With His Girl Friday, Howard Hawks rewrites The Front Page, the splendid 1931 film by Lewis Milestone, with a twist that’s both delightful and deeply interpretive: Hildy becomes a woman (Rosalind Russell), while Walter Burns is played by Cary Grant. Hawks recounted that the idea emerged almost by accident: when he mentioned it to Ben Hecht, Hecht replied, “I wish I had thought of that first.” Beyond the work dynamic, Hildy and Walter are a divorced couple, adding spice to Cary Grant’s schemes against the third wheel, Ralph Bellamy’s fiancé.
A brisk pace, frantic dialogue, and live sound. Working from a screenplay by Charles Lederer, Hawks creates a memorable screwball comedy, a remake of Lewis Milestone’s splendid 1931 film The Front Page, featuring Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant in top form.
...This is a memorable screwball comedy in which Hawks aims to achieve an even faster pace than Milestone’s. Charles Lederer’s screenplay features rapid-fire, overlapping, and incredibly witty dialogue (“He’s in the hospital; they fear he might recover”) and even includes a couple of meta-jokes. In top form, Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant embody the classic Hawksian “heroic couple”: a man and a woman, two professionals who think alike.
