This film's script must have run 200 pages—twice the standard length. The overlapping dialogue moves at breakneck speed, and parts of it were ad-libbed. Directed by Howard Hawks, the screenplay was written by Charles Lederer based on the 1928 play, The Front Page, by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur. Of course, I'm talking about His Girl Friday. If you haven't seen it in a while, you may want to give it a fresh look. The YouTube print below is gorgeous and crystal clear. [Photo above, from left, of Rosalind Russell, Cary Grant and Howard Hawks on the set of His Girl Friday]
The screwball comedy is about a dashing hard-boiled newspaper editor and his attempts to keep his ace reporter and ex-wife from remarrying. It stars Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell. Hawks purposefully set out to break the record for fastest film dialogue, much of it delivered with machine-gun naturalism as Grant's and Russell's lines playfully overlap. According to an early 1970s interview with Russell conducted by James Bawden, Irene Dunne, Ginger Rogers and Jean Arthur all turned down the role. Russell also said she hired a gag writer to come up with snappy comebacks to keep up with Grant, who improvised quite a few lines (including the crack that her future husband looks like "that actor, Ralph Bellamy"). As a newspaperman since 1976 who started when the business was still hot type, I've always had a soft spot for this film. [Photo above of Rosalind Russell]
Here's His Girl Friday. Note the spirited pace and how gifted all of these actors were to memorize the lines and pull off this traffic jam of a script with remarkable ease and rhythm...
