The Front Pages From The Distaff Side-Rosalind Russell And Cary Grant’s “His Girl Friday”-(1940)-A Film Review     

DVD Review

By Sam Lowell

His Girl Friday, starring Rosalind Russell, Cary Grant, Ralph Bellamy, directed by Howard Hawks, from a play by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, 1940  

Recently in reviewing another later (1960) Cary Grant vehicle, The Grass Is Greener, where he plays a cuckolded English Earl whose wife’s affections were stolen by an arriviste American oil man (played by also hunk Robert Mitchum) I noted that as a rule Cary Grant, the epitome of maleness, handsomeness, suaveness and whatever else matters to the majority females that made up the 1940s and 1950s audiences did not lose the woman (and in that vehicle he didn’t either but it was a close call when the deal went down). In the film under review Howard Hawk’s adaptation of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s screwball comedy, The Front Page, he almost let another dame get away, let his ex-wife Hildy beat it to upstate New York. So maybe I was a little wrong about Cary’s ability to swoop women off their feet-and keep them swooped (is that the right past tense, oh well).                 

Here’s the play and it may be familiar to those who saw the play or the later screen version with Jack Lemon and Walter Matthau except, a very big except the ‘‘ace” reporter is a woman, a female Hildy, played by rough and tumble, give as well as he received, Rosalind Russell, which allows the male-female tussle that drives the film to go forward. Tussle because one, Hildy had given Walter, Walter Burns, the mad monk editor-in-chief/owner of a New York City newspaper, his walking papers, no go, done, and two, she is now engaged and ready to let the rough and tumble life of an ace reporter fall by the wayside. Engaged to Bruce Baldwin, a nice safe middle of the road insurance man, played by Ralph Bellamy.      

But see Walter, since the nasty divorce had gotten “religion,” well maybe had gotten religion, since he is remorseful about the bad way he treated Hildy and wants her back. The hook: the hook for any good and resourceful journalist- a big career-making or enhancing front page story. The bait for the hook- covering the execution of a small time grafter whose upcoming date with death is being played by the political establishment for the impending elections as the final nail in the coffin for the anarchist plague that had descended upon the city. The felon nothing but a snook and so Walter lures Hildy into looking into what the whole plan is all about. Gets her in so deep she can’t even think about poor ordinary nice guy Bruce and his very average life plans. In the end the snook gets a reprieve and the local politicos have egg all over their faces for their cover-ups. And Hildy and Walter go about their merry way. As for Bruce, well, he is on his way back to Albany-alone. You know Cary had this one in the bag from the beginning when you think about it. Just don’t let your good woman loose around him-okay.