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Empire Magazine (2008) Greatest Movies List - #58: His Girl Friday

It can be a bit weird watching movies that were shot decades ago as well as movies in which the characters work in your own profession. With His Girl Friday (1940) I get a helping of both cases since a lot of this movie is set in a newspaper office close to 80 years ago. Some things portrayed in the movie have changed, some things have stayed the same, and as with most movies set in a certain workplace some things are down right inaccurate. However there’s no denying this remains a hugely entertaining story thanks to the rapid-fire dialogue, the film’s humour and the chemistry between the two leads.

I think I first saw His Girl Friday during a university course on classic movies, but I recently re-watched it to refresh my memory. Upon first viewing I was just a university student and now I have been working as a journalist for a few years. Since then the terms “fake news” and “alternative facts” have sadly become a part of the vernacular, and it was hard not to think of that while watching the movie’s fake journalist sometimes stretching the facts in order to increase their readership. However I did like seeing them running about in the late hours of the night trying to be the first ones to crack a big story. That’s still an admirable goal nowadays.

The movie, directed by classic Hollywood era director Howard Hawks, focuses on two journalists over roughly one day. Rather it focuses on editor Walter Burns (Cary Grant), and his ex-wife Hildegard “Hildy” Johnson (Rosalind Russell) who wants out of the newspaper business. This being the 1940s, Walter refers to Hildy as a great newspaperman while admitting she is the best in the business regardless of her gender. Yet clearly their marriage did not work out since they are divorced and Hildy has come back to the newspaper offices only to announce to Walter that she is leaving the big city for good and moving to Albany, New York, with her new fiancé Bruce (Ralph Bellamy) the very next day.

For Walter this cannot happen. Setting aside the fact he still loves his ex-wife, he is convinced she is meant to be reporting on big stories in the city and not living with some insurance salesman and his mother (Alma Kruger). To make sure this doesn’t happen he comes up with one crazy scheme after another to keep Hildy away from Bruce, whether that means getting Bruce arrested, or even worse, having Bruce’s mother sort of abducted.

In the meantime there is a really big story cooking up in the courthouse that could make a break a journalist’s career. A bookkeeper named Earl Williams (John Qualen) is scheduled to be executed for murder in a few hours unless a psychiatric evaluation or a new development leads to a stay of execution from the governor. There are political implications since the man Earl shot and killed was an African-American police officer and there is a mayoral election coming soon. As you can imagine, that particular plot point would have very different implications in this day and age.

While Walter is busy trying to salvage his love life, he is also trying to lure Hildy back to work to cover Earl’s story hoping just a taste will convince to stay on as a journalist. Some pretty ludicrous and wacky things ensue, from Earl escaping prison and hiding in a journalist’s desk, to Walter and Hildy playing phone tag with several people while trying to break the story. That last part is especially funny given that they are using those old phones that now belong in museums. Nowadays they would be on different cell phones while looking for trending stories on Twitter.

One very striking thing about the film is the rapid-fire dialogue. Every character speaks their lines as though they’ve ingested five cups of coffee first thing in the morning. People frequently speak over each other while trying to transmit crucial information. You can tell the script is based on a play given how much the story relies on dialogue and the action is set in about two key locations.


There are many things that could have gone wrong with this movie, from bad chemistry between the leads, to the story not being a good fit for the big screen. Yet everything here works. Grant and Russell are perfect as an on-screen couple, the dialogue feels natural even though it clearly isn’t and the movies goes by like a breeze while putting a big smile on your face. As a journalism movie His Girl Friday is not All the President’s Men in terms of accuracy, but in terms of entertainment it’s an absolute classic comedy movie. 

               
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