His Girl Friday/Cary Grant on Film: A Biography

Starring:Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Bellamy, Gene Lockhart, Porter Hall, Ernest Truex, Cliff Edwards, Clarence Kolb, Roscoe Karns, Frank Jenks, Regis Toomey, Abner Biberman, Frank Orth, Helen Mack, John Qualen, Alma Kruger, Billy Gilbert, Pat West, Edwin Maxwell, Wheaton Chambers
Director: Howard Hawks
Studio: Delta
Product Type: DVD

Editorial Review:
Amazon.com essential video
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.

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. 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
Description
This hilarious re-working of The Front Page teams Grant and Rosalind Russell. This version adds the twin lures of sex and romance. Undoubtedly Grant's greatest comedic role.

Includes "Cary Grant On Film" - a documentary, an intro by Tony Curtis, and the trailer for Gunga Din.

Menus: English  Spanish  Chinese  Japanese
Subtitles: Spanish  Chinese  Japanese

Amazon.com essential video

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.

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. 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

Description

This hilarious re-working of The Front Page teams Grant and Rosalind Russell. This version adds the twin lures of sex and romance. Undoubtedly Grant's greatest comedic role.

Includes "Cary Grant On Film" - a documentary, an intro by Tony Curtis, and the trailer for Gunga Din.

Menus: English • Spanish • Chinese • Japanese
Subtitles: Spanish • Chinese • Japanese

B&W/Color
Running Time: 121 min.

Customer Reviews:

His Girl Friday.......2007-06-22

The legendary Howard Hawks directs what may be the fastest film comedy ever. A re-make of "The Front Page", this version's inspired plot twist is that Hildy is a female reporter, formerly wed to loveable scoundrel Burns. The conceit works, as underneath Walter and Hildy's scathing, rapid-fire repartee we sense a strong (though somewhat twisted) animal attraction. Both Grant and Russell are in top form, and all we have to do is keep up with them. A rip-roaring good time, start to finish

He looks like that film actor.......2007-06-14

Right in the middle of one of the most successful three years anybody has ever had, Howard Hawks gave us his new and improved reworking of Ben Hecht's comedic play, The Front Page. He changed the title to His Girl Friday. It was sandwiched in between Only Angels Have Wings in 1939 and Sergeant York in 1941. This amazing string of five classics began with Bringing Up Baby in 1938 and wound up with my personal favorite, Ball of Fire in 1941. WOW, what a run!

Bringing Up Baby and Only Angels Have Wings both starred the irresistible Cary Grant. He was probably the inspiration for Hawks' reworking. Grant owned the role of Walter Burns. It was a role that allowed him to ham to his heart's content. Burns is the freewheeling owner/editor of a big city newspaper that's at odds with its local government.

Originally, the plot revolved around Burns trying to keep his star reporter, Hildebrand "Hildy" Johnson, from quitting his job to get married. Hawks made a brilliant revision turning Hildebrand into Hildegaard and made her Burns' ex. When she shows up at the paper Walter conceitedly thinks she's there to get her job back but she's actually there to tell him that she's going to live in Albany with her soon to be husband, the nebbish insurance agent Bruce Baldwin beautifully self-parodied by Ralph Bellamy. Walter, unwilling to see his ex and star reporter walk out on him, works the kind of magic only he can work. This results in one of the top ten American comedies of all time and one that can truly be called madcap.

Hildy is realized in a frenetic performance by not the first nor second or even third choice, Rosalind Russell. Russell was borrowed from MGM after Jean Arthur turned the role down and for whatever reason Irene Dunne and Claudette Colbert also didn't work out. One could only guess their ultimate choice would have been Kate Hepburn but RKO would probably never lend her out to play the part. The stars must have been aligned. Because she was their last choice, Russell played the part with a huge chip on her shoulder, which was just what the role needed. She was so miffed she even felt the script gave Grant the lion's share of good lines and injected her own prewritten adlibs to offset. This did not endear her to Grant and the two never worked together again but once again it worked toward the betterment of the film as this two giant talents rivaled to "one up each other" in scene after scene.

Here is where Hawks developed his trademark style of layering dialog, making actors start their line before the other actors had finished their line. This wasn't the first time it was done but in His Girl Friday it was brought to the level of fine art. It was not only practiced by the stars but also perfectly played by the innumerable character actors. The core of pressroom actors did this so well they will always be thought of not as actors but reporters. The pacing is blindingly fast and rarely ever achieved again. The celebrated scene in Broadcast News pales by comparison.

If you've haven't seen this American treasure, I envy you. I wish I could see for the first time again but I can attest to its ability to make you laugh even after twenty viewings.

A classic screwball comedy.......2007-04-19

This movie reminds us what movies used to be: fun.

Carey Grant is handsome and debonair (and all that stuff that drove women crazy) and downright evil sometimes in this movie. He is not above twisting arms (men or women's) to get what he wants and needs, but he does it with such charm that most people just follow him. This is a lesson in alpha-male behavior 101. I won't reveal the storyline or any spoilers (I am sure someone has already done that), but instead I ill say that the movie reeks of another era, which wasn't that long ago chronologically. The witty banter and seemingly endless conflict between the main characters drives the movie forward like a roller coaster that threatens to come off of the tracks at any moment.

This is Howard Hawks' brilliance. The director, the actors, even the lighting all work together seamlessly to create this film. The truest beauty of this film I believe was not the way that Hawks was able to entertain men and women equally in this truly romantic comedy (as compared to the trash that passes for "romantic crap (oops! I mean 'comedy')" today. It was the way this and other films laid down archetypes to aspire to. Cary Grant wasn't just a good looking guy with money - he was a good looking guy with money and a demonic bent and a razor-sharp tongue that he coated with just enough charm to make the poison work all the better. He had an iron will and was Hell bent on getting his way, and not looking like the bad guy in the process. His counterpart, "Hildy Johnson" was his intellectual equal and very sexy, and independent as well. Not the type of woman you would ever get tired of - or bored with.

With characters like this on screen, it became all to easy to imagine that people like that existed somewhere, and that you might get lucky enough to snag one. The characters in this film were not as flat and 2-dimensional as many of the films today, and that is why it stands up so well even though it is shot in black and white, and the actors are long deceased. This is truly a night's worth of great entertainment and a movie *worth* owning, not just viewing.

Breathless take on old-style Chicago news hounds with Grant, Russell and Bellamy.......2007-02-16

This is the 95th review to appear here at Amazon on this movie. As always, it has proved enlightening to read the preceding writers had to say. Most of them loved the film, as was wholly predictable. A goodly number issued dire warnings about the appalling quality of one issue or another, so there is very much a buyer beware factor involved here. A handful didn't care for the film at all, almost always because thedialogueissofasttheycan'tkeepupwithit. That ... is ... a ... real ... shame, especially in this era of the fidgety edit, the sound bite and the five-second commercial.

Many, altogether too many, praised director Howard Hawks to the skies for his brilliant story, his brilliant dialogue, his brilliant re-visioning, his brilliant this, his brilliant that. Now that requires a comment or two.

In the Roaring Twenties, Chicago was the most raffish newspaper town in the world. Reporters who had seen it all--many, many times--covered Prohibition-era beer wars, gangsters several times bigger than life, crooked politicians, lurid scandals of every conceivable stripe, Red scares, repeated labor strife, mesmerizing mouthpieces who reduced juries to tears in order to save thrill killers from their justly deserved dates with public executioners, and any other mad things that turned up by land, sea or air. The pop culture of the day was fascinated by it all and two contemporary plays survive into our time to remind us of those hard-charging times: "Chicago" and "The Front Page." "Chicago," of course, was a hit play, that became a hit movie (and advanced the career of Ginger Rogers), that became a hit Broadway musical, that became a hit retro-movie musical.

"The Front Page" was an even bigger hit on stage in its first go-around. It was written by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur who had served time in the news bullpen at the Chicago City Hall and had finally escaped to write for other venues that were no more respectable but paid a whole lot more money. Their subject was Hildy Johnson, a reporter on his last day in the bullpen before escaping into the real world and his boss Walter Burns, an amalgamation of every editor who'd ever run a beady eye over Hecht and MacArthur's deathless prose. I should point out that Hildy Johnson in the play is a man. The reason for that is ... well, because there actually was a Hildy (short for Hilding) Johnson who happened to be a bullpen reporter at the Chicago City Hall. Whatever inclination (if such a thing ever entered their minds at all) that Hecht and MacArthur had to make Hildy Johnson a woman would have promptly fallen by the wayside because the two authors were aware that the real Hildy Johnson would be in the theater on opening night to observe the antics of the fictional Hildy on stage. By all accounts, the real Hildy was a large and formidable Swede, not at all someone H&Mac wished to annoy.

In very short order, the play was faithfully transferred to the movie screen with Pat O'Brien as Hildy and dapper Adolph Menjou as Walter Burns. That film is largely forgotten today, but is well worth watching. It was the first major film of the talkie era in which the old fluid movement of the silent film camera was re-attained. Menjou and O'Brien are both terrific.

More than a decade later, a geologic era of Hollywood time, Howard Hawks set himself to the task of making a remake. He hired Charles Lederer, yet another raffish writer, to make a 1940-ish screenplay out of the 1928 play. He, or Lederer, or both simultaneously succumbed to the psycho-magnetic pull of that name, Hildy. They subjected Johnson to a gender transformation ... which changed the relationship between Burns and Johnson from Mephistopheles and Faust to lovers-separated ... which allowed for the importation of a new character as the temporary impediment to the course of true love ... which yielded a magnificent screenplay that maintained all the cynical energy of the original, but in the context of a romantic comedy.

In the apportioning of credit, so far, I would put writer Lederer far ahead of director Hawks. Hawks racks up points for casting Cary Grant in the unaccustomed role of an authority figure, for casting Roz Russell who was perfectly capable of going toe-to-toe with Grant and always giving as good as she got, and for tossing in the wonderful, but still under-appreciated Ralph Bellamy as hilarious ballast to keep everything on course.

Hawks did one more thing. He rehearsed each scene in long takes, again and again, until the rapid, overlapping rhythm of the words was ingrained in the performers. Then, and only then, did he shoot it.

This film is a masterpiece for its screenplay, for its performers down to the smallest parts (a perfect, Big Studio-era repertory company of players), for Hawks' masterful direction. Sheesh, what more could you want? Of course it's worth five stars!

His Girl Friday dvd.......2007-01-19

Delivery of the item was prompt as promised and the quality of the DVD was as indicated. Completely satisfied with the transaction.

Cary Grant: Penny Serenade/His Girl Friday/Cary Grant on Film - A Biography

Average customer rating:

Cary, Irene and Roz: What more could you ask for?
A Good movie paired with a cheesy one

Cary Grant: Penny Serenade/His Girl Friday/Cary Grant on Film - A Biography
Starring: Cary Grant
Manufacturer: Delta
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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To Catch a Thief (Special Collector's Edition)

ASIN: B00004YKRG
Release Date: 2002-04-12

Description

Includes:
Penny Serenade
His Girl Friday
On Film

B&W/Color
247 min.

Customer Reviews:

Cary, Irene and Roz: What more could you ask for?.......2001-10-22

My memories of "Penny Serenade" far surpassed the reality of viewing it again recently on this DVD. Unfortunately, even though the cast is very strong and the director, George Stevens went on direct such classics as "Giant," the film is very dated in it's form and exposition specifically. The old hoary device of using records spinning on a turntable to recall and propell scenes has not aged well. In fact it was a surprise to me to see that the movie was released in 1941, not 1931! But the interplay between Cary Grant,Edgar Buchanan and Irene Dunne is classic film acting that still stands up well and Grant's scene in the judges office is a classic tearjerker as powerful as any in film history. But Baby Trina dying off camera? What is with that? I mean if your going to be a tearjerker isn't this scene obligatory? George Stevens was a perfectionist by all accounts: are there scenes missing in this print, do you think? The Ultra Contemporary and still hilarious "His Girl Friday" directed by Howard Hawks is also in this set and it's once again a pleasure to see the sparks fly between Grant and Rosalind Russell. And "His Girl Friday" was released a year BEFORE "Penny Serenade." A note about the transfer to DVD: below average at best. The contrast between black and white is mostly non-existent making everything grey. Not Good. Laserlight shame on you.

A Good movie paired with a cheesy one.......2001-09-09

Penny Serenade is total cheese. Added to it, you get a preview by Tony Curtis - Mr. Cheese himself. This not one of Cary Grant's better movies to say the least.
However, His Girl Friday is an excellent movie. The pace is very fast for a black & white. Rosiland Russell is super and the banter between her and Cary is classic. Definately a must see. Buy the package and throw away Penny Serende.

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