11 Intriguing Details About 'His Girl Friday'

In His Girl Friday (1940), fast-talking New York City newspaper editor Walter Burns (Cary Grant) will go to any lengths to keep his top reporter, Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell), from leaving the newsroom. But Hildy, who also happens to be Walter's ex-wife, has her own plans: she's ready to settle down in Albany with the bumbling insurance salesman Bruce Baldwin (Ralph Bellamy), and there's nothing that can make her change her mind—until Burns offers her the scoop of a lifetime. Directed by Howard Hawks, His Girl Friday brilliantly mixes elements of a newsroom drama, a gripping crime tale, a romantic comedy, and stands as one of the greatest screwball comedies of all time. Here are some lesser-known facts about this fast-paced classic.

1. IT'S INSPIRED BY A PLAY.

Howard Hawks' film His Girl Friday is based on the popular Broadway play The Front Page. Originally staged in 1928, The Front Page, written by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, quickly became a Broadway sensation, with The New York Times describing it as 'loud, rapid, coarse, and relentlessly entertaining' (although they also mentioned, somewhat disapprovingly, that its characters used some of the most blunt profanity and crude jokes ever heard on stage). However, Hawks wasn't the first to bring the story to the big screen; Lewis Milestone directed an adaptation in 1931 also called The Front Page. Billy Wilder gave his own take on it in 1974, starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, and CBS even adapted it into a TV series in 1949. The original play has been revived multiple times, both on Broadway and off, with a notable revival in October 2016 featuring Nathan Lane.

2. HOWARD HUGHES WAS BEHIND THE FIRST FILM ADAPTATION.

His Girl Friday might be the most iconic film version of The Front Page, but it was the eccentric aviation mogul Howard Hughes who initially brought it to the silver screen in 1931. At the time, Hughes was already making a name for himself as a film producer in Hollywood and had just directed and produced the expensive and controversial Hell’s Angels (1930), a World War I film centered around combat pilots, which resulted in the tragic deaths of several stunt pilots, and Hughes himself had been severely injured during one of the airplane stunts. In contrast, The Front Page was a relatively safe production, as it had no risky stunts and was based on a popular existing play. The film was eventually nominated for three Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor (for Adolphe Menjou, who portrayed Walter Burns).

3. HAWKS MADE HILDY A WOMAN AFTER A DINNER PARTY READING.

In the original play, both Hildy and Walter were male reporters, but Hawks had a moment of creative inspiration while discussing the play at a dinner party. In an interview, he

"We were having dinner one evening at the house, with six or eight people, and we were talking about dialogue. I mentioned that the best modern dialogue in the world came from Hecht and MacArthur. After dinner, we went inside, and I had two copies of their play The Front Page. There was a woman there who was quite good, so I asked her, 'Read the reporter's part, and I’ll read the editor's.' Halfway through, I thought, 'My goodness, it’s much better with a woman reading it!' You see, The Front Page was originally written as a love story between two men. They had deep affection for each other. I realized it would be much easier to create a love story with a man and a woman, and that would allow for some stronger scenes. The dialogue needed very little modification; it was quite simple."

4. HAWKS WANTED TO CREATE THE "FASTEST" FILM …

Hawks wasn’t just aiming for His Girl Friday to be a fast-paced film; he wanted it to be the fastest film ever. 'Everyone claimed that the original Front Page was the fastest movie ever made,' Hawks recalled in an interview. 'I said, 'I want to prove that the original was not as fast.''

5. … SO HE WROTE OVERLAPPING DIALOGUE.

To quicken the pace of His Girl Friday, Hawks adopted two main techniques: he wrote overlapping dialogue and instructed the actors to speak faster than in real life. His goal was to create dialogue that felt authentic to how people actually speak, with characters interrupting, cutting off, or finishing each other’s sentences. In the film, Hildy and Walter are constantly talking over each other, cutting each other off, or finishing each other’s thoughts. Hawks believed that this rapid dialogue would make the entire film feel faster. 'I noticed that when people talk, they often talk over one another, especially when they’re arguing or talking quickly,' the director explained. 'So we structured the dialogue to make the beginning and ends of sentences unnecessary.'

6. THE SCREENPLAY SPANNED 191 PAGES.

The overlapping dialogue significantly impacted the screenplay's length. Typically, one page of dialogue corresponds to about one minute of film. However, due to the constant overlapping and simultaneous speech in His Girl Friday, the film ended up being a fast-paced 92 minutes, despite the screenplay suggesting a much longer 191 minutes.

7. THE FILM IS FULL OF INSIDE JOKES.

While working from a script, Hawks encouraged his actors to improvise throughout the film. Cary Grant, in particular, managed to sneak a couple of Hollywood inside jokes into his lines. In one scene, Walter casually mentions a man named Archie Leach, saying, 'Listen, the last man who said that to me was Archie Leach, just a week before he cut his throat.' (Archibald Leach was Cary Grant's real name.) In another moment, Grant, while describing Hildy’s fiancé, Bruce Baldwin, remarks, 'He looks like that actor... Ralph Bellamy!' Of course, Bruce Baldwin was played by Ralph Bellamy.

8. ROSALIND RUSSELL HIRED A WRITER TO HELP WITH HER AD LIB.

While ad-libbing came effortlessly to Grant, who had honed his improvisational skills in the vaudeville circuit, Russell sometimes found it difficult to come up with jokes on the spot. Not wanting to be overshadowed by her co-star, Russell hired a writer from her brother’s advertising agency for $200 a week to write jokes for her. Although she kept the arrangement a secret from Hawks, Grant eventually caught on and was said to tease Russell every morning before filming by asking her, 'What have you got today?'

9. RALPH BELLAMY AND CARY GRANT HAD SIMILAR ROLES IN THE AWFUL TRUTH.

Only three years prior to His Girl Friday, Grant and Bellamy appeared together in Leo McCarey’s screwball comedy The Awful Truth, where they played almost identical roles. In His Girl Friday, Grant portrays the charming ex-husband Walter, trying to win back his ex-wife from her quirky new fiancé, Bruce (played by Bellamy). Similarly, in The Awful Truth, Grant plays the suave, soon-to-be ex-husband Jerry, fighting to win his wife back from her goofy new fiancé, Dan (once again played by Bellamy), before their divorce is finalized.

10. CARY GRANT DONATED HIS SALARY TO THE WAR RELIEF FUND.

Grant didn’t accept a single penny for his work in His Girl Friday. Instead, as biographer Graham McCann notes, he donated his salary from both His Girl Friday and The Philadelphia Story (released in 1940), along with part of his salary from the 1944 film Arsenic and Old Lace, to the War Relief Fund.

11. THE EARL WILLIAMS STORY WAS INSPIRED BY TRUE EVENTS.

The idea of concealing a notorious murderer in a roll-top desk to secure a groundbreaking scoop might seem like an outlandish Hollywood invention, but the truth is, this plot point actually draws from real life. The story of murderer Earl Williams and journalist Hildy Johnson is partly based on the true events involving Emile Gavreau, a reporter from the Hartford Courant, who once hid a murderer in his office and then published an exclusive account written by the murderer himself about his crimes.