn, who hilariously proceeds to turn museum paleontologist Cary Grant’s orderly life upside down. The romantic comedy also marked the first of the director’s five pairings with leading man Grant. Hawks next returned to his two tried-and-true themes with a pair of back-to-back Cary Grant features, the aerial romantic adventure “Only Angels Have Wings” (1939) and the romantic comedy “His Girl Friday” (1940). The latter film perfectly exemplified the director’s fascination with American language via the staccato bursts of dialogue and the breakneck tempo of Grant’s and Rosalind Russell’s witty repartee. Hawks eclipsed his success on “Scarface” with the World War I biopic “Sergeant York” (1941). Starring Gary Cooper as the pacifist-turned-war hero, the film won Cooper an Oscar, garnered Hawks a nomination for Best Director, and went on to become the biggest box office hit of the year. Shortly thereafter came “Air Force” (1943), one of the better “propaganda” films of World War II; it was also an early example of Hawks’ recurrent theme of dissimilar men bonding together and maintaining their professionalism in the face of daunting odds.

Prior to his early departure from the project, Hawks provided uncredited work on Howard Hughes’ sexually provocative Western “The Outlaw” (1943), a film most famous for the amount of breast exposed on screen by its star, the voluptuous Jane Russell. He then teamed for the first time with megastar Humphrey Bogart in the memorable “To Have and Have Not” (1944), an adaptation of the Ernest Hemingway novel of the same name. Notable for several reasons, the film was also the screen debut of Lauren Bacall and her first pairing with her future husband and frequent costar, Bogart. Years later, rumors continued to circulate that Hawks – an unrepentant womanizer, even while married – had been smitten by the 19-year-old Bacall and jealous of her and Bogie’s relationship. Whatever strain the supposed lovers’ triangle may have had on their working relationship, it did not prevent their reuniting for the adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe mystery “The Big Sleep” (1946). In an effort to capitalize on Bacall’s growing fame and sort out the highly convoluted narrative of the book, the film underwent a great deal of reworking during its nearly two year journey to the screen, ultimately resulting in an almost incomprehensible plot, but also an exquisitely entertaining film noir…After completing the Western adventure “The Big Sky” (1952) with Kirk Douglas – Hawk’s first and only teaming with the star – the director proved instrumental in the transformation of Marilyn Monroe from sultry supporting actress to bona fide movie star with the back-to-back features “Monkey Business” (1952) and “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” (1953). The former film, co-starring Grant, was little more than a reworking of “Bringing Up Baby,” while the latter hit musical-romantic comedy, co-starring Jane Russell, demonstrated abilities in Monroe previously unseen by critics or audiences – including her baby-girl singing voice, famously captured in her classic number “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend.” The accomplished filmmaker quite literally directed a cast of thousands in the Egyptian epic “Land of the Pharaohs” (1955), which starred a young Joan Collins as a conniving princess intent on ruling the Nile…

Conceived as a response to the revisionist Western “High Noon” (1952) – itself widely viewed as an indictment of McCarthyism and the “Red Scare” – “Rio Bravo” (1959) also saw Hawks refining his theme of consummate professionalism to an ethic in which the loyalties of the unconventional family reigned supreme…Not only would Hawks personally make not one, but two, loose remakes of “Rio Bravo,” but later filmmakers such as John Carpenter would openly model several of their movies on the revered adventure tale. The director later reteamed with Wayne for the African safari oddity “Hatari!” (1962), followed by the Rock Hudson-Paula Prentiss screwball comedy “Man’s Favorite Sport?” (1964). He gave James Caan his first leading role in the stock car racing drama “Red Line 7000” (1965), then placed him in the earlier Ricky Nelson role opposite John Wayne in “El Dorado” (1966), his first loose remake of “Rio Bravo.” Fittingly, Hawks’ final directorial effort also starred his friend and collaborator Wayne, in the western “Rio Lobo” (1970), yet another iteration of the tried-and-true “Rio Bravo” storyline. Although nominated only once for “Sergeant York,” Hawks was given an honorary Academy Award in 1974 for his lifetime of cinematic contributions. Three years later, the 81-year-old director died in his Palm Springs home on Dec. 26, 1977.” (tcm.com)