His Girl Friday

His Girl Friday. 1940 Columbia Pictures.
Starring: Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Bellamy, Alma Kruger, Gene Lockhart, Clarence Kolb, Regis Toomey
Director: Howard Hawks
Buy His Girl Friday, Columbia Classics edition, from Amazon.

A 1940 remake of the 1931 film The Front Page. This movie has also since become a public domain one, which means anyone can release it to home video. I have made sure to seek out and buy the one released by Columbia Pictures itself, and I would recommend that you do the same, even if Columbia didn't do the best job preserving their older films!

Morning Post editor Walter Burns (Grant, suave as always) knows that his former wife and former star reporter Hidegard "Hildy" Johnson (Russell) is planning to marry the boring insurance salesman Bruce Baldwin (Bellamy) before settling down to a quiet life as a wife and mother in Albany, New York. Burns isn't having it, and he manages to talk Hildy into covering just one more big story before she leaves: the upcoming execution of convicted murderer Earl Williams (John Qualen). Bruce and Hilly plan to live with Bruce's mother the first year, which should suggest that this relationship's gonna go over real well, right?

(It should be mentioned that Bruce Baldwin looks like that fellow in the movies...you know, Ralph Bellamy. Oh, and Walter Burns once got even with a guy named Archie Leach, who regretted ever messing with that fiery editor!)

Burns does everything he can do to keep Hildy from leaving, and he sets up Bruce that he is frequently arrested on trumped-up charges. Meanwhile, Williams escapes from jail, and runs across Hildy. The lure of the big scoop overcomes Hildy, and she becomes preoccupied with writing the story that she hardly notices that Bruce has thrown in the towel, and is going back home to Albany.

Mayor Fred (Kolb) is a corrupt son of a gun, and he realizes he and his sheriff need the publicity of the execution to keep their jobs in the next election, and they bribe a messenger to go away and come back later when he tries to give them the governor's reprieve for Williams. Walter and Hildy put a stop to this plot. Afterwards, he offers to remarry Hildy, complete with promising that honeymoon they never had the first time in Niagara Falls (slowly I turn...). Enroute, Walter finds out about a big news story, a strike, in Albany.

Highly recommended movie. This is one of the all-time classic screwball comedies.