His Girl Friday

Like a quintessentially perfect pop song, true to its time and place, clever and ever-so-optimistic, His Girl Friday lifts us up and carries us along on a dogged path of lyricism.

A bit of history: when I was about ten, my parents newly divorced, I spent the weekends at my dad’s house. I remember with a child’s vivid clarity lying on the floor against one of those 1970’s corduroy floor cushions, propped up in my pop’s arms, and watching the That’s Entertainment series -- mostly musical clips from MGM’s black-and-white classics. I cut my teeth on Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire, Judy Garland and Ann Miller. Their bold, East Coast way of speaking, as if every proclamation were first-time and fresh: “Lets put on a show!” and they did and it was colorful, and urgent and just-this-side of divine.

Things were so simple then; this 1940’s world mirroring the simple joy I felt nestled up in the crook of my dad’s arms, the clip-clap of tap dancing bouncing off the screen and the ebb and flow of love lost and gained.

Last night, for whatever reason I know not, G agreed to watch a B&W flick from the classic days; I didn’t question it, just told him to push play and we settled into a superbly entertaining evening of Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell in one of the most deliciously molten relationships in cinematic history. This is verbal choreography at its best, the characters dipping and diving through their lexical fencing.

The film is a battle of the sexes, the relevance of its message amazingly intact 60 years later: As women, what is our place? The house on the hill and a handful of children? A career where success is clawing and spitting and shoving your way to the top? A husband who punches a safeguarded clock or a life-partner who digs his heels into a doggedly animated vision of the world and whisks you along on his magic carpet ride?

Russell is breathtakingly at ease with her womanhood: tall, lanky, non-blonde, she exudes power, confidence, hunger and an agility with a turn-of-phrase that is stupefying. She is the spark to Grant’s self-centered ego-driven flame and together they heat the screen. It’s like a rap duet, so contemporary is the feeling of their rapport.

You can get this all on Wikipedia, but let me just give some quick background info: His Girl Friday was released in 1940 and directed by Howard Hawks, an adaptation of the play The Front Page. So fascinating (to me anyway) to know that they changed the role of Russell’s character, Hildy Johnson, from male to female.

The film was originally supposed to be a straightforward adaptation of the play with both the editor and reporter being men. But during auditions, Howard Hawks's secretary 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 as well as the ex-wife of editor Walter Burns. Most of the original dialogue and all of the characters' names (with the exception of Bruce Baldwin, Hildy's fiance, who was of course a woman in the play) were left the same.

Hawks had a very difficult time casting this film. While the choice of Cary Grant was almost instantaneous, the casting of Hildy was a far more extended process. At first, Hawks wanted Carole Lombard, whom he had directed in the comedy but the cost of hiring Lombard in her new status as a freelancer proved to be far too expensive, and Columbia could not afford her. Katharine Hepburn, Claudette Colbert, Margaret Sullivan, Ginger Rogers and Irene Dunbar were offered the role, but turned it down, Dunne because she felt the part was too small and needed to be expanded. Joan Crawford was reportedly also considered.

The beauty of the black-and-white shadows is superb as are the scenes with Russell rushing back-and-forth among several hand-held candlestick phones with all her journalistic fervor, the technological irony alive and well. Communication was just as much a matter of multi-tasking in 1940 as it is with our iPhones and Blackberries today.

My favorite line of the film: "Get back in there, you monk turtle!"

My favorite bit of trivia (courtesy of G): In his early 50’s, Cary Grant underwent a series of controlled experiments with LSD. He ultimately became the first mainstream celebrity to hail the virtues of psychedelic drugs. In his autobiography, he writes eloquently about the benefits he derived from these psychiatrically monitored acid trips:

“The shock of each revelation brings with it an anguish of sadness for what was not known before in the wasted years of ignorance and, at the same time, an ecstasy of joy at being freed from the shackles of such ignorance.”