His Girl Friday

Good journalists are hard to find. Walter Burns knows this more than anyone, he was once married to Hildy Johnson, one of the best newspapermen Chicago had ever known- unfortunately he was not the best of husbands and she divorced him and left the paper to his annoyance- both as an editor and as a husband.

One day she comes waltzing in to say goodbye, she is getting married to the worthy but dull Bruce Baldwin the very next day and starting a new life of being a domestic Goddess in Albany, being a woman after a life in a man's world. Isn't it appealing?

However Walter knows that a man is due to be hanged tomorrow for shooting a policeman- elections are coming up and the mayor wants to appear tough on crime to appeal to the voters. Only one person could write the editorial that might make the judges re-think the verdict and save his life and that is Hildy. In a bid to get her to stay and to re seduce her Walter appeals to Bruce's better nature, convincing her to stay and do it to save the man's life. They could still catch the later train to Albany and be there for the wedding in the morning. But this is a screwball comedy and NOTHING is ever that simple.

Howard Hawks produced a string of romantic comedies in the 40s and this is one of his best, mixing light, frothy and witty dialogue. Cary Grant and Rosalind Russel are beautiful, clever and funny and deliver crisp and accomplished performances with Ralph Bellamy excellent as the foil for their gags, acting the provincial boy to perfection.

However as well as being a delightfully funny romantic comedy (all too often an oxymoron) it is also a very polished satire on human costs. The mayor is willing to sacrifice the life of a man in order to win an election and the journalists are vampirical in their pursuit of a good story, thinking of the scoop and not the people behind it, the media is shown as being as cruel then as it is today. Perhaps Hildy's distaste for the life is well founded after all- my own initial feminist anger at her wanting to abandon a successful career for domesticity was shaken on reflecting on the heartlessness of the life she wishes to leave. Like all great films it has many more levels than it first seems.

But despite these undercurrents it is first and foremost a comedy and an extremely funny one that sparkles all the way through and has done for 66 years.

Review by Louise Oliver
Written for EUFS Programme Spring 2006

Ben Hecht's and Charles MacArthur's hit Broadway play, The Front Page, has been filmed four times to date, and His Girl Friday is by far the best version, thanks to not only the new screenplay by Hecht and Charles Lederner, but to stars Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, director Howard Hawks, and a new idea. The idea was to change one of the male lead parts to a female role, allowing romance and the battle of the sexes to invade the story.

The story itself concerns a newspaper editor whose best reporter has left to get married. Worse, she used to be his wife, and the editor (Grant) wants her back. After quitting, Hildy (Russell) introduces her ex to her new fiance, the nice-but-nerdish Ralph Bellamy. Grant then sets out to do everything in his power to regain Russell as both wife and reporter. Amongst the antics is a sub-plot of a murder trial, which increases the confusion as the paper tries to cover the story. Howard Hawks makes this film one of the funniest he directed, with the classic Hawksian touches that characterised Twentieth Century and Bringing up Baby. Like all Hawks' best films, it's very pacy with no sentimental breaks or pathos, just stylised humour. Hawks ties it up nicely but as usual in his films (Scarface, The Big Sleep, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) leaves you thinking. Whatever did happen to the murderer, Earl Williams?

Review by Martin Hunt
Taken from EUFS Programme 1995-96