His Girl Friday

Mintonio S. 

FILM 2600: Film History 

Dr. Cathleen Londino

Fall  2011

        “His Girl Friday” was a very fast paced movie. The dialogue was extremely quick but was also easy to understand. You would think a movie with such a fast pace would be hard on the ears but surprisingly it wasn’t. The comedic approach was quite different compared to what we are used to nowadays although I could understand why it would have been a success. This is one of those types of movies that not only is humorous but also keeps you on the edge of your seat with all the suspense.

“His Girl Friday” goes down as one of the finest newspaper films as well as the 13th best comedy of all time. Director Howard Hawks was deeply inspired by a play called “The Front Page” created by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthurs. He considered this play to have one of the best modern dialogues of its time. It is because of this play that “His Girl Friday” came about. It was in 1939 when Ben Hecht had given Hawks the green light to create an altered version of his play resulting in them both starting work on the script. They really made no progress until the involvement of Hecht’s protégé, Charles Lederer. It was Charles that insisted the movie would be more focused if Walter and Hildy had been married and previously divorced. Hecht unfortunately didn’t get to finish the script due to other projects he had to take care of. This resulted in Lederer finishing the script as well as taking all the credit. The film had originally been called “The Bigger They Are” until it was changed to a more romantic title “His Girl Friday” in 1949.
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        In my opinion, the movie was very enjoyable. Although it was long, it never ran on or became dull. The dialogue was very intriguing which made it very interesting because you didn’t know what was going to happen next with all the shenanigans that took place. It was definitely a different comedy than what I am used to today being that there are many different genres of comedy now a days. Watching this movie has given me a greater sense of how comedy has come along way. This movie definitely goes down in my book as one of the greatest old school comedies I have ever seen. Well written and well conducted piece.