"His Girl Friday" - Film Review

Charles Leder’s script for His Girl Friday (based on the play “The Front Page” by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur) has dialogue that feels like it’s meant to be recited. It’s the kind of dialogue that you want to see great actors speak at a rapid-fire pace, as you try to keep up with all the double entendres, play on words, and general witticisms.

Walter Burns (Carry Grant) and Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russel) are quarreling exes who trade jabs and barbs at one another with an ease that’s astounding. Hildy is engaged to and plans to get married to Bruce Baldwin (Ralph Bellamy), but Walter will let nothing of the sort happen: he plans to win her back, making her realize she doesn’t want to give up newspaper writing. 

He sucks her into writing a story about a man accused of murdering a cop, and, before either one knows it, the story is snowballing more and more until neither can think of anything else but making sure the paper has an exclusive scoop on the story. 

His Girl Friday is a classic example of screwball comedy. Screwball comedies peaked in the 1940's, and featured farcical situations, fast paced repartee, mismatched pairings, and plots about relationships and marriage. The genre was used by studios to get away with risqué elements under the Hays Code. Though the genre has mostly died out, its elements still remain alive and well today in many comedic and romantic movies.  

Russel and Grant give some fantastic performances, and it remains as hilarious today as it was over seventy years ago. 

Grade: A-