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His Girl Friday

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His Girl Friday, starring Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Bellamy, Gene Lockhart
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In His Gal Friday, an unscrupulous newspaper editor (Cary Grant) uses every dirty trick in the book to stop his ace reporter/ex-wife (Rosalind Russell) from remarrying and moving to Albany. Directed by Howard Hawks.

His Girl Friday (1940), starring Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Bellamy, Gene Lockhart

Editorial review of His Girl Friday courtesy of Amazon.com

The Front Page, Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s classic 1928 newspaper play, has had three official film versions and contributed structural DNA to half the movies ever made about professional camaraderie and fierce love-hate friendships. Lewis Milestone’s 1931 movie is well respected (Billy Wilder’s 1974 version isn’t), but this is one case where the remake towers brilliantined head and blocked shoulders above the original.

Howard Hawks had the inspired notion of making Hildy Johnson–the ace newsman whom demonic editor Walter Burns is trying to keep from quitting and getting married–a she instead of a he. What’s more, she’s not only Walter’s star reporter but also his ex-wife. When Hildy (Rosalind Russell) comes to tell Walter (Cary Grant) she’s leaving the newspaper business, he bamboozles her into carrying out one last assignment–a death-row interview with a little nebbish (John Qualen) convicted of killing a policeman. It sounds like a snap, but before you can say screwball comedy, the press room of the Criminal Courts Building has become ground zero for all the lunacy a jailbreak, a shooting, an impromptu suicide, a corrupt city administration, and the most Machiavellian “hero” in the American cinema can supply.

Cary Grant takes a look at the engagement ring that his ex-wife Rosalind Russell has in His Girl Friday

Dialogue comedy

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. Russell, not Hawks’s first choice to play Hildy, is triumphant in the part, holding her own as “one of the guys” and creating an enduring feminist icon. Grant is a force of nature, giving a performance of such concentrated frenzy and diamond brilliance that you owe it to yourself to devote at least one viewing of the movie to watching him alone.

Cary Grant on the phone in His Girl Friday

But then you have to go back (lucky you) and watch it again for the sake of the press-room gang–Roscoe Karns, Porter Hall, Cliff Edwards, Regis Toomey, Frank Jenks, and others–the kind of ensemble work that gets character actors onto Parnassus. –Richard T. Jameson

Cast of characters

Cast of His Girl Friday - Rosalind Russell, Cary Grant, Billy Gilbert, Clarence Kolb & Gene Lockhart

Additional cast

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