His Girl Friday
Starring:Cary Grant
Studio: Unicorn Video
Product Type: DVD
Average customer rating:
- His Girl Friday
- He looks like that film actor
- A classic screwball comedy
- Breathless take on old-style Chicago news hounds with Grant, Russell and Bellamy
- His Girl Friday dvd
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His Girl Friday
Starring: Cary Grant , Rosalind Russell , Ralph Bellamy , Gene Lockhart , and Porter Hall
Director: Howard Hawks
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Similar Items:
- The Philadelphia Story
- Bringing Up Baby (Two-Disc Special Edition)
- To Catch a Thief (Special Collector's Edition)
- Arsenic and Old Lace
- Charade
ASIN: 6305416192
Release Date: 2000-11-21 |
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
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.
Average customer rating:
- His Girl Friday
- He looks like that film actor
- A classic screwball comedy
- Breathless take on old-style Chicago news hounds with Grant, Russell and Bellamy
- His Girl Friday dvd
|
His Girl Friday
Starring: Cary Grant , Rosalind Russell , Ralph Bellamy , Gene Lockhart , and Porter Hall
Director: Howard Hawks
Manufacturer: Good Times Video
ProductGroup: DVD
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Similar Items:
- The Philadelphia Story
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- To Catch a Thief (Special Collector's Edition)
- Arsenic and Old Lace
- Charade
ASIN: B00006RCLG
Release Date: 2002-10-01 |
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
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.
Average customer rating:
- Five of Grant's best in one attractive package
- Cary Grant Collection
- Creme de la Cary.
- Great Early Cary Grant Movies.
- Thanks, Universal
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The Cary Grant Box Set (Holiday / Only Angels Have Wings / The Talk of the Town / His Girl Friday / The Awful Truth)
Starring: Katharine Hepburn , Cary Grant , Doris Nolan , Lew Ayres , and Edward Everett Horton
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- The Cary Grant Signature Collection (Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House / Destination Tokyo / The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer / My Favorite Wife / Night and Day)
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- Classic Comedies Collection (Bringing Up Baby / The Philadelphia Story Two-Disc Special Edition / Dinner at Eight / Libeled Lady / Stage Door / To Be or Not to Be)
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ASIN: B000CEV3L4
Release Date: 2006-02-07 |
Description
Holiday
Free-thinking Johnny Case finds himself betrothed to a millionaire's daughter and having difficulties being able to spend the early years of his life on "Holiday."
Only Angels Have Wings
Jean Arthur is a stranded showgirl who sets her sights on Cary Grant in this rousing adventure tale of men who fly mail planes over the Andes.
The Talk of the Town
A charming fugitive, a beautiful teacher, and a stuffy lawyer, forced to become roommates, are rumor-mill fodder in this madcap romantic farce.
His Girl Friday
A classic comedy in which Rosalind Russell plays reporter Hildy Johnson, who, on the eve of her remarriage, is talked into one more assignment by her editor and ex-husband.
The Awful Truth
The screwball antics of a couple (Irene Dunne and Cary Grant) who can't stand being married, but can't stand seeing the other married to anyone else.
Customer Reviews:
Five of Grant's best in one attractive package.......2007-06-27
The problem with some DVD box sets is that there's usually a film or two included that you could very well do without or perhaps would not even like in your film collection. No such problem with the simply named "The Cary Grant Box Set" which includes five movies that are all among Grant's very best. That alone makes this a must-have for Grant fans. So the featurettes, the vintage replica movie postcards and the overall attractive packaging are bonuses -- significant ones at that.
The films feature such wonderful leading ladies as Jean Arthur (twice) Rosalind Russell, Irene Dunne and the incomparable Katherine Hepburn. Hepburn appears in "Holiday" directed by George Cukor, a depression era film that skewers the upper class. Grant plays Johnny Case an up and coming young business man who thinks more of exploring life than of making money. He finds himself in love with the daughter of a wealthy entrepreneur but it is soon obvious that he has more in common with the girl's sister. Lew Ayers turns in a memorable performance as the brother, a philosophizing drunk.
"Only Angels Have Wings" offers a very different Grant, this time playing a the leader of a crew of daring mail pilots in South America. Here Jean Arthur is the love interest though a lovely young Rita Hayworth offers competition. Thomas Mitchell is part of a stellar cast directed by the great Howard Hawks.
"Talk of the Town" is to me one of the most underrated films of all time. Grant is Leopold Dilg a labor activist framed for a factory bombing. After escaping from jail he hides out in the bucolic summer home of an old childhood friend played by Jean Arthur. The catch is that she's renting the home to one of America's leading legal minds a supreme court candidate played by Ronald Coleman. There is comedy, the inevitable romance and a good deal of politics in this surprisingly thought provoking film directed by George Stevens.
Grant is again directed by Hawks but this time in a classic screwball comedy in "His Girl Friday." This remake of "Front Page" introduced the concept of rapid fire overlapping dialogue, principally between Grant and co-star Russell who play a former husband and wife team that doubled as a newspaper reporting dynamic duo. Grant would like them back together again but Russell and a would-be second husband played by Ralph Bellamy have other ideas. Grant is diabolical and hilarious as he manipulates events around a forthcoming execution in an effort to get the girl and the story. Among the laughs, "His Girl Friday" also has a points to make about corruption, media and justice.
"The Awful Truth" starring Grant and Dunne is straight screwball as the two stars play a divorcing married couple that maybe doesn't really want to separate. Leo McCarey directed this fast paced romp, poor old Ralph Bellamy is again Grant's hapless foil.
In the unlikely event I'm sent to a desert island that has a DVD player and can only bring a few DVD sets, this one is coming with me. In any event this box set should find itself on the the shelves of any Cary Grant fan.
Cary Grant Collection.......2007-06-21
No actor epitomizes classical Hollywood cinema like the ultra-suave, thoroughly professional Cary Grant, the leading man's leading man. This box set collects Grant's greatest hits of the late '30s-early '40s, right after he jettisoned his stifling Paramount contract to become a free agent for Columbia and RKO. Acting opposite Irene Dunne, Katharine Hepburn, and Rosalind Russell in the set's three uproarious screwball comedies ("Truth", "Holiday", and "Friday", respectively), Grant shows off his inimitable flair for witty, machine-gun repartee. Only the riveting "Angels" and more cerebral "Talk" (opposite the incomparable Jean Arthur) demonstrate why Hitchcock, among others, found the gentleman star such an appealing straight man. If you adore Cary Grant the way I do, this set is a must-have.
Creme de la Cary........2007-04-15
The idea of putting a collection of a screen star's films is always a great idea, but most of the time it doesn't follow through (Exhibit A: The James Stewart Signature Collection. As much as, well, everybody loves Jimmy Stewart, did we really need "The Cheyenne Social Club"??). That is hardly the case here. Included are essential Cary Grant films, both classic (His Girl Friday), underrated (Only Angels Have Wings) or unreleased (Holiday), his breakthrough role (The Awful Truth), and a charming social comedy (The Talk of the Town).
*THE AWFUL TRUTH: Jerry (Grant) and Lucy Warriner (Irene Dunne) both think that they have caught each other in infidelity (He returns home from a "business trip" from Florida with oranges from California, She comes back arm in arm with her French voice teacher), so they divorce each other, with 90 days until the thing becomes final. In those 90 days, she dates a sweet, bumbling oil man from Texas (Ralph Bellamy, who made a career out of playing the guy who loses the girl to Cary Grant, see HIS GIRL FRIDAY), and he romances an heiress. As their divorce's final date gets closer and closer, they realize that they're not ready to let each other go...leading to screwball results. This is the film that established Cary as a genuine star, a romantic leading man. His rapport with Irene Dunne is magical, and she's hysterical, especially towards the end when she tries to embarrass his stuffy fiancee's family by pretending to be his boozy sister "Lola Warriner." But beneath the laughs lie a deep understanding of marriage and the melancholy of love, leading to one of the cleverest ending shots in history.
*HIS GIRL FRIDAY: Undoubtably the funniest, fastest film ever made. Ace reporter Hildy Johnson (the brilliant Rosalind Russell) just wants to quit the newspaper business and settle down with a safe (re: dull) fiance Bruce Baldwin (Ralph Bellamy) in Albany. But her ex-husband/boss/editor Walter Burns (Grant) won't let her go that easily. Russell is probably the only woman who could go shoulder-to-shoulder with Cary Grant, in a way that even Katharine Hepburn and Irene Dunne couldn't have topped. She delivers each of her lines with precise timing, and proves that, like all great Hawksian women, she is "just one of the guys." This was the third collaboration between Grant and Howard Hawks, the versatile director of "Bringing Up Baby", "Scarface", "Only Angels Have Wings" and "The Big Sleep." They made 5 films together, 4 screwball comedies and one action-adventure/drama (ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS). This is the best of their screwball comedies, and Cary Grant's on-screen persona as a lovable rogue who gets the girl by being the crueller of the two and always indirectly asking her to stay, is at his best here. This film is a must-have for any film buff.
*THE TALK OF THE TOWN: Although this is the least flashy of the set, it's a nicely made comedy of social manners directed by George Stevens. Leopold Dilg (Grant) is a political activist who is framed for arson and murder. He hides out in the summer house of Nora Shelley (Jean Arthur), a teacher as well as Leopold's childhood sweetheart. But Nora has rented out the house to a stuffy candidate for a seat on the Supreme Court, Professor Lightcap (Ronald Coleman). After Leopold has introduced himself to the professor as Joseph the Gardener, Nora and Leopold must convince the professor to help Leopold out. The dialogue about social conflict hasn't aged very much and translates well today. Though the love triangle is a little bit stale, all three actors make their roles lively and believable. Jean Arthur particularly has nice chemistry with Grant.
*HOLIDAY: Johnny Case (Grant), a fun-loving man with a joie de vivre, thinks he has met the love of his life in Julia Seton (Doris Nolan), a woman he knows little about other than that he loves her. When he goes to meet her family, he realizes that she belongs to a very rich family of bankers, whose matriarch is particularly stuffy and wants his daughter to marry into another rich family. Johnny also meets Julia's siblings, the alcoholic Ned and independent-thinking Linda (Katharine Hepburn). As the film continues, Johnny and the audience find out just how much Julia is like her father, someone who only cares about money, and we see that Johnny is really a much better match for Linda. But will he follow his brain or his heart? (Little hint: if you actuall think that Cary Grant will ride off into the sunset with someone named Doris Nolan, you've never seen a movie.) Slight predictability aside, this is a sparkling gem. Johnny doesn't want to work all his life; his plan is to save up enough money to spend his days in relaxation and on holiday, then go back to work when he's figured out what he's working for. This type of thinking would become a hit in the 60s, so it's incredibly surprising to see it shown in a movie from 1938. Katharine Hepburn is wonderful in her signature role, and independent woman with a heart full of love underneath it all. I liked how even though you know that Cary and Katharine will end up together, you see genuine chemistry, especially in their body language, between Cary and Doris Nolan. Her flaw isn't initially obvious, unlike how you see a mile ahead that Meg Ryan and Bill Paxton aren't a match in SLEEPLESS IN SEATLE, or Woody Allen and Mariel Hemingway in MANHATTAN. This film was ahead of its time in so many ways, and if not for the lack of sex, violence and today's modern stars, I'd confuse it for a romantic comedy made from today.
*ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS: Bonnie Lee (Jean Arthur again) is on her way back to New York, just passing through a small Columbian town Barranca, home to a group of tough-shelled pilots who fly mail to hard-to-reach places. The leader of these pilots is Geoff Carter (Grant), who has the toughest shell to crack. He never has attachments to anybody, probably due to the frequent deaths of friends. This is shown in the first twenty mintues of the film, when the death of a pilot devestates Bonnie but the gang acts as though nothing has happened. It doesn't take her long to become just "one of the guys", and she decides to stay. Another unexpected visitor comes in the form of Bat Kilgallen--MacPherson, a pilot shunned for previously jumping out of a crashing plane, leaving his engineer to die...the man he left to die was the brother to Kid Dabb (Thomas Mitchell), Geoff's best friend. Also along for the ride is Judy MacPherson, Geoff's ex-love. As tensions both personal and sexual start to rise, we are entertained by a nifty script with numerous memorable quotes, excellent performances and some spectacular flying scenes which aren't cutting-edge by today's standards but nonetheless thrilling. This is a great role for Grant, as a stoic man who gradually unravels the veil to reveal a sad and broken man, something he would do 7 years later in NOTORIOUS. Jean Arthur makes another great Hawksian woman, probably the most vulnerable of them all. Her chemistry with Grant is sweet (just look at the scene where he scoops her up in his arms, thinking her leg is hurt) and natural. An underrated film for both Grant and Hawks, this was a big hit in 1939, considered the golden age of cinema. This film is usually passed over for films like GONE WITH THE WIND and MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON among others, but this melodrama comes off as a standard action film and ends up becoming a revealing character study. If only Michael Bay could take notes from this film...
You won't find a better collection of Cary Grant films in a better boxed set. Included are 10 postcards from his films (Represented for each is film is one picture of him and his leading lady, the other is a copy of the original poster), plus the box package has some swank photos of Cary and some of his greatest quotes ("Everybody wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant."). Don't we all, Cary. Don't we all...
Great Early Cary Grant Movies........2007-03-19
This collection is very good. You have some of Cary Grants best screwball comedies, and a couple of his best dramatic work. The movie Holiday is making its debut on DVD. You also get to see how Cary Grant became a major force in Hollywood. This is worth every cent you pay for it. These are all genuine classic movies.
Thanks, Universal.......2007-01-04
I've been waiting for two of these for years. I gave this five stars for the movies alone. All are clean and easy to watch. Universal did a first class job there. However they then put them in a cardboard case which I don't like. A little more spent on regular plastic cases and cover art would have made this better. That being said I would have paid twice the price as it is.
Average customer rating:
- His Girl Friday
- He looks like that film actor
- A classic screwball comedy
- Breathless take on old-style Chicago news hounds with Grant, Russell and Bellamy
- His Girl Friday dvd
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His Girl Friday/Cary Grant on Film: A Biography
Starring: Cary Grant , Rosalind Russell , Ralph Bellamy , Gene Lockhart , and Porter Hall
Director: Howard Hawks
Manufacturer: Delta
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ASIN: B00003ES2M
Release Date: 1999-11-16 |
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
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.
Average customer rating:
- His Girl Friday
- He looks like that film actor
- A classic screwball comedy
- Breathless take on old-style Chicago news hounds with Grant, Russell and Bellamy
- His Girl Friday dvd
|
His Girl Friday
Starring: Cary Grant , Rosalind Russell , Ralph Bellamy , Gene Lockhart , and Porter Hall
Director: Howard Hawks
Manufacturer: Delta
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ASIN: B00008G8B7
Release Date: 2002-11-26 |
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
B&W/Color
Running Time: 133 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.
Average customer rating:
- Never Wave at a Wave - Refreshing & Undemanding
|
Rosalind Russell Double Feature (B&W)
Starring: Cary Grant , Rosalind Russell , Ralph Bellamy , Gene Lockhart , and Porter Hall
Director: Howard Hawks , and Norman Z. McLeod
Manufacturer: Critic's Choice
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ASIN: B000ACPALW
Release Date: 2006-06-27 |
Product Description
Double feature #1.
His Girl Friday staring Roselind Russell and Cary Grant.
Never Wave at a Wac staring Roselind Russell. Paul Douglas and Marie Wilson.
Customer Reviews:
Never Wave at a Wave - Refreshing & Undemanding.......2007-05-12
This comparatively little known film, with the extremely unlikely storyline is, nevertheless a joy to watch. It is pure escapism with more than a hint of nostalgia for those of us of a certain age. The script is good with some nice one-liners, but because the plot itself is obviously rather weak things become a little laboured. I doubt it would come over as successfully as it does, where it not for the one and only Rosalind Russell - ever able to combine excellent dramatic and comedic acting with the epitome of Hollywood glamour. And where oh where would it have been without that stalwart, always believable, and I think much underrated actor, Paul Douglas as Russell's long suffering ex husband.
If you feel like some light hearted 1950s entertainment you could do a lot worse.
Average customer rating:
|
His Girl Friday
Starring: Cary Grant; Rosalind Russell; Ralph Bellamy; Helen Mack; Gene Lockhart
Director: Howard Hawks
Manufacturer: Reel Enterprises
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ASIN: B000KIX8VK
Release Date: 2006-11-13 |
Description
A reporter helps a condemned man escape. "His Girl Friday" is even better than the very good original, "Front Page". Howard Hawks and Cary Grant have rarely handled comedy better, and Rosalind Russell gives one of her most memorable performances. Grant stars as Walter Burns, a newspaper editor whose top reporter, Hildy Johnson (Russell), is leaving the paper to get married. Walter wants her to stay in order to cover the impending execution of a convicted murderer, but Hildy refuses, leading to a continuing battle of wits between them. Hanks was always interested in what makes the professional tick. Almost all of his films touched on this theme in one way or another.
Customer Reviews:
You're a reporter.......2007-02-06
Howard Hawks was responsible for a lot of outstanding movies, like "The Big Sleep" and "Bringing Up Baby." But one of his best was wild, witty screwball comedy "His Girl Friday," with Cary Grant as (once more) a divorced man who won't give up so easily. You'll never look at a rolltop desk the same way again.
Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell) comes into her ex-husband's newspaper office. Walter (Cary Grant) is ready to give her her old job -- until she announces that she's marrying a nice, dull insurance agent (Ralph Bellamy). Walter insists that Hildy can't just go to Albany and be a housewife, and she insists that that's exactly what she wants.
So the wily ex bribes Hildy to cover a sensational cop-killing case -- the convicted man is scheduled to be executed in the morning -- and takes the opportunity to make life difficult for her fiancee. Now Hildy tries to get the facts behind the cop-shooting, while battling with a corrupt mayor who wants the convicted man dead. Is the sordid world of journalism -- and Walter -- what Hildy really wants? Looks like it.
Sometimes even if people don't get along, they fit so perfectly that trying to get together with someone else is pointless. Personally I've never experienced that (yet), but I've seen couples who do work the way Hildy and Walter do. Howard Hawks captures the feel of such couples perfectly.
In addition to the screwball romance, Hawks mixes in a cop-killing, a prison break, an attempted suicide, a conspiracy for mayoral votes, and a lot of reporters slavering for a hit story. It's a tight, taut little story peppered with humor, like the convict in the roll-top desk, or Bellamy's imperious mother being dragged out of the building.
Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell have electric chemistry in this movie. It's a shame that they apparently didn't collaborate on any other movies, because in terms of comedy skill, they fit like two pieces of a puzzle -- they jabber together, trade fast barbs, and lob insults that don't pierce each other's skin.
Their dialogue is as fast as their wits: "I wish you hadn't done that, Hildy." "Done what?" "Divorced me. It makes a man feel he's not wanted!" And on the sidelines, Bellamy has an amusing role as the rather slow-witted fiancee whom Grant charms and then gets arrested. (Interestingly, Bellamy played the same role in "Awful Truth," another Grant movie about a divorced guy trying to win his ex-wife)
"The Awful Truth" is one of those classic movies that leaves you with a warm glow and a cynical chuckle. Hilarious from start to finish, especially with Grant and Russell.
Average customer rating:
- His Girl Friday
- He looks like that film actor
- A classic screwball comedy
- Breathless take on old-style Chicago news hounds with Grant, Russell and Bellamy
- His Girl Friday dvd
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His Girl Friday
Starring: Cary Grant , Rosalind Russell , Ralph Bellamy , Gene Lockhart , and Porter Hall
Director: Howard Hawks
Manufacturer: Alpha Video
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD
General
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Satire
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Classic Comedies
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Screwball Comedy
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Cary Grant
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Corporate Life
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Bellamy, Ralph
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Biberman, Abner
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Edwards, Cliff
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Gilbert, Billy
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Grant, Cary
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Hall, Porter
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Jenks, Frank
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Karns, Roscoe
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Kruger, Alma
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Lockhart, Gene
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