307 - His Girl Friday, United States, 1940. Dir. Howard Hawks.
Aren't they inhuman?
I know. They're newspapermen.
Mollie Malloy asks the question a few moments before jumping out the window of the press room in the Chicago Criminal Courts Building, the window overlooking the courtyard of the Cook County Jail.
Hildy Johnson answers it.
Hildy is herself a newspaperman and wants to be a wife. She has quit her job, divorced her ex-husband--Morning Post managing editor Walter Burns--gone on a six-week vacation, and gotten herself engaged to earnest insurance salesman Bruce Baldwin.
She needs to make the 4:00 train--make that the 6:00 train--make that the 9:00 train--in order to make their wedding in Albany tomorrow and their honeymoon in Niagara Falls. After that they will move in with his mother until they get settled.
Good luck with that.
Meanwhile, Walter still loves Hildy and wants her back. She left him because his mind was always on his work--getting the next scoop, publishing the hottest story--and they spent their own honeymoon hovering over typewriters to meet a deadline.
But Hildy has reporting in her blood.
Can she really abandon it?
Walter believes she cannot, and he believes he can win her back now that Earl Williams has escaped from the County Jail. Earl is scheduled to be hanged tomorrow. Sheriff Peter B. "Pinky" Hartwell (Gene Lockhart) and the Mayor (Clarence Kolb) want him to be hanged because the election is next week and getting him hanged is worth two hundred thousand votes. The Mayor says they need those votes to get reelected.
The only problem is the Governor is about to issue a reprieve. No problem for the Sheriff and the Mayor. They can fix anything. The Mayor says so himself. He offers the messenger, Joe Pettibone (Billy Gilbert) a cushy job and hefty salary as a "City Sealer" if he will pretend he was unable to deliver the reprieve in time.
If you think that is corrupt, look at what Walter Burns does to try to win Hildy back.
He gets Bruce put in jail three times, for stealing a watch, soliciting a prostitute, and using counterfeit money--all set up by Walter--just to stall him long enough to keep Hildy around. And he hires reporter Roy Bensinger (Ernest Truex) just to get him out of the room. He will have him fired again once his story is finished.
Hildy knows all about Walter's ways. Earlier when Bruce meets Walter and tells Hildy that "he's got a lot of charm," she responds, "He comes by it naturally. His grandfather was a snake."
Earl Williams will deliver for Walter Burns by showing up in the Press Room and pulling a gun on Hildy Johnson. He will fire the last round out the window. She will take the gun and hide him in the rolltop desk. And she will find herself sitting on the hottest story of the year.
Hildy has reporting in her blood.
Can she turn down this story?
Can she turn down Walter, the love of her life?
His Girl Friday is known as the fastest talking screwball comedy in the history of the movies. It is a tour-de-force of ensemble acting, entrances and exits, physical comedy, overlapping dialogue, rapid delivery, comedic timing, inside jokes, political parody, social commentary, word play, insinuations, and chemistry.
It began as a play, The Front Page, by master writers Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, and it had already been made as a movie in 1931 by Lewis Milestone.
The play takes place entirely in the press room, and it features two males. The focus is on the newspaper business.
Howard Hawks in his genius, with screenwriter Charles Lederer (who had written dialogue for the original film), rebranded Hildebrand as Hildegard and made Hildy a woman, adding the sexual tension, chemistry, innuendo, the love triangle, and the romantic plot, making a successful story even better. It is hard to imagine the play or the movie without these elements.
Milestone's original film was already noted for its fast-paced dialogue. Howard Hawks tested his own speed by placing two projectors next to each other and running the two films side by side. But where Milestone gets his speed by editing, cutting out the pauses (which also eliminates the overlapping dialogue), Hawks gets it in the acting, letting the camera sit in long takes as the actors put their chops on full display.
The film is also full of great character actors with full personalities, who enter and exit and add to the mayhem.
Peter Bogdanovich asked Howard Hawks what makes a good director.
Hawks said a good storyteller.
Bogdanovich: "Did you ever think of making movies as an art?"
Hawks: "No."
Bogdanovich: "What do you think of it?"
Hawks: "Business. Fun."
Hildy: Stop that acting. We've got a lot to do.
Walter: Now you're talking!
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The Front Page, 1931. Male/Male. Film. Dir. Lewis Milestone. Adolphe Menjou & Pat O'Brien.
His Girl Friday, 1940. Male/Female. Film. Dir. Howard Hawks. Cary Grant & Rosalind Russell.
The Front Page, 1945. Male/Male. TV movie. Dir. Ed Sobol. Matt Crowley & Vinton Hayworth.
The Front Page, 1948. Male/Male. TV movie. Prod. Joel O'Brien. Henry Gilbert & Sidney James.
The Front Page, 1949. Male/Male. TV episode. Prod. Donald Davis. John Daly & Mark Roberts.
The Front Page, 1970. Male/Male. TV movie. Dir. Alan Handley. Robert Ryan & George Grizzard.
The Front Page, 1974. Male/Male. Film. Dir. Billy Wilder. Walter Matthau & Jack Lemmon.
Switching Channels, 1988. Male/Female. Film. Dir. Ted Kotcheff. Burt Reynolds & Kathleen Turner.
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He looks like that fellow in the movies. You know, Ralph Bellemy.
Get back in there, you Mock Turtle!
The last man who said that to me was Archie Leach, just a week before he cut his throat.
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