His Girl Friday (Dir. Howard Hawks. 1941)
Newspapers may have changed over the past 60 years but the people who staff them haven’t. The booze culture may have all but disappeared but the hack eat hack battle of wills for a byline still plays out daily in newsrooms across the world among a cynical, bitter, arrogant, dedicated, shifty, insecure and sometimes tremendously brave breed of people who have a sometimes shaky but nonetheless obsessive urge for the, or at least ‘a’, truth and who know only to well they are often as despised as they are revered. Little wonder many reporters make great writers but terrible human beings. His Girl Friday takes its cue from that observation and runs with it. Cary Grant as hard bitten newspaper editor Walter Burns and Rosalind Russell as cynical hackette Hildegard Johnson (part Lois Lane part Rotteweiller) made the perfect newsroom team. Sadly they also make a lousy married couple whose love hate relationship has ended in a bitter divorce. When Hildy arrives at the offices of The Morning Post with her new fiance in tow, a nice but dim lad unwise to the cut, thrust and duplicitous side of reporters, she fully intends to quit to have her new beau’s babies.Burns, though, has other ideas. He’s still in love with Hildy (and she’s fighting against admitting she has mutual feelings) and hatches a plot to get her back by getting her onto the byline of her life - a miscarriage of justice case that points to corruption in City Hall - while he busily sets about framing up his rival for her affections. Fast moving with machine gun paced dialogue both leads spend the entire movie trying to out quip each other with barbed lines (during filming Russell noted that Grant had better lines then her in the script and hired an advertising copywriter to provide her killer lines which she then passed off as spur of the moment improvisation - all of them made it into the film.) resulting in a breathless, effortlessly clever and genuinely hilarious movie. But there’s also room for proper acting and Grant makes an early case here as one of the greatest screen actors of his generation. The scene when Hildy finally gets to tell Walter she’s engaged and want’s to leave the newspaper business to live a ‘normal’, domestic life is as touching as it is funny. Grant is, for the only time in the film, truly flummoxed.
Walter: You can marry all you want to, Hildy, but you can't quit the newspaper business.Hildy: Oh! Why not?Walter: I know you, Hildy. I know what quitting would mean to you.Hildy: And what would it mean?Walter: It would kill ya.Hildy: You can't sell me that, Walter Burns.Walter: Who says I can't? You're a newspaperman.Hildy: That's why I'm quitting. I want to go someplace where I can be a woman.Walter: You mean be a traitor.Hildy: A traitor? A traitor to what?Walter: A traitor to journalism. You're a journalist, Hildy.Hildy: A journalist? Hell, what does that mean? Peeking through keyholes? Chasing after fire engines? Waking people up in the middle of the night to ask them if Hitler's gonna start another war? Stealing pictures off old ladies? I know all about reporters, Walter. A lot of daffy buttinskis running around without a nickel in their pockets and for what? So a million hired girls and motormen's wives'll know what's going on. Why... Golly, what's the use? Walter, you...you wouldn't know what it means to want to be respectable and live a half-way normal life. The point is, I...I'm through.
Despite it’s age His Girl Friday feels fresh, honest and modern in it’s attitudes to news gathering and society at large “Why Hildy! you've got the old fashioned idea that divorce is something that lasts forever, 'til death do us part.' Why divorce doesn't mean anything now days Hildy, just a few words muttered over you by a judge”. There’s a cracking supporting cast, to boot and although it is a little stagey around the edges (it’s based on the Broadway hit of the 1920s ‘The Front Page - which in turn was made into a film by Howard Hawks before he saw the comic potential of casting a woman in the second lead) there’s much left to admire, laugh at and even, if you can catch your breath, think about.And watch out for an in jokes that will make Bristolian’s titter. When Hildy and Walter find themselves under arrest for aiding an escaped criminal and kidnapping they are told by the sheriff, in the pocket of the local mayor, that they face at least a ten year stretch in prisonWalter merely shrugs his shoulders at the prospect and when a flustered mayor ups the stakes and tells the pair they’re through, Walter smoothly replies, “Listen the last man that said that to me was Archie Leach a week before he cut his throat”. Archie Leach being the name Grant’s family knew him by as a little boy who played on the streets of Horfield.
The Food: Chewing gum (masticated rapidly) boiled sweets, Mars Bars, white bread sandwiches in plastic packaging, Cheezy Wotsits all should sustain you en route to your deadline.
The Drink: Black coffee in plastic cups and lots of it. Make sure you have bag full of 20p pieces for the machine.
Newspapers may have changed over the past 60 years but the people who staff them haven’t. The booze culture may have all but disappeared but the hack eat hack battle of wills for a byline still plays out daily in newsrooms across the world among a cynical, bitter, arrogant, dedicated, shifty, insecure and sometimes tremendously brave breed of people who have a sometimes shaky but nonetheless obsessive urge for the, or at least ‘a’, truth and who know only to well they are often as despised as they are revered. Little wonder many reporters make great writers but terrible human beings. His Girl Friday takes its cue from that observation and runs with it. Cary Grant as hard bitten newspaper editor Walter Burns and Rosalind Russell as cynical hackette Hildegard Johnson (part Lois Lane part Rotteweiller) made the perfect newsroom team. Sadly they also make a lousy married couple whose love hate relationship has ended in a bitter divorce. When Hildy arrives at the offices of The Morning Post with her new fiance in tow, a nice but dim lad unwise to the cut, thrust and duplicitous side of reporters, she fully intends to quit to have her new beau’s babies.Burns, though, has other ideas. He’s still in love with Hildy (and she’s fighting against admitting she has mutual feelings) and hatches a plot to get her back by getting her onto the byline of her life - a miscarriage of justice case that points to corruption in City Hall - while he busily sets about framing up his rival for her affections. Fast moving with machine gun paced dialogue both leads spend the entire movie trying to out quip each other with barbed lines (during filming Russell noted that Grant had better lines then her in the script and hired an advertising copywriter to provide her killer lines which she then passed off as spur of the moment improvisation - all of them made it into the film.) resulting in a breathless, effortlessly clever and genuinely hilarious movie. But there’s also room for proper acting and Grant makes an early case here as one of the greatest screen actors of his generation. The scene when Hildy finally gets to tell Walter she’s engaged and want’s to leave the newspaper business to live a ‘normal’, domestic life is as touching as it is funny. Grant is, for the only time in the film, truly flummoxed.
Walter: You can marry all you want to, Hildy, but you can't quit the newspaper business.Hildy: Oh! Why not?Walter: I know you, Hildy. I know what quitting would mean to you.Hildy: And what would it mean?Walter: It would kill ya.Hildy: You can't sell me that, Walter Burns.Walter: Who says I can't? You're a newspaperman.Hildy: That's why I'm quitting. I want to go someplace where I can be a woman.Walter: You mean be a traitor.Hildy: A traitor? A traitor to what?Walter: A traitor to journalism. You're a journalist, Hildy.Hildy: A journalist? Hell, what does that mean? Peeking through keyholes? Chasing after fire engines? Waking people up in the middle of the night to ask them if Hitler's gonna start another war? Stealing pictures off old ladies? I know all about reporters, Walter. A lot of daffy buttinskis running around without a nickel in their pockets and for what? So a million hired girls and motormen's wives'll know what's going on. Why... Golly, what's the use? Walter, you...you wouldn't know what it means to want to be respectable and live a half-way normal life. The point is, I...I'm through.
Despite it’s age His Girl Friday feels fresh, honest and modern in it’s attitudes to news gathering and society at large “Why Hildy! you've got the old fashioned idea that divorce is something that lasts forever, 'til death do us part.' Why divorce doesn't mean anything now days Hildy, just a few words muttered over you by a judge”. There’s a cracking supporting cast, to boot and although it is a little stagey around the edges (it’s based on the Broadway hit of the 1920s ‘The Front Page - which in turn was made into a film by Howard Hawks before he saw the comic potential of casting a woman in the second lead) there’s much left to admire, laugh at and even, if you can catch your breath, think about.And watch out for an in jokes that will make Bristolian’s titter. When Hildy and Walter find themselves under arrest for aiding an escaped criminal and kidnapping they are told by the sheriff, in the pocket of the local mayor, that they face at least a ten year stretch in prisonWalter merely shrugs his shoulders at the prospect and when a flustered mayor ups the stakes and tells the pair they’re through, Walter smoothly replies, “Listen the last man that said that to me was Archie Leach a week before he cut his throat”. Archie Leach being the name Grant’s family knew him by as a little boy who played on the streets of Horfield.
The Food: Chewing gum (masticated rapidly) boiled sweets, Mars Bars, white bread sandwiches in plastic packaging, Cheezy Wotsits all should sustain you en route to your deadline.
The Drink: Black coffee in plastic cups and lots of it. Make sure you have bag full of 20p pieces for the machine.
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