Movie Reviews 583 – His Girl Friday (1940)

As much as we all protest movie studios cranking out stale and usually inferior remakes or what they now refer to as re-imaginings, sometimes revisiting a good source is not half as bad as we tend to think. Case in point His Girl Friday. 

Not only was this a remake of the film The Front Page (and given the gender change of the main character I would argue that this was a re-imagining of sorts), but it was the first of at least three remakes of the classic comedy.

My fondness for the story begins with the last remake, the 1974 version of The Front Page which I first saw many years ago. This is one of the great Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau pairings directed by none other than Billy Wilder. In that version Lemmon plays Hildy Johnson, the city’s top notch newshound who has resolved to finally get married and quit his ace reporter job working for tyrant paper editor Walter Burns (Matthau). But Burns knows Hildy’s achille’s heel, a good story, and when a scandalous murder trial of a humble man is sensationalized by the dailies, Burns makes sure that Hildy becomes entangled by plying to his professionalism and inability to sit out a good story.

His Girl Friday adds an added twist to the story by having Rosalind Russell play the part of Hildy, not only the reporter but Burn’sformer wife, this time Burns being played by the always elegant and witty Cary Grant. So aside from the witty reporter-editor repartee we get the scorned lover angle as well.

As any film starring Grant is reason enough for me to watch I did not even bother reading the story synopsis and thus did not know this was a Front Page variant, but it all clicked into place as soon as I heard the name Hildy.

What surprised me was how good this film stands up to the later version of the film and how the gender switch really improves the story. Moreover it is Russell‘s hildy that carries the film and not Cary (pun intended) although Grant‘s performance is commendable as always. I was also surprised to see that despite the changes many of scenes and plot points are the same between both versions.

Simply put, as much as I like the later Lemmon/Matthau film, this may be the best version of the classic comedy.

And speaking of Cary Grant I did have a chance to watch the recent four part miniseries Archie, a biography of his life. While I did find it both informative and entertaining, the format choices and concentration on the latter part of his life when married to Dyan Cannon (it was partly based on her book) was a bit unfortunate. I do recommend it for any Grant fans wanting to learn a bit more about the man behind the smile.

Tags: Cary Grant, His Girl Friday, Rosalind Russell, The Front Page