His Girl Friday is a screwball comedy film directed by Howard Hawkes in 1940. The film stars Carey Grant as
newspaper editor Walter Burns. He finds out that his ex-wife Hidly, played by Rosalind Russell, and is
getting remarried. Walter uses everything in his power to stop the wedding from happening, but
throughout the day his plan to keep Hidly quickly escalates into bigger problems causing chaos.
The film is adapted from a Broadway play titled The Front Page. Although it’s somewhat the same
premise, the film version was changed to add a story line. The play is about two male news reporters, who
ironically have the same name as the two leads in the film version, who are trying to interview and hide a
convict that is on death row. The difference here is that the two male leads were working together as co-
workers, whereas in the film there was a back story given with the two leads being a divorced couple. The
film’s simple change shows that Walters motive all along is to get Hidly to stay in the station longer just to
write a paper on the convict. While he uses his sharp skills to his advantage he creates situations that
serve as an obstacle to his plan. The Front Page’s character of Walter Burns and Hidly Johnson we’re more
like rivals. Hidly was getting married and leaving the newspaper and Burns constructed the same kind of
devious plan to get Hidly to continue writing about the convict.
In my opinion I find the film version to be more fitting for this genre of comedy. And overall I really
enjoyed watching it. It’s a ridiculous situation for an ex-husband to have so much jealously that he forms
a plan to get his ex-wife to get caught up in her work, in which she does, and not remarry. It’s a unique set
up for a film relationship but has grown today into a typical Hollywood film formula that’s been done to
death. Usually these days most romantic-comedies involve a guy & girl meeting, falling in love, breaking
up, but have them reconcile and have it all work out for them in the end. His Girl Friday seemed like the
type of film that started that trend but also at the same time the formula was entirely different, we start
with the characters already broken up which provided a lot of witty dialogue between the two.
