Barnes & Noble

One of the all-time-great comedies, His Girl Friday is a breakneck-paced joyride through the newspaper business, filled with some of the sharpest rapid-fire dialogue to ever grace the screen. Directed by Hollywood master Howard Hawks and adapted from the play The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, His Girl Friday stars Cary Grant as a newspaper editor who will stop at nothing to lure his former star reporter (Rosalind Russell) -- who also happens to be his ex-wife -- back onto the newspaper and into his life. Hawks's typically clean, unobtrusive direction gives the actors plenty of room to work, and they make the most of it, reveling in the witty repartee and sprinting gleefully through scenes of nonstop, overlapping dialogue that may set a words-per-minute record. The jaded view of the press that marked the original play survives intact, but Hawks's addition of a romantic story line (the Russell character was a man in The Front Page) turns the material into a battle of the sexes -- a classic of the form. Grant, of course, delivers his lines with effortless impeccability; his sense of comic timing is nothing short of perfect. Russell matches him stride for stride and line for line, making for the kind of combustible screen chemistry that is the stuff of legend. The Columbia DVD includes a commentary track and four short documentaries. Gregory Baird

Barnes & Noble

One of the all-time-great comedies, His Girl Friday is a breakneck-paced joyride through the newspaper business, filled with some of the sharpest rapid-fire dialogue to ever grace the screen. Directed by Hollywood master Howard Hawks and adapted from the play The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, His Girl Friday stars Cary Grant as a newspaper editor who will stop at nothing to lure his former star reporter (Rosalind Russell) -- who also happens to be his ex-wife -- back onto the newspaper and into his life. Hawks's typically clean, unobtrusive direction gives the actors plenty of room to work, and they make the most of it, reveling in the witty repartee and sprinting gleefully through scenes of nonstop, overlapping dialogue that may set a words-per-minute record. The jaded view of the press that marked the original play survives intact, but Hawks's addition of a romantic story line (the Russell character was a man in The Front Page) turns the material into a battle of the sexes -- a classic of the form. Grant, of course, delivers his lines with effortless impeccability; his sense of comic timing is nothing short of perfect. Russell matches him stride for stride and line for line, making for the kind of combustible screen chemistry that is the stuff of legend. The Columbia DVD includes a commentary track and four short documentaries. Gregory Baird

All Movie Guide

The second screen version of the Ben Hecht/Charles MacArthur play The Front Page, His Girl Friday changed hard-driving newspaper reporter Hildy Johnson from a man to a woman, transforming the story into a scintillating battle of the sexes. Rosalind Russell plays Hildy, about to foresake journalism for marriage to cloddish Bruce Baldwin (Ralph Bellamy). Cary Grant plays Walter Burns, Hildy's editor and ex-husband, who feigns happiness about her impending marriage as a ploy to win her back. The ace up Walter's sleeve is a late-breaking news story concerning the impending execution of anarchist Earl Williams (John Qualen), a blatant example of political chicanery that Hildy can't pass up. The story gets hotter when Williams escapes and is hidden from the cops by Hildy and Walter--right in the prison pressroom. His Girl Friday may well be the fastest comedy of the 1930s, with kaleidoscope action, instantaneous plot twists, and overlapping dialogue. And if you listen closely, you'll hear a couple of "in" jokes, one concerning Cary Grant's real name (Archie Leach), and another poking fun at Ralph Bellamy's patented "poor sap" screen image. Subsequent versions of The Front Page included Billy Wilder's 1974 adaptation, which restored Hildy Johnson's manhood in the form of Jack Lemmon, and 1988's Switching Channels, which cast Burt Reynolds in the Walter Burns role and Kathleen Turner as the Hildy Johnson counterpart. Hal Erickson

Product Details

• UPC: 018713813657
• Source: GOOD TIMES VIDEO
• Region Code: 0
• Aspect Ratio: Pre-1954 Standard (1.33.1)
• Presentation: B&W
• Sound: Dolby Digital Mono
• Language: English
• Time: 1:32:00
• Sales Rank: 24,754

This DVD is also available as part of a box set:

• My Man Godfrey (1936) / His Girl Friday
• Cary Grant Collector's Edition
• The Cary Grant Box Set
• Family Collection: 250 Movies
• Grant/Hope Comedy Collection
• Comedy Classics: 100 Movie Pack
• Classic Comedy Collection
• The Awful Truth / Born Yesterday / His Girl Friday

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