His Girl Friday is a 1940 American screwball comedy film directed by Howard Hawks, starring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell and featuring Ralph Bellamy and Gene Lockhart. It was released by Columbia Pictures. The plot centers on a newspaper editor named Walter Burns who is about to lose his ace reporter and ex-wife, Hildy Johnson, newly engaged to another man. Burns suggests they cover one more story together, getting themselves entangled in the case of murderer Earl Williams as Burns desperately tries to win back his wife. The screenplay was adapted from the 1928 play The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur. This was the second time the play had been adapted for the screen, the first occasion being the 1931 film which kept the original title The Front Page.
The script for His Girl Friday was written by Charles Lederer, with the biggest alteration to the source material being the change of Hildy Johnson's gender, an idea introduced by Hawks. Filming began in September 1939 and finished in November, seven days behind schedule. Production was delayed because the frequent improvisation and numerous ensemble scenes required many retakes. Hawks encouraged his actors to be aggressive and spontaneous. His Girl Friday has been noted for its surprises, comedy, and rapid, overlapping dialogue. Hawks was determined to break the record for the fastest film dialogue, at the time held by The Front Page. He used a sound mixer on the set to increase the speed of dialogue and held a showing of the two films next to each other to prove how fast his film was.
His Girl Friday was No. 19 on American Film Institute's 100 Years ... 100 Laughs and was selected in 1993 for preservation in the United States National Film Registry of the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The film entered the public domain in 1969 because the copyright was not renewed; the play it was based on remained under copyright for several decades until it expired in 2024, fully releasing the film from remaining copyright. It has often been considered one of the best comedy films of all time.
Plot
Hard-boiled newspaper editor Walter Burns learns that his ex-wife and former star reporter, Hildy Johnson, is about to marry insurance man Bruce Baldwin and settle down as a housewife in Albany. Determined to sabotage these plans, Walter convinces a reluctant Hildy to cover one last story: interviewing Earl Williams the day before his execution for murdering a policeman. Walter maintains that Williams is innocent and that the city fathers are only going through with the execution to curry favor with voters. Hildy accepts the assignment on the condition that Walter buy a large life insurance policy, earning Bruce a hefty commission. Wary of Walter's trickery, Hildy has Bruce give her, for safekeeping, the $500 he is carrying. She instructs Bruce to hide the $2500 certified check for the insurance premium in the lining of his hat to prevent Walter's pickpocket associate, Louie, from stealing it back.
While Hildy works on a story sympathetic to Williams, based on irresistible impulse in an insanity defense, Walter does everything he can to keep Bruce from taking her to Albany. Louie plants a watch on Baldwin, who is arrested for theft, forcing Hildy to bail Baldwin out of jail (Baldwin finds his wallet gone as well as other personal items). Exasperated, Hildy quits, but when Williams escapes, her journalistic instincts get the better of her.
During a psychiatric sanity reenactment of Williams's crime using Hartwell's gun, Williams escapes by shooting Sheriff Hartwell. Hildy uses $450 of Baldwin's money to buy the story from Warden Cooley, money Walter promises to reimburse, sending Louie with counterfeit money. Walter frames Bruce again for "mashing" blonde Evangeline, another associate, who faked a dizzy spell; Baldwin is immediately sent back to jail. Meanwhile, a messenger from the governor arrives at the mayor's office with a reprieve for Williams. Determined to hang Williams, the mayor bribes the messenger to delay delivering the reprieve until too late. The mayor gives a "shoot to kill" order on sight for Williams. Williams enters through the window of the press room where Hildy is working, holding her at gunpoint. She hides him in a rolltop desk, notifies Walter, and puts off bailing out Bruce. Williams's girlfriend, Molly, arrives on scene and helps Hildy distract everyone from Williams.
Hildy's future mother-in-law, Mrs. Baldwin, enters the press room, having eluded a kidnapper sent by Walter. She reveals to the mayor and the reporters that Hildy has claimed to have found Williams. To redirect the press from Williams, Molly jumps out the window, surviving the fall, but wounded. Walter arrives and attempts to trick the Sheriff into carrying out the desk from the building by impounding the Post's property. The Sheriff finds the gun Williams left in the room, recognizing it as his own gun. Mrs. Baldwin returns, having escaped from a second kidnapping attempt, accusing Walter of the kidnapping. Denying the charge emphatically, Walter pounds on the desk three times, unintentionally giving the signal to Williams that he can emerge. Williams reveals himself and is apprehended.
Williams is taken back to his cell, and Walter and Hildy are arrested for abetting his escape. At this point, the messenger returns with the reprieve, telling the mayor that he has decided not to take the bribe after all. Walter uses this information to blackmail the mayor into letting them go.
Walter tells Hildy she is free to go to Albany with Bruce. Dejected by this, Hildy realizes she still loves Walter and is not ready to give up her journalist career. Bruce then calls to say he has been arrested again, this time for carrying counterfeit money. Recognizing Walter's ploy, Hildy is relieved to learn he never had any intention of letting her go quietly. Walter proposes to Hildy, promising to take her on the honeymoon they never had in Niagara Falls. He then learns there is a strike in Albany, on the way to Niagara Falls. Hildy agrees to honeymoon in Albany, accepting that Walter will never change.
Cast
Production
Development and writing While producing Only Angels Have Wings (1939), Howard Hawks tried to pitch a remake of The Front Page to Harry Cohn of Columbia Pictures. Cary Grant was almost immediately cast in the film, but Cohn initially intended Grant to play the reporter, with radio commentator Walter Winchell as the editor. Hawks's production that became His Girl Friday was originally intended to be a straightforward adaptation of The Front Page, with both the editor and reporter being male. During auditions, Howard Hawks's secretary, a woman, read reporter Hildy Johnson's lines. Hawks liked the way the dialogue sounded coming from a woman, resulting in the script being rewritten to make Hildy female and the ex-wife of editor Walter Burns played by Cary Grant. Cohn purchased the rights for The Front Page in January 1939.
Although Hawks considered the dialogue of The Front Page to be "the finest modern dialogue that had been written", more than half of it was replaced with what Hawks believed to be better lines. Some of the original dialogue was left the same, as were all of the characters' names with two exceptions: Hildy's fiancé (now no longer a fiancée) was given the name Bruce Baldwin, and the name of the comic messenger bringing the pardon from the governor was changed from Pincus to Pettibone. Harry Cohn of Columbia Pictures approved Hawks's idea for the film project. Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, the writers of the original play, were unavailable for screenwriting. Consequently, Hawks considered Gene Fowler as the screenwriter, but he declined the job because he disliked the changes to the screenplay Hawks intended to make. Hawks instead recruited Charles Lederer, who had worked on the adaptation for The Front Page, to work on the screenplay. Though he was not credited, Hecht assisted Lederer in the adaptation. Additions were made at the beginning of the screenplay by Lederer to give the characters a convincing backstory; it was decided that Hildy and Walter would be divorced with Hildy's intentions of remarriage serving as Walter's motivation to win her back.
During writing, Hawks was in Palm Springs directing Only Angels Have Wings, but stayed in close contact with Lederer and Hecht. Hecht helped Lederer with some organizational revisions, and Lederer finished the script on May 22. After two more drafts completed by July, Hawks called Morrie Ryskind to revise the dialogue and make it more interesting. Ryskind revised the script throughout the summer and finished by the end of September before filming began. More than half of the original dialogue was rewritten. The film lacks one of the well-known final lines of the play, "the son-of-a-bitch stole my watch!", because films of the time were more censored than Pre-Code Hollywood films, and Hawks felt that the line was too overused. Ryskind developed a new ending in which Walter and Hildy start fighting immediately after saying "I do" in the wedding they hold in the newsroom, with one of the characters stating, "I think it's gonna turn out all right this time." However, after revealing the ending to a few writers at Columbia one evening, Ryskind was surprised to hear that his ending was filmed on another set a few days later. Forced to create another ending, Ryskind ended up thanking the anonymous Columbia writer, because he felt that his ending and one of his final lines, "I wonder if Bruce can put us up", were better than what he had written originally. After reviewing the screenplay, the Hays Office saw no issues with the film, besides a few derogatory comments towards newsmen and some illegal behavior of the characters. During some rewrites for censors, Hawks focused on finding a lead actress for his film.
Casting
Hawks had difficulty casting His Girl Friday. While the choice of Cary Grant was almost instantaneous, the casting of Hildy was a more extended process. At first, Hawks wanted Carole Lombard, whom he had directed in the screwball comedy Twentieth Century (1934), but the cost of hiring Lombard in her new status as a freelancer proved to be far too high, and Columbia could not afford her. Katharine Hepburn, Claudette Colbert, Margaret Tallichet, Margaret Sullavan, Ginger Rogers, Lana Turner, and Irene Dunne were offered the role, but turned it down. Dunne rejected the role because she felt the part was too small and needed to be expanded. Jean Arthur was suspended by the studio when she refused to take it. Joan Crawford reportedly was considered. Hawks then turned to Rosalind Russell, who had just finished MGM's The Women (1939). Russell was upset when she discovered from a New York Times article that Cohn was "stuck" with her after attempting to cast many other actresses. Before Russell's first meeting with Hawks, to show her apathy, she took a swim and entered his office with wet hair, causing him to do a "triple take". Russell confronted him about this casting issue; he dismissed her quickly and asked her to go to wardrobe.
Filming After makeup, wardrobe, and photography tests, filming began on 27 September 1939. The film had the working title of The Bigger They Are.
The film is noted for its rapid-fire repartee, using overlapping dialogue to make conversations sound more realistic, with one character speaking before another finishes. Although overlapping dialogue is specified and cued in the 1928 play script by Hecht and MacArthur,Hecht, Ben, & Charles MacArthur, The Front Page, 1928. Samuel French, Inc. Hawks told Peter Bogdanovich: