His Girl Friday (1940)

The ultimate rapid-fire screwball comedy and my personal all-time favorite movie. Cary Grant, in his greatest performance, is the searingly charismatic big city newspaper editor who connives to win back Hildy (Rosalind Russell), the journalist ex-wife whom he still loves. She’s about to give up the career and marry her way to white-picket-fence normalcy via her new man, a dopey milquetoast insurance salesman (Ralph Bellamy). Cary Grant knows the truth about her, though—Hildy’s a newspaper reporter through and through, a tough lady and a powerful writer made to live on the edge. This film is all about how he jumps through hoops of fire to get her to recognize who she really is.
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This was made at a time when the job of newspaper journalist seemed seedy to a lot of people. Many reporters then weren’t college educated. They were often seen as sneaky, untrustworthy types who fraternized with crooks and lived crazy lives unsuitable for raising a family. But, of course, that’s extremely romantic, too. This film makes being a newspaper reporter look as fun as running away with the circus.

In the original stage play, The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, Hildy is a man. The story goes that, in pre-production, His Girl Friday director Howard Hawks did a reading of the script with his female secretary, which lead to a lightning bolt moment of inspiration when he noticed how much juicier Hecht and MacArthur’s story would be if Hildy was a woman. Hawks was right. File His Girl Friday among that small number of films that improve on its source material.