Classic Pick: His Girl Friday (1940)
Howard Hawks’ His Girl Friday is literally one of the fastest-talking comedies ever made, packing more lines into a ninety-minute run time than any other film. It is so quick, so witty, and so chock-full of colorful characters that you’ll want to watch it at least three or four times just to catch every word.
Rosalind Russell is Hildy Johnson, a former newspaperwoman for The Morning Post, who returns to the Post to tell her ex-husband/managing editor Walter Burns (Cary Grant) that she’s quitting the newspaper game altogether to get married and settle down with nice guy Bruce Baldwin (Ralph Bellamy, playing the Ralph Bellamy character to perfection). She does so on the eve of the execution of Earl Williams (John Qualen), an accidental cop-killer whose public hanging is being used to insure the re-election of the Sheriff and the Mayor. Walter will do anything to keep his star reporter and ex-wife, and embarks on a campaign of manipulation and subterfuge with the Williams story as bait.
His Girl Friday is based on the play (and then film) The Front Page, which featured two men in the roles of Hildy and Walter. In changing Hildy’s gender and her relationship to Walter from work colleagues to former lovers, His Girl Friday makes the film as much about a woman choosing between the safety of a traditional family life, and the excitement in continuing to be a “newspaperman.” Grant and Russell talk a mile a minute, their dialogue overlapping without making the words unintelligible, hinting at a couple with a passionate and even equitable relationship. There’s never any question of what choice Hildy will make as we watch her spar with Walter, beat the boys’ club of reporters with her verbal wit, and jump into action the moment a siren sounds or a gun goes off. The film is one of the sharpest, funniest movies to come out of the screwball comedy genre, with two leads that put every contemporary romantic comedy pairing to shame. Turn up the sound, though – you don’t want to miss a word.
