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Description:
Howard Hughes produced this first film version of the Ben Hecht-Charles MacArthur play, fresh from its wildly successful Broadway engagement; it's at once a close transcription of the stage piece and, under Lewis Milestone's aggressively inventive direction (which includes using a bouncing camera to underline the rapid-fire dialogue), a typically eccentric, anything-goes bit of early sound filmmaking. Pat O'Brien, in one of his first films, flies through the role of Hildy Johnson, the ace tabloid reporter with dreams of getting married and going straight; sleek Adolphe Menjou is his boss, the wily editor Walter Burns, who's desperate to keep Hildy on staff to cover an upcoming execution. Director Howard Hawks added whole levels of thematic depth and dramatic tension when he made Hildy a woman (Rosalind Russell) in his 1940 remake, His Girl Friday, but the Milestone version has its own gritty integrity and even manages to challenge Hawks in the strength of its supporting cast: Mae Clarke, Walter Catlett, Frank McHugh, Edward Everett Horton, Slim Summerville, and George E. Stone. --Dave Kehr
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