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Plot:
- by Zoë
Shaw
Hildy Johnson, who
has recently divorced Walter Burns, announces she is leaving his newspaper
to remarry, and settle down to a peaceful life. She agrees to cover one more
story before leaving, but this story proves that she is made to be a
reporter.
Review:
- by Jerelyn
Stanley
His Girl Friday is another of the screwball comedies so
popular in the 1930's and one of the better ones. It was adapted for the movies from the
play "The Front Page" by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur.
Directed by Howard Hawks, this is a fast-paced story
teaming Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell. He is a newspaper editor trying to prevent his
ace reporter ex-wife from remarrying and leading a "normal" life. He uses every
trick possible to do that.
The big story in the film is an upcoming execution of a
mild-mannered little man whom many believe is innocent of the murder of which he was
convicted, and the political corruption of the officials involved. Every reporter is
trying to get a scoop on the action surrounding this big story.
This is to be Russell's last story before marriage and
retirement, and Grants pulls out all the stops trying to mess things up for her, even to
giving her counterfeit money. There is a jailbreak, shooting, and a hilarious scene where
Russell chases a man down and tackles him in her high heels!
Of course Grant and Russell are reunited at the last, and
we hope that it will be happily ever after.
VARIETY
Film Review - January 10, 1940
- by "Herb"
- submitted by Barry Martin
No doubt aiming to dodge the stigma of have 'His Girl Friday'
termed a remake, Columbia blithely skips a pertinent point in the
credits by merely stating 'From a play by Ben Hecht and Charles
MacArthur.' It's inescapable, however, that this is the
former legit and pic smash 'The Front Page.' The trappings
are different - even to the extent of making reporter Hildy
Johnson a femme - but it is still 'Front Page' and Columbia need
not regret it. Charles Leder has done an excellent
screenwriting job on it and producer director Howard Hawks has
made a film that can stand alone almost anywhere and grab healthy
grosses.
With more of the feminine-romance
angle injected than was in the original, this new edition becomes
more the modern-style sophisticated comedy than the hard, biting
picture of newspapermen that Hecht and MacArthur painted in their
stage play. It's remake in the revised form was a happy
idea, especially since it still moves punchily, retains plenty of
its laughs and almost all of its drama.
A slight shaving of the 92-minute
running time (original picture was 100 minutes), to eliminate just
a touch of dragginess in one or two spots, would be of further
help.
Casting is excellent, with Cary
Grant and Rosalind Russell in the top roles. Grant is the
sophisticated, hard-boiled, smart-alec managing editor who was
portrayed by Adolphe Menjou in the earlier picture version
(produced in 1931 by Howard Hughes and released by United Artists)
and by Osgood Perkins in the play (produced in 1928 by Jed Harris
and directed by George S. Kaufman).
Characters in this version carry
the same names as in the original - even to the part handled on
the stage by Lee Tracy, on the screen by Pat O'Brien and now by
Miss Russell. It's still Hildy (this time for Hildegegarde)
Johnson. A newly-injected part, required by the switch in
sex of Hildy, is taken by Ralph Bellamy. Role of the prostie-friend
of the murderer, handled on the boards by Dorothy Stickney and in
the previous picture by Mae Clarke, is given to Helen Mack.
All compare favorably with the originals, particularly the
sparkling Miss Russell. Ernest Truex, as the sissy-reporter,
doesn't quite get the laughs earned by Edward Everett Horton, but
that's due more to the manner in which the character was gagged up
then.
Principal action of the story still
takes place in a courthouse pressroom (original was modeled after
that in Chicago Criminal Courts Building - this one is near New
York). All of the trappings are there, including the crew of
news-hawks who continue their penny-ante poker through everything
and the practice of the sheriff's crew on the gallows for an execution
in the morning. With the wider vista given the story, there
is, in addition, the newspaper office. Much to the credit of
Hawks, this city room bears some semblance to the McCoy, although
there are still too many rewritemen taking too many yarns from too
many legmen, as if every story came in with but 10 seconds to
presstime.
Star-reporter Miss Russell tells
managing editor Grant, from whom she has just been divorced, that
she is quitting his employ to marry another man. Grant
neither wants to see her resign nor marry again, retaining hope of
a rehitching. To prevent her escaping, he prevails upon her
to cover one more story , that of a deluded radical charged with
murder and whom the paper thinks is innocent. Escape of the
convicted man, his virtual falling into Miss Russell's lap as she
sits alone in the pressroom, and attempts by Grant and Miss
Russell to bottle up the story, are w.k., but still
exciting.
Bellamy is okay as a meek soul from
Albany whom Miss Russell is set to marry so she can get out of the
screwey newspaper business. It is to him that all of the
misfortunes fall that the managing editor in the original edition
pulled on Hildy. Amusing is Grant's attempt to describe him,
finally hittin on it: 'Oh, he looks like that movie guy, Ralph
Bellamy.'
In favor of romance the finish
naturally lacks the epithet that won notoriety for the play and
the gag laugh-line of the first picture, but some of the
earthiness of the predecessors is still there and may be expected
to get some minor scissoring from scrupulous censors. For
instance, Miss Russell's genteel nose-thumbing.
NEW YORK TIMES
Film Review - January 12, 1940
- by Frank S. Nugent
- submitted by Barry Martin
They've replated "The
Front Page" again, have slapped "His Girl Friday"
on the masthead and are running it off at the Music Hall as a
special woman's edition of the frenzied newspaper comedy Hecht and
MacArthur first published back in 1931. Hildy Johnson is a girl
reporter. She has just been divorced from Managing Editor Walter
Burns and is threatening to take the night train to Albany, to
matrimony and to Bellamy (Ralph). The celebrated curtain line
about the so-and-so's stealing the watch has gone by the board -
the State Censor Board - but they have another just as cute if you
can hear it.
That goes for most of the picture:
the lines are all cute if you can hear them, but you can't hear
many because every one is making too much noise - the audience of
the players themselves. Hysteria is one of the communicable
diseases and "His Girl Friday" is a more pernicious
carrier than Typhoid Mary. It takes you by the scruff of the neck
in the first reel and it shakes you madly, bellowing hoarsely the
while, for the remaining six or seven. Before it's over you don't
know whether you have been laughing or having your ears boxed. The
veriest bit of the strenuous side, if you follow us.
Charles Lederer, who wrote the
adaptation, has transposed it so brilliantly it is hard to believe
that Hecht and MacArthur were not thinking of Rosalind Russell, or
someone equally high-heeled, when they wrote about the Hildy
Johnson who once had a printer's ink transfusion from a
Machiavellian managing editor and never again could qualify as a
normal human being. It was a wild caricature, of course, and, if
there ever were newspaper people like that, they went into limbo
when Hecht and MacArthur, Gene Fowler, Joel Sayre and Nunnally
Johnson died (journalistically) and went to Hollywood. Still,
caricatures are fun if you don't have to put up with them too long
and if they don't insist on being taken too seriously.
Under Howard Hawk's direction, the
cast has acknowledged the clamoring script with performances that
are hard, brittle and strained to the breaking point, if not
somewhat beyond, as though they were waiting for the cameral to
look the other way so they could collapse with honor. Cary Grant's
Walter Burns is splendid, except when he is being consciously
cute. Mr. Bellamy's woe-begone- insurance man, Gene Lockhart's
Sheriff Hartwell, Ernest Truex's sob-brother, Helen Mack's Mollie
Malloy, John Qualen's Earl Williams, and - most especially - Billy
Gilbert's governor's messenger, Joe Pettibone, are faces that
stand out in the swirling hubbub.
Except to add that we've seen
"The Front Page" under its own name and others so often
before we've grown a little tired of it, we don't mind conceding
"His Girl Friday" is a bold-faced reprint of what was
once - and still remains - the maddest newspaper comedy of our
times.
CHRISTIAN
SCIENCE MONITOR Film Review - March 8, 1940
- submitted by Renee Klish
Pungent and garrulous, "His
Girl Friday" is an implied argument that suggestion and
implication are as effective as outright statement. It went
without saying that Columbia could never have introduced verbatim
the raffish characters of "The Front Page," which Ben
Hecht and Charles MacArthur wrote in 1928. But even with its
profanity and more outspoken jests removed, the new version,
called "His Girl Friday," is hardly less Hecht-ic and
hard-boiled.
In this second remake of probably
the most celebrated stage piece dealing with the Fourth Estate,
Scenarist Charles Lederer has turned Hildy (now short for
Hildegarde) Johnson into a newspaperwoman who has divorced her
managing editor husband and is about to marry an insurance
salesman (Ralph Bellamy).
Walter Burns, the
ex-husband-managing editor, is a resourceful blackguard who, with
the aid of a friendly gangster, manages to have Hildy's fiancée
arrested and interned every time the prospective bride and groom
seem to be heading for the altar, in Albany. Burns dupes
Hildy into interviewing a condemned man, remaining to cover the
latter's escape, and finally, in returning to himself and to
newspaper work.
"His Girl Friday" is
racy, cruelly naturalistic, aggressively indifferent to decency
and humaneness. It is at the same time more authentic than
most newspaper films and not authentic at all. According to
this film, metropolitan press rooms are entirely populated by
individuals so brutal, insolent, and hard-bitten that their
presence becomes depressing long before they have hurled their
final insult into a telephone. For all that, it is a film of
superior craftsmanship. Frank Hawks' direction and the
acting roar like a high-speed press at edition time. The
dramatic episodes flash like photographers' bulbs. The
story, which has to fight for recognition through the atmosphere,
is sufficiently compelling to hold attention. There are
novel twists to the dialogue such as when Burns (Cary Grant),
identifies Baldwin (Mr. Bellamy) by saying, "He looks like
that movie actor, Ralph Bellamy." Mr. Grant is almost
personally engaging enough to offset the thoroughly despicable
character he plays, and Miss Russell charges through the role of
Hildy as if to the deadline born.
THE
WASHINGTON POST Film Review - February 10, 1940
- by Mary Harris
- submitted by Renee Klish
Dizzy, Diverting
'Girl Friday' Opens at Earle
"You're marvelous - in a
loathsome way!" says Rosalind Russell to Cary Grant.
That's something of an overstatement because the tall, dark and
handy Cary isn't loathsome. But in manners, morals and
monkey business he surely is setting the Earle audience up to a
bunch of semihorrified laughs in "His Girl Friday,"
celluloid resurrection of "The Front Page," one of the
hottest opuses ever dashed off by Messrs. MacArthur and Hecht.
Hildy Johnson was a newspaperman in
the original, but Hollywood has chosen to transform Hildy into
Rosalind Russell. It's a neat idea, at that, because it
gives a new angle to the show for those who've seen "Front
Page" a time or so. Also, La Russell puts plenty of
sizzle into the role, is much better than she was in "The
Women."
For the rest, "His Girl Friday
is pure "Front Page," with the exception of the original
boiling profanity. There's the pathetic murderer waiting for
the necktie party in the morning, there's the stuffed shirt
sheriff, mayor and psychologist, there's the nutty prison break,
there are wise cracks with bite and sting, there's the
hell-raising, let-'er-rip spirit of a newspaper day that is done -
as the picture's announcement frankly says.
The cast of "His Girl
Friday" is something tremendous, with star caliber people
scattered all through.
It all adds up to making "His
Girl Friday" one of the dizziest but most diverting pictures
of the season. With its cast and the impact of that
"Front Page" theme, it couldn't be otherwise.
Review
Click here to read
Susanna's review of "His
Girl Friday"
Review
Click here to read Jenny's Crackpot
Reviews at the Cary Grant Shrine
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