Walter attempts to convince Bruce that Hildy is the only one who can write a story to save wrongly convicted Earl Williams. For instance, Walter has Bruce arrested twice, gives him counterfeit money, and plans to rig the election with biased reporting. The plot centers on a newspaper editor named Walter Burns who is about to lose his ace reporter and ex-wife Hildy Johnson, newly engaged to another man. [22] The film is noted for its rapid-fire repartee, using overlapping dialogue to make conversations sound more realistic, with one character speaking before another finishes. "[31] Harrison's Reports wrote, "Even though the story and its development will be familiar to those who saw the first version of The Front Page, they will be entertained just the same, for the action is so exciting that it holds one in tense suspense throughout. Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. They do not kiss, embrace, or even gaze at each other. As he explains this concept, two stills from His Girl Friday are shown with Cary Grant in one photo and Rosalind Russell in the other. [49] Prior to His Girl Friday the play The Front Page had been adapted for the screen once before, in the 1931 film, also called The Front Page, produced by Howard Hughes, with Adolphe Menjou and Pat O'Brien in the starring roles. Hildy takes the gun from him. According to Bellamy, the remark was ad-libbed by Grant. This creates a "closure effect" or an appearance of closure. A chemist finds his personal and professional life turned upside down when one of his chimpanzees finds the fountain of youth. The screenplay was adapted from the 1928 play The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur. It has a gallows. For example, they do not discuss what happened to Molly Malloy after the conflict is resolved. The fates of the main characters and even some of the minor characters such as Earl Williams are revealed, although there are minor flaws in the resolution. [35], On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 98% based on 60 reviews, with an average rating of 9.07/10. Walter and Hildy find out in time to save Williams from the gallows and they use the information to blackmail the mayor and sheriff into dropping Walter's arrest for kidnapping Mrs. Baldwin. Rosalind Russell was also difficult to film because her lack of a sharp jawline required makeup artists to paint and blend a dark line under her jawline while shining a light on her face to simulate a more youthful appearance. A married couple file an amicable divorce, but find it harder to let go of each other than they initially thought. "[20] Her ghostwriter gave her some of the lines for the restaurant scene, which is unique to His Girl Friday. His Girl Friday is certainly very funny it is also slickly directed, and the chief parts are acted with diamond-cut-diamond precision by Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant. “His Girl Friday” is still popular on the revival circuit. Williams comes to the press room holding a gun to Hildy and accidentally shoots a pigeon in fear. [14], During writing, Hawks was in Palm Springs directing Only Angels Have Wings, yet stayed in close contact with Lederer and Hecht. The play was an immediate success and considered an instant classic. “His Girl Friday” may talk about overnight trains to Albany, but Walter’s speech locates the action as specifically not New York. In the meantime, Hildy bribes the jail warden to let her interview Earl Williams in jail. Although overlapping dialog is specified and cued in the 1928 play script by Hecht and MacArthur,[23] Hawks told Peter Bogdanovich: I had noticed that when people talk, they talk over one another, especially people who talk fast or who are arguing or describing something. I can understand why His Girl Friday is usually labelled, first and foremost, a screwball romantic comedy. Parents need to know that while there's no sex or bad language in His Girl Friday, you do see a character jump out the window to her death and many characters pull guns on one another.There's also a considerable amount of underhanded behavior. [54][55], His Girl Friday and the original Hecht and MacArthur play were later adapted into another stage play, His Girl Friday, by playwright John Guare. Hildy has also come to tell Walter that she is taking the afternoon train to Albany, where she will be getting married tomorrow to staid straight-laced insurance agent, Bruce Baldwin, with whose mother they will live, at least for the first year. Walter and Hildy send money to bail Bruce out of jail. Directed by Howard Hawks. There's certainly plenty going on in its last 20 minutes to support that labelling especially. Bruce comes into the press room having wired Albany for his bail asking about the whereabouts of his mother, as Hildy is frantically typing out her story. Walter Burns (Cary Grant) is a newspaper editor who learns his ex-wife is about to marry a bland insurance man and settle down to a quiet life. Williams's friend Mollie comes looking for him, assuring him that she knows he is innocent. In His Girl Friday, Walter Burns manipulates, acts selfishly, frames his ex-wife's fiancé, and orchestrates the kidnapping of an elderly woman. Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday. [25], Hawks encouraged aggressiveness and unexpectedness in the acting, a few times breaking the fourth wall in the film. More than half of the original dialogue was rewritten. So we wrote the dialogue in a way that made the beginnings and ends of sentences unnecessary; they were there for overlapping. [47] In 1993, the Library of Congress selected His Girl Friday for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. (1940). Walter suspects that the convicted man, Earl Williams (John Qualen), was temporarily insane and should be reprieved, or, at any rate, he thinks that angle would make a great story. [9] Hawks instead recruited Charles Lederer who had worked on the adaptation for The Front Page to work on the screenplay. Cary Grant played a self-centred newsman The story concerns an editor (Walter Burns) trying to keep his best reporter (Hildy Johnson) from quitting and getting married so he can cover a breaking story. [in her story]And so, into this little tortured mind came the idea that that gun had been produced for use. [40], A commonality in many Howard Hawks films is the revelation of the amorality of the main character and a failure of that character to change or develop. "[34] Louis Marcorelles called His Girl Friday, "le film américain par excellence". His Girl Friday is a 1940 American screwball comedy drama romance film directed by Howard Hawks, starring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell and featuring Ralph Bellamy and Gene Lockhart. "[36], The title His Girl Friday is an ironic title, because a girl "Friday" represents a servant of a master, but Hildy is not a servant in the film, but rather the equal to Walter. At this time, the building is surrounded by other reporters and cops looking for Williams. At one point, Grant broke character because of something unscripted that Russell did and looked directly at the camera saying, "Is she going to do that?". [26] Frank S. Nugent of The New York Times wrote, "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. [46], His Girl Friday (often along with Bringing Up Baby and Twentieth Century) is cited as an archetype of the screwball comedy genre. [59], Director Quentin Tarantino has named His Girl Friday as one of his favorite movies. [52][53] The Front Page was remade in a 1974 Billy Wilder movie starring Walter Matthau as Walter Burns, Jack Lemmon as Hildy Johnson, and Susan Sarandon as his fiancée. [19], Release of the film was rushed by Cohn and a sneak preview of the film was held in December, with a press screening on January 3, 1940. Written by And if you listen closely, you'll hear a couple of "in" jokes, one concerning Cary Grant's real name (Archie Leach), and another poking fun at Ralph Bellamy's patented "poor sap" screen image. Was this review helpful to you? When reporters knock at the door, she hides Williams in a roll-top desk. His Girl Friday (1940) Approved | 1h 32min | Comedy, Drama, Romance | 18 January 1940 (USA) A newspaper editor uses every trick in the book to keep his ace reporter ex-wife from remarrying. His Girl Friday is a 1940 screwball comedy starring Cary Grant as a wily newspaper editor named Walter Burns and a very brisk Rosalind Russell as his ex-wife, ace reporter named Hildy Johnson. View production, box office, & company info. Jerry Bruckheimer's most hyperbolic action movie ain't got nothing' on this one.Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell were a brilliant screen pair (indeed, it seems that no one was bad casting when paired with Cary Grant) as rival reporters in a furiously paced news office. Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Williams explains that he shot the police officer by accident. His Girl Friday plays out against an especially grim plot mechanism: the question of whether a man will be hanged the next morning for shooting a police officer. But on this, my third viewing, I still remain resolutely unconvinced that this … His Girl Friday is one of the, oh, five greatest dialogue comedies ever made; Hawks had his cast play it at breakneck speed, and audiences hyperventilate trying to finish with one laugh so they can do justice to the four that have accumulated in the meantime. The two plots do not resolve at the same time, but they are interdependent because although Williams is released before Walter and Hildy get back together, he is the reason for their reconciliation. The ending of the film is rather circular and there is no development of characters, specifically Walter Burns, and the film ends similarly to the way in which it starts. Critics were particularly impressed by the gender change of the reporter. Shop AllPosters.com to find great deals on His Girl Friday (1940) Posters for sale! Get a sneak peek of the new version of this page. Bruce calls, and she tells him to wait because she has Earl Williams in the press room. "[33] John Mosher of The New Yorker wrote that after years of "feeble, wispy, sad imitations" of The Front Page, he found this authentic adaptation of the original to be "as fresh and undated and bright a film as you could want. Even among the relationships between Grant and Russell and Bellamy and Russell, the relationships are positioned within a larger frame of the male-dominated newsroom. Having been away for four months, Hildy Johnson walks into the offices of the New York City based The Morning Post, where she is a star reporter, to tell her boss, editor Walter Burns, that she is quitting. His plan ... Berlinale reveals Generation and Retrospective sections for two-part 2021 edition, Cary Grant’s Career Started Off With Poor Reviews Before His Hollywood Triumphs, City Of Hope Announces Celebrity Sale 4 Hope, FAMOUS DIRECTORS I NEED TO WATCH MORE STUFF FROM, Broadway to Hollywood Stage Play Adaptations. Before Russell's first meeting with Hawks, to show her apathy, she took a swim and entered his office with wet hair, causing him to do a "triple take". The film is set in Chicago in the bad old days. [26], Grant's character describes Bellamy's character by saying "He looks like that fellow in the movies, you know ... Ralph Bellamy!" With Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Bellamy, Gene Lockhart. At the beginning of the film Hildy says that she wants to be "treated like a woman", but her return to her profession reveals her true desire to live a different life. Upon being harassed for Williams's whereabouts by the reporters, Mollie jumps out of the window but isn't killed. It still holds up 70 some odd years later, but films just aren't made this way anymore. Walter frames Bruce again, and he is immediately sent back to jail. Hildy's stern mother-in-law-to-be (Alma Kruger) enters berating Hildy for the way she is treating Bruce. His Girl Friday is a 1940 American comedy film directed by Howard Hawks starring Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell and Ralph Bellamy. [8] Cohn purchased the rights for The Front Page in January 1939. One of the fastest, funniest, and most quotable films ever made, His Girl Friday stars Rosalind Russell as reporter Hildy Johnson, a standout among cinema’s powerful women. [13] Additions were made at the beginning of the screenplay by Lederer to give the characters a convincing backstory so it was decided that Hildy and Walter would be divorced with Hildy's intentions of remarriage serving as Walter's motivation to win her back. The ex-husband, ex-wife plot angle was created for "His Girl Friday" and made the story equally as entertaining as the original but unique in its own right. [b] But during auditions, a woman, Howard Hawks' secretary, read reporter Hildy Johnson's lines. His Girl Friday has received a few different origin stories over the years. At the restaurant, Hildy insists that she and Bruce will be leaving in two hours to take a night train to Albany to be married the following day. When his character is arrested for kidnapping, he describes the horrendous fate suffered by the last person who crossed him: Archie Leach (Grant's birth name). The major change in this version, introduced by Hawks, is that the role of Hildy Johnson is a woman. "[61], Mankiewicz, Ben and Muller, Eddie (July 23, 2020) Intro to the, List of films in the public domain in the United States, "Librarian Announces National Film Registry Selections (March 7, 1994) - Library of Congress Information Bulletin", "Complete National Film Registry Listing | Film Registry | National Film Preservation Board | Programs at the Library of Congress | Library of Congress", "THE SCREEN IN REVIEW; Frenzied's the Word for 'His Girl Friday,' a Distaff Edition of 'The Front Page,' at the Music Hall--'The Man Who Wouldn't Talk' Opens at the Palace", "Enlistment is Portrayed in Broadcast From Recruiting Station - Claudette Colbert Has Role in Radio Theater", "Theater; The Play of the Movie of the Play", "His Girl Friday: a fast paced witty show", "The Greatest Films Poll - 2012 - Quentin Tarantino", "Making Light of the Dark: Understanding the World of His Girl Friday", Willys Theatre Presenting Ben Hecht's Tales of the City, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=His_Girl_Friday&oldid=1019671017, Films with screenplays by Charles Lederer, United States National Film Registry films, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 24 April 2021, at 18:51. Annoyed, Walter has his colleague "Diamond Louie" (Abner Biberman) remove Mrs. Baldwin from the room "temporarily". A writer of books on the futility of marriage risks his reputation when he decides to get married. "Diamond Louie" enters the room with torn clothes, revealing that he had hit a police car while driving away with Mrs. Baldwin. With Hawks encouraging ad-libbing on the set, Russell was able to slip her personal, paid writer's work into the movie. “The Front Page” (which was remade again by Billy Wilder with a male Hildy) has more or less faded away. There are nine scenes with at least four words per second and at least two with more than five words per second. Howard Hawks, 1940. [25] Filming was difficult for the cinematographers because the improvisation made it difficult to know what the characters were going to do. Hildy divorced Walter largely because she wanted more of a home life, whereas Walter saw her more as a driven hard-boiled reporter than subservient homemaker. Hawks liked the way the dialogue sounded coming from a woman, resulting in the script being rewritten to make Hildy female and the ex-wife of editor Walter Burns played by Cary Grant. His Girl Friday (1940) is Howard Hawks' speedy and hysterically funny, modern-style screwball comedy, and one of the best examples of its kind in film history. [21] Arthur Rosson worked for three days on second unit footage at Columbia Ranch. A shame since His Girl Friday is one of the great classics. A young man in love with a girl from a rich family finds his unorthodox plan to go on holiday for the early years of his life met with skepticism by everyone except for his fiancée's eccentric sister and long-suffering brother. We offer a huge selection of posters & prints online, with big discounts, fast shipping, and custom framing options you'll love. It may very well be the fastest paced movie I've ever seen. ", because films of the time were more censored than Pre-code Hollywood films and Hawks felt that the line was too overused. [39] Film critic Molly Haskell wrote that the scene near the end of the film when Hildy sheds tears was not included to expose her femininity, but to express the confusion she felt due to the collision of her professional and feminine natures. 11 . Upon the resumption of their relationship, there is no romance visible between them. The feminine side of Hildy desires to be subservient and sexually relate to men, while the other side of Hildy desires assertion and to forfeit the stereotypical duties of a woman. The crooked mayor (Clarence Kolb) and sheriff need the publicity from the execution to keep their jobs in an upcoming election, so when a messenger (Billy Gilbert) brings them a reprieve from the governor, they try to bribe the man to go away and return later, when it will be too late. In His Girl Friday, the cigarette in the scene between Hildy and Earl Williams serves several symbolic roles in the film. His Girl Friday was #19 on American Film Institute's 100 Years ... 100 Laughs and was selected in 1993 for preservation in the United States National Film Registry of the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". A fast-talking reporter gets ready to marry her new beau, but her crafty former spouse aims to ruin the nuptials in this classic Hollywood comedy. The film had the working title of The Bigger They Are. There is a clear contrast between the fast-talking Hildy and Walter and slow-talking Bruce and Earl which serves to emphasize the gap between the intelligent and the unintelligent in the film. This was the second time the play had been adapted for the screen, the first occasion being the 1931 film also called The Front Page. She is so consumed with writing the story that she hardly notices as Bruce realizes his cause is hopeless and leaves to return to Albany on the 9 o'clock train. Hildy uses economic theory to explain the murder of the cop to Williams, insisting that he shot the gun because of production for use. IT’S BASED ON A PLAY. The average word per minute count of the film is 240 while the average American speech is around 140 words per minute. His Girl Friday (1940) Plot. He explains that upon looking closely, the two shots are actually the same shot, "because the director is incapable of seeing the difference between a man and a woman. 4. His Girl Friday is a 1940 American screwball comedy drama romance film directed by Howard Hawks, starring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell and featuring Ralph Bellamy and Gene Lockhart. Walter Burns (Cary Grant) is a hard-boiled editor for The Morning Post who learns his ex-wife and former star reporter, Hildegard "Hildy" Johnson (Rosalind Russell),[a] is about to marry bland insurance man Bruce Baldwin (Ralph Bellamy) and settle down to a quiet life as a wife and mother in Albany, New York. The line is a "cleaned-up" version of a line from the stage version of The Front Page ("Get back in there, you God damned turtle!") Additionally, the film ends with a brief epilogue in which Walter announces their remarriage and reveals their intention to go cover a strike in Albany on the way to their honeymoon. Grant makes several other "inside" remarks in the film. Walter does everything he can to keep Hildy from leaving, first setting up and accusing Bruce of stealing a watch, forcing Hildy to bail him out of jail. Hildy has also come to tell Walter that she is taking the afternoon train to Albany, where she will be getting married tomorrow to staid straight-laced insurance agent, Bruce Baldwin, with whose mother they will live, at least for the first year. Her tears represent her emotional helplessness and inability to express anger to a male authority figure. Director: Howard Hawks Writers: Charles Lederer (screen play), Ben Hecht (from the play "The Front Page") Stars: Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Bellamy A pigeon in fear the frequent improvisation and numerous ensemble scenes, many retakes were.. And bustle, Contemporary reviews from critics were particularly impressed by the reporters, Mollie out. Was an immediate success and considered an instant classic bail his girl friday out.... Her quickly and asked her to go to wardrobe. 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