His Girl Friday. 1940

Hysterical hysteria. Howard Hawk’s topsy turvy slap happy gender bending adaption of the old chestnut “The Front Page” stars Cary Grant (who was never more delectable, he’s like a rich piece of chocolate cake) as Walter Burns a big city newspaper editor who will do anything including extortion, kidnapping, passing counterfeit money, and lying to get what he wants, which includes getting his ex-wife and his ex star reporter played by Rosalind Russell back to writing for the paper, and maybe back into his bed. The truth like Helen Mack goes out the window with a thud in this rat tat tat of a movie and in a switch to end all switches Hawks changed the sex of the reporter Hildy Johnson from male to female and cast Roz Russell in the role. The film begins with Roz decked out in a pin stripe suit and hat looking like a moving early Frank Stella painting visiting her old newspaper where she once worked to let Grant know that she is going to get married again. Hawks makes use of a marvelous tracking shot (the really only “cinematic” moment in this otherwise stage bound movie) to follow Russell as she greets her former co-workers and into Grants office where we have the first of many fast paced (in dialogue) scenes between these two unlikely romantic leads. It’s said that every major female star with the exception of Lassie turned the part of Hildy down, and it finally landed in Roz’s lap where it belonged in the first place. Russell is perfect in the part, and this role marked the beginning of her many film performances in which she played strong career women in which romance (at least for the first few reels) was put on the backburner as she pursued her career goals. Russell brings just the right mix of feminine-masculine traits to the part that is a good match for Grant’s masculine-feminine traits, a tactic that Hawks would use in film after film during his long and great career. Hawks loved using Grant in his movies and went so far as to put him in drag in two of the films that they did together, “Bringing Up Baby” and “I Was a Male War Bride.” The screenplay by Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur and Charles Lederer based on Hecht and MacArthur’s play is fast, loose and tart with over lapping dialog with the two leads crossing and double crossing each other with Grant doing most of the crossing, as a pending execution of a sad Earl Williams played by John Qualen plays in the background. Much of the action takes place in the pressroom at the courthouse as a group of reporters’ are playing cards, gossiping and killing time waiting to report on the execution of Williams for killing a “colored” policeman. The reporters are played by a great bunch of character actors including Porter Hall, Roscoe Karns and Ernest Truex of who it’s implied is light in the loafers and is the brunt of a homophobic taunt by Hildy when Truex asks her if “we are invited to the wedding” and Hildy replies “Well I might use you as a brides maid. The dark story lines are mixed in with screw ball comedy with much of the darts directed at the once again hapless Ralph Bellamy who plays Russell’s finance who keeps winding up in jail thanks to Grant’s meddling schemes. Hawks even uses some in jokes that were supposedly ad-libbed by Grant including one when blonde bombshell Marion Martin is set up by Grant to pick up Bellamy and then have him arrested for pandering. “What does he look like” she asks? And Grant replies, “He looks like that actor Ralph Bellamy.” Another great ad-lib by Grant comes when a character tells he that he’s through with him, and Grant tells him “Listen the last man that said that to me was Archie Lech just before he cut his throat.” For those in the know, Leach was Grant’s real name. I should note that besides the gay baiting there is also a cringe worthy racist joke, which comes when Roscoe Karnes is reporting a story on the phone to his editor about a “Colored who just gave birth to a pickaninny in the back of an ambulance. Yes I know it was the times but still. Also in the wonderful cast is the great Billy Gilbert who almost steals the movie as a confused but honest messenger who tries to deliver a reprieve for Williams from the governor to the crooked mayor and incompetent sheriff and is offered a bribe if he just goes away and forgets about it because a reprieve would hurt the mayors chance at re-election . And in Gilbert's other short scene with Grant and Russell if you look closely you can see them nearly cracking up with laughter. Also with Helen Mack as a simple young woman who befriended Earl Williams and is crucified by the press, and Alma Kruger as Bellamy’s harassed mother. It doesn’t get much better than this. Best picture, director and actress 1940