Rating: 
Summary: VINTAGE SCREWBALL SPARKLES ON DVD FROM COLUMBIA
Review: "His Girl Friday" is Howard Hawk's inspired remake of the award-winning Broadway play and previous movie release of "The Front Page". It's the story of a rapid fire newspaper editor, Walter (Cary Grant) and his star reporter and ex-wife, Hildie Johnston. Hildie has decided to retire to the country with her soon to be new husband (Ralph Belamy). But when a prison break captures the imagination of a troupe of cutthroat reporters, all rabid for the real scoop, Hildie sets aside marital bliss for one last hurrah behind the desk as a cub reporter.
THE TRANSFER: BEWARE OF THIS DVD! There are no less than 12 bootlegged versions of this film being sold through various vendors on DVD. In all but one case the image quality looks as though the entire print had been fed through a meat grinder. The version you want is the one from Columbia Tri-Star Home Video. Its packaging features a disclaimer that reads "mastered from the original camera negative." This version of "His Girl Friday" exhibits - in short - exemplary video quality. The B&W picture has been completely restored. Age related artifacts are nonexistent. The gray scale, black and contrast levels are perfectly realized. Fine detail will astound. There are no digital anomalies. The audio is mono but very nicely cleaned up.
EXTRAS: This version also includes some very nice - if all too brief - featurettes on the careers of stars Rosiland Russell and Cary Grant and the making of the film. There's also the original theatrical trailer.
BOTTOM LINE: This girl is worth seeking out!
Rating:
Summary: THE funniest movie ever made!
Review: 'His Girl Friday' was released in 1940 (Actually, it was released on January 18th to be exact, which was Cary Grant's birthday). It was based on the play 'The Front Page' by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur. 'The Front Page' was actually first made into a movie in 1931 (keeping the title of the play). It has a big change. The Character played by Rosalind Russell in 'His Girl Friday', was actually a man in the original story. The film is directed by Howard Hawks, and it has a very fast-paced story, which is hilarious, all the way through.The basic plot of the story, is that Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell) has just recently divorced Walter Burns (Cary Grant), and she tells him that she will no longer be working with his newspaper. So as to she can get married again, to another man, Bruce Baldwin (Ralph Bellamy, in a great role), and live a much more peaceful life than the one she has been living in the newspaper reporter business. Before she leaves, she agrees to covering one more story. But Walter does everything he can to make sure this isnt her last story, and that she doesnt re-marry. The DVD presents the movie to us, in a very good looking print, with good sound aswell. It comes with some nice extras, such as a few featurettes (although short) of the lead stars. With other little things too. Easily, in my opinion (and I know a lot of others) the funniest movie ever made. Maybe Howard Hawks' best movie, with a great, great cast. Very highly recommended. PLEASE NOTE: Living in the UK, I obviously own the Region 2 release from Columbia. Checking through, it appears to be the same as this Region 1 release.
Rating:
Summary: Get The Girl
Review: 1940's His Girl Friday is a fast-paced comedy from director Howard Hawks that is has brilliant pacing and performances from Cary Grant & Rosalind Russell. The film is based on the play, The Front Page and had been previously made into a film and those versions concern the professional relationship of two men, Walter Burns & Hildy Johnson. In this version they changed the gender of Hildy to a female and the professional tension of the original is replaced by sexual tension. Though it seems tame today, the erotic electricity & innuendo between Mr. Grant & Ms. Russell was quite groundbreaking for the time. The screenplay has been one of the most influential in film history, with Quentin Tarantino citing it as an inspiration for his script's pacing.
Rating:
Summary: The Significance of this Film
Review: As a Film student I have learned a lot about Hollywood and the standard of all their movies back when this film was made. One of the main things that you will see in other films made around this time is that the good guy role is always good and he always ends up with the girl.
Well in this film Cary Grant is really kind of a bad guy and the good guy is played by Ralph Bellamy. Ralph is this sweet natured guy wanting to marry this girl Hildy played by Rosalind Russell. Ralph is your prototypical guy, the kind that your mom wants you to bring home. However Cary Grant is the exact opposite of him. (DO NOT READ NEXT PARAGRAPH IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THIS FILM)
Cary ends up with the girl and Ralph is sent packing. Besides the girl issue Cary also gets Ralph in trouble, not to mention has Ralph's mother kidnapped. Is that a role of the good guy back in the 30's & 40's? No!
The significance is that the film broke the rules and did great job of doing so.
Personally I'm not a big fan of movies made back before the 60's because most of them aren't all that good. Movies like Casablanca are horrible productions. They refuse to 1) depicit reality and 2) push the bounds of film making and usually keep movies very conservative.
Conservative = FCC = Christian Coalition = Little House on the Praire = Kill me now to stop the pain!
Rating:
Summary: A Hawks comedy masterpiece
Review: Cary Grant plays a newspaper editor and Rosalind Russell plays his ex-wife and fellow reporter who is about to quit her job and remarry. Grant doesn't want to lose one of his star reporters, and he is unscrupulous enough to do just about anything to stop the marriage going ahead, including having her prospective husband framed and thrown in prison- not once, but twice. Russell is desperate to leave journalism behind her and start a family and a home, but her journalistic instincts flair up when she hears of a man about to be unfairly executed and she thinks she can stop it. Watching her facilitate between her desire to be a journalist and a housewife is genuinely funny. The film is gripping and Howard Hawks, one of Hollywood's greatest directors, handles the direction with real flair, never letting the pace slacken. Cary Grant is a master of comic timing and both he and Russell make a great double act. The rest of the cast put in a sterling performance. This is a much better film than the more famous Billy Wilder remake.
Rating: 
Summary: brilliant film--dreadful DVD
Review: Don't buy this DVD. The sound quality is terrible--a loud hissing noise overshadows the film's trademark fast, witty dialog. $5 seemed a small investment at the time, but I should have saved my money. Surely someday those who own the rights to "His Girl Friday" will release a DVD worthy of this wonderful classic.
Rating:
Summary: BAD DVD, OVERRATED MOVIE
Review: For some reasons I have never been able to get into this film. I find it's madcap antics way too over the top for my taste. Roz Russell and Cary Grant are fine but I have found it impossible to follow the rapid-fire story. Perhaps if we were given a decent DVD transfer, fully restored, I would change my mind. The DVD is so bad its almost unwatchable. This may be the reason I have never been able to get into this movie because the film quality is so poor. This is a film in dire need of restoration because it cannot be fully appreciated. (Just a warning......any time you see a classic film in the bargain bin without the "Turner", "Warner", "UNIVERSAL" or "20th Century Fox" trademark, it is a generic DVD and the quality will be poor. A few others like this......"Penny Serenade, Meet John Doe, A Farewell to Arms"), etc.
Rating:
Summary: Double Warning - Great Movie - Bad DVD
Review: I read a review about the bad DVD quality of the version of HIS GIRL FRIDAY produced by D3K films. I made sure I bought a different DVD of the movie from a company called Alpha Video. This was also an incredibly bad rendition of this classic movie. The contrast of the movie was so poor that you could not see the faces of the actors. It was also poorly framed. DON'T BUY THIS VERSION EITHER!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent 30s Comedy
Review: One of the finest examples of 1930s comedy, and an excellent adaptation of a story that has been told many times, *His Girl Friday* is Hollywood at its best. Perfectly pairing Grant and Russell with an excellent script by Charles Lederer, based on Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's 1931 play, *The Front Page*, it is the kind of studio magic that could occur when the powers-that-be assigned the best work to the best candidates. Grant, whom I found arrogant and repellant later in his career - not to mention redundant - is at his suave-and-smooth best here as Walter Burns, newspaper editor, with the perfect foil in Rosiland Russell. As Hildy Johnson, Burns' ex-wife, Russell plays was in the process of cutting her teeth developing characters like this. Hildy is the archetype that gave Russell her reputation as a fast-talking dame, with machine gun delivery, and a smart-mouthed answer for everything. Hildy is off to marry Bruce, played by Bellamy, but her ex, Walter, still needs her to be his star reporter and cover the execution of a convicted killer. Every early journalistic stereotype is in full force - from reporters who would stop at nothing to get their story, to the city editor with a visor and sleeve-garters. Gene Lockhart, Ernest Truex and Clarence Kolb are all in fine form, but even the finest supporting performances pale against Grant and Russell. They are both delightful in this stylish slapstick farce that had previously been filmed as *The Front Page* (and later, again as *The Front Page* in 1974, and as *Switching Channels*). It also spawned a slew of imitators, not the least of which was TV's *Moonlighting*. Screenwriter Lederer's scripts have a freshness even today - 1995 saw a remake of his script *Kiss Of Death* and 2001 brings us *Ocean's Eleven*, which Lederer wrote the script for in 1960.
Rating:
Summary: One of my top 10 favorites
Review: Senior year in Cinema class, our teacher made us read "The Front Page" (the play HGF is based upon)as extra credit in addition to watching this classic flick. Oddly enough,in the play, the Hildy character isn't a woman, but a man, best friend to the editor that doesn't want him to get married and quit. Both versions work, but I think I like the movie version better. Walter Burns (Cary Grant) in Hildigard "Hildy" Johnson both work for the Post (he's editor, she's a reporter). They're also divorced. The opening sequence shows Hildy visiting Walter's office to break the news that she's not only quitting "the newspaper game", but she's also getting remarried to a guy named Bruce (Ralph Bellamy). Not only does Walter not want to lose his best reporter, he can't stand losing Hildy to someone else. He does everything in his power to prevent them leaving for Albany on the 6:00 train- from having Bruce get mugged, and then framed (twice), he convinces Hildy to write one last article. A man named Earl Williams is going to be hanged for shooting a cop, and the Post believes he's innocent. But as Hildy follows her end of the bargain, Walter keeps changing the rules and moving the goalposts to prevent her departure. Hildy's fellow reporters also lay odds on wether or not a "swell reporter" like Hildy would give up the thrill of the game to "darn socks for a guy in the insurance business". An excellent cast and wonderful chemistry between Russell and Grant makes this film a 5-star one to own. There aren't too many extras to rave about, but still a movie any classics fan should have.
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