html> His Girl Friday

HIS GIRL FRIDAY
HOWARD HAWKS
1940

SCREWBALL COMEDY

Genre population during the great depression. Characters like noir except that female dominates the relationship with the male star whose masculinity is challenged. A battle of the sexes.

Verbal repartee is defined as:

noun
1. a quick, witty reply.
2. conversation full of such replies.
3. skill in making such replies.

Farcical situations
Farce is defined as

noun
1. a light, humorous play in which the plot depends upon a skillfully exploited situation rather than upon the development of character.
2. humor of the type displayed in such works.
3. foolish show; mockery; a ridiculous sham.
Escapist themes Ben Hecht (1894–1964) was a screen writer, producer playwright, journalist and novelist,

He is listed on IMDB as having been a writer on 164 films, many of which are uncredited. These include such major films as Underworld (1927), The Great Gabbo (1929), the Front Page (1931), Scarface (1932) Halleluiah I’m a Bum (1933), Queen Christina (1933), Riptide (1934), Viva Villa (1934), 20th Century (1934), A Star is Born (1937), The Prisoner of Zenda (1937), The Hurricane (1937), Nothing Sacred (1937), Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), Gunga Din (1939), Stagecoach (1939) Wuthering Heights (1939), Gone with the Wind (1939), His Girl Friday (1940), The Shop around the Corner (1940) The Outlaw (1943), Lifeboat (1944), Spellbound (1945) Gilda (1946), Notorious (1946), Specter of the Rose (1946), Duel in the Sun (1946) Portrait of Jennie (1948). Rope (1948) The Front Page (1948) The Miracle of the Bells (1947) The Paradine Case (1947), The Thing from Another World (1951) Strangers on a Train (1941) etc.

Most of these credits are actually for helping to adapt a work to a screen play

He died in 1964 but has 3 credits for that year and 13 more from 1965 on.

He frequently worked with Charles MacArthur (born 1895 Scranton, PA; died, 1956 NYC) with whom he co-authored The Front Page. He also worked with Charles Lederer (nephew of Marion Davies the mistress of Randolph Hearst) who is also credited with writing The Front Page (1931), Ocean’s Eleven (1960) and the 1962 Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953).

Hecht was an avid Zionist and was enraged at America’s (especially Hollywood’s) fear of upsetting the European markets and in response wrote a pageant called We Will Never Die which was performed in Madison Square Garden. It was performed several times with the money going to buy a ship renamed the SS Ben Hecht which moved 900 holocaust survivors to Palestine where it was seized by the Royal Navy and 600 passengers were arrested as illegal immigrants. The crew was also imprisoned. The ship became the flagship of the Israeli Navy.

In an open letter to the Jewish insurgents he wrote:

"Every time you blow up a British arsenal, or wreck a British jail, or send a British railroad train sky high, or rob a British bank, or let go with your guns and bombs at the British betrayers and invaders of your homeland, the Jews of America make a little holiday in their hearts."

This caused a great deal of problem since he was advocating terrorism. As a result some of what he wrote was under aa pseudonym so he would not have his materials banned in Britain.

The Front Page a play by Ben Hecht and Charles McArthur first appeared as a film in 1931 and was remade in 1940 as His Girl Friday. Subsequent incarnations appeared 1945 as a play/TV film, yet again in 1948 as a TV movie/play

Aside from the stars who are well known the film also has Ralph Bellamy (Bruce Baldwin) who would achieve fame for his performance of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1960 Sunrise at Campobello which led to his playing Roosevelt in several mini series War and Remembrance and Winds of War. He also appeared in Rosemary’s Baby and on many TV shows including his own series Man Against Crime (122 episodes). He received an honorary Oscar for his contributions to the acting profession in 1987.

Watch for Helen Mack who plays Mollie Malloy who appears in Son of Kong, She, and with Harold Lloyd in The Milky Way.

Cliff Edwards (Endicott) is perhaps best known as the voice of Jiminy Cricket in Walt Disney’s Pinocchio

Abner Biberman, actor (57) and director (49). He plays Louie, an Italian gangster but his unusual looks allowed him to play people from quite different backgrounds – Polynesian, American Indian, Chinese and so on.

Billy Gilbert (Joe Pettibone) His long drawn out sneeze was a part of his comedy routine (not here), but cast him as “Sneezy” in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. He appears in The Great Dictator, Anchors Away and many other films (226). You should recognize him as Professor von Schwarzenhoffen (uncredited) in “The Music Box” who appears on the endless stairs and has his hat knocked off and then is the person to whom the piano is being delivered.

The film is from a play. Does it break free of a staged feeling? How?

The cartoon of the cat and the mouse indicates the kind of “comic duo” we find with Abbott and Costello, Laurel and Hardy, and so on can also be found in cartoons. Other pairs are Sylvester and Tweety, Coyote and Road Runner, Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd and so on.

The cartoon also does comedy around the “attack on authority” or in this case, a small guy (the mouse) successfully taking on the big guy (the cat). It also merges comedy and horror in that it spoofs Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The lighting with its large shadows borrows from the horror film genre. The attacks are funny, because the outcome is not permanent on the characters. They come back “good as new”.

AFTER THE FILM

Despite the film’s warning that things are no longer like this in the newspaper business, one suspects that is part of the joke. They certainly are still the same. The comments about it being a “cut throat business” and the attempts to make certain politicians look good or bad based on party lines certainly continues today and not just on the op ed pages.

The film has many of the characteristics of screwball comedies including the fast paced “snappy” dialog and overlapping lines along with multiple conversations going on at the same time. In film (as opposed to sound) attention is usually focused through a number of techniques which include composition in the frame, the use of lines and other device to drawn one’s “gaze” to a specific spot in the frame. One can also use depth of field. In shallow depth of field the audience’s attention is focus on the part of the frame in focus. Deep focus does not focus the audience’s gaze and is a visual parallel to the multiple conversations going on in the audio. The audience cannot be sure which conversation to follow when many are happening at once, and the audience is less clear on where to look when the focus is deep.

Hawks is known for his emphasis on interaction between people. This is evident in that the film has few 1 shots. Frequently many people (4,5,or 6) may be in the shot. Only rarely do we get a one shot – usually for some reaction and it is rather short. The shots in the film are longish, but there is a good deal of camera movement which keeps them from being static. Consider the scene in the restaurant which has Walter Burns (Cary Grant), Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell) and Bruce Baldwin (Ralph Bellamy) almost constantly in the shot. Similarly the scenes in the press room usually contain most if not all of the reporters and anyone else like Sheriff Hartwell (Gene Lockhart), Millie Molloy (Helen Mack) or anyone else present.

Rapid cuts appear in one shots at the time of the jail break and the re-arrest of Earl Williams (John Qualen). At this point, each reporter is reporting the event as it never happened! Each reporter’s statements are kept clearly apart, no overlapping dialog. And in parallel, the frames are all 1 shots and the cuts are very fast.

The editing clearly helps the “jokes” here.

One in joke in the film is Burns’ comment about Archie Leach (his own real name).