His Girl Friday
“At each other's throat when they're not in each other's arms!”
About His Girl Friday
Editor Walter Burns hears that his ex-wife, star reporter Hildy Johnson, is about to marry insurance man Bruce Baldwin and quit for Albany. He steers her into one last assignment, the hanging of Earl Williams, and has a pickpocket and a fake mash charge keep Bruce in jail. Williams breaks out of a sanity test and climbs into the press room, where Hildy hides him in a roll-top desk while the mayor tries to bury a governor's reprieve. Walter blackmails the mayor with that bribe. Hildy stays, and the honeymoon Walter offers is already a strike story on the way to Niagara Falls.
Cast & crew
More about His Girl Friday
Columbia bought The Front Page in January 1939. Charles Lederer wrote the screenplay, with uncredited help from Ben Hecht and summer revisions by Morrie Ryskind, and replaced more than half the play's lines. Hawks shot from 27 September to 21 November 1939 under the working title The Bigger They Are, seven days over because of retakes. Harry Cohn sneaked it in December. The press saw it on 3 January 1940; it opened at Radio City Music Hall on 11 January and went into general release on 18 January.
Themes
In film history
In 2000 the American Film Institute placed it 19th on 100 Years... 100 Laughs.
Making
Hawks told Peter Bogdanovich he wrote the lines so the starts and ends of sentences did not have to be heard, because people talk over each other. He put a sound mixer on the set to push the pace and ran this cut beside the 1931 Front Page to show which one talked faster.
Reviews
Frank S. Nugent, in the New York Times of 12 January 1940, reviewed the Music Hall opening and called it a woman's edition of Hecht and MacArthur's "frenzied newspaper comedy." He wrote that Lederer transposed the play so well it was hard to believe the authors had not had Rosalind Russell in mind, and he still called the material "the maddest newspaper comedy of our times." The New Yorker of 13 January 1940 found this version "as fresh and undated and bright a film as you could want."
Look
Joseph Walker photographed it. Hawks stages the criminal-courts press room as one crowded space, with several reporters talking at once instead of cutting each line to a close-up.
Technique
Hawks had the mixer speed the dialogue on the set so the company could hear how fast the scenes were running. Gene Havlick cut the picture.
Music
There is almost no score. Music comes in for the fade-out. The track is typewriters, phones, and overlapping talk.
Preservation
The Library of Congress selected it for the National Film Registry in 1993. Criterion's edition uses a 4K restoration; the label's 2017 Blu-ray is spine 849, later issued on 4K UHD.
Notes
- Hawks decided Hildy should be a woman after a secretary read the reporter's lines aloud at an audition.
- The New Yorker of 13 January 1940 traced the title to Walter Winchell's weekly valentine.
- In the play Earl Williams is an anarchist. The film drops that.
- The stage ending, "the son-of-a-bitch stole my watch," was not used.
- Grant's Walter tells a reporter he looks like "that fellow in the movies, Ralph Bellamy," who is playing Bruce in the same scene.
- The copyright was not renewed, so the picture entered the public domain in 1969. The play's copyright ran until 2024.
Scenes
- Williams comes through the press-room window and Hildy shuts him in the roll-top desk.
- Walter pounds the desk and gives Williams the signal to come out.
- The messenger brings the reprieve back and Walter uses the mayor's bribe to walk free.
Influenced by
- The Front Page (1928 play)
- The Front Page (1931 film)
Also available
- Internet Archive (his_girl_friday)
- Criterion Collection (Blu-ray spine 849; 4K UHD)
- Wikimedia Commons (His Girl Friday (1940, SDR).webm)
Quotes
He looks like that fellow in the movies, Ralph Bellamy.
