His Girl Friday
Directed by Howard Hawks
Written by Charles Lederer from the play “The Front Page” by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur
1940/USA
Columbia Pictures Corporation
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
#141 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die
[box] Hildy Johnson: Walter, you’re wonderful, in a loathsome sort of way.[/box]
Love this one! I only wish I could finally watch it restored and with subtitles to catch every delicious line.
Hard-charging newspaper editor Walter Burns (Cary Grant) will stop at nothing to keep his star reporter and ex-wife Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell) from marrying insurance salesman Bruce Baldwin (Ralph Bellamy). He has an especially potent lure in the story of Earl Williams (John Qualen), a crazed killer who is about to be executed as the climax to the re-election campaigns of the city’s corrupt law-and-order ticket mayor and sheriff. With a host of outstanding character actors as the many other reporters, wise-guys, and patsies.
His Girl Friday unfortunately fell into the public domain and I have only ever seen it in the sub-par cheapo edition available from Netflix or on TV. I am sure I have missed many zingers. Even so, there are so many I did catch that this is a total delight. The leads were born to deliver this rapid-fire material. Rosalind Russell was about the seventh actress offered the part but it is hard to imagine any one else in this role.
Trailer
Commit to memory.
Will try if it takes the rest of my life!
Good Girl, Friday.
Loved this one too. I found a nicely restored DVD with excellent subtitles so I got every bit of it, but you have to keep ear and eyes sharp, it is very fast. Both Cary Grant as the smart-ass and Ralph Bellamy as the sucker are great, but Rosalind Russell looked as if the role was made for her. Cannot belive she was seventh choice.
My source says “Jean Arthur was the first choice to play Hildy. Among the other actresses who also turned down the role were Carole Lombard, Ginger Rogers, Claudette Colbert and Irene Dunne.” It also mentions Katharine Hepburn was considered. I think they lucked out when they had to use Russell.
I can’t imagine anyone but Russell in the part of Hildy…….she is superb. I loved the original and thought that it couldn’t be improved upon but changing the sex of Hildy in this version was a great twist. I can’t imagine the actors trying to learn the dialogue for this film unless they were improvising. Talk about rapid fire!!!!! This sets the standard.
The actors earned their pay with this one! I read that Russell thought she didn’t have enough good lines so she hired a writer to come up with some for her and sprang them on Hawks and cast!