Product Details

• Actors: Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Bellamy, Gene Lockhart, Porter Hall
• Directors: Howard Hawks
• Format: Black & White, NTSC
• Language: English, French
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Sony Pictures
• VHS Release Date: January 19, 1999
• Run Time: 92 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (122 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00000G3IA
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #20,266 in Video (See Bestsellers in Video)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com essential video

The Front Page, Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's classic 1928 newspaper play, has had three official film versions and contributed structural DNA to half the movies ever made about professional camaraderie and fierce love-hate friendships. Lewis Milestone's 1931 movie is well respected (Billy Wilder's 1974 version isn't), but this is one case where the remake towers brilliantined head and blocked shoulders above the original.

Howard Hawks had the inspired notion of making Hildy Johnson--the ace newsman whom demonic editor Walter Burns is trying to keep from quitting and getting married--a she instead of a he. What's more, she's not only Walter's star reporter but also his ex-wife. When Hildy (Rosalind Russell) comes to tell Walter (Cary Grant) she's leaving the newspaper business, he bamboozles her into carrying out one last assignment--a death-row interview with a little nebbish (John Qualen) convicted of killing a policeman. It sounds like a snap, but before you can say screwball comedy, the press room of the Criminal Courts Building has become ground zero for all the lunacy a jailbreak, a shooting, an impromptu suicide, a corrupt city administration, and the most Machiavellian "hero" in the American cinema can supply.

His Girl Friday is one of the, oh, five greatest dialogue comedies ever made; Hawks had his cast play it at breakneck speed, and audiences hyperventilate trying to finish with one laugh so they can do justice to the four that have accumulated in the meantime. Russell, not Hawks's first choice to play Hildy, is triumphant in the part, holding her own as "one of the guys" and creating an enduring feminist icon. Grant is a force of nature, giving a performance of such concentrated frenzy and diamond brilliance that you owe it to yourself to devote at least one viewing of the movie to watching him alone. But then you have to go back (lucky you) and watch it again for the sake of the press-room gang--Roscoe Karns, Porter Hall, Cliff Edwards, Regis Toomey, Frank Jenks, and others--the kind of ensemble work that gets character actors onto Parnassus. --Richard T. Jameson

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

179 of 189 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Get the "Cary Grant on Film" version! D3K gets 0 stars!, April 15, 2000

By	M. Dufarge (Nashville, TN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: His Girl Friday/Cary Grant on Film: A Biography (DVD)

This is one on my favorite movies of all time. The dialog is fast, funny and SMART. Plus, the gender treatment is fascinating, and not dated in the slightest. But . . . WARNING! Avoid the D3K DVD at all costs. It is truly the most horrendous digital transfer I have ever encountered. The picture is fuzzy and the dialogue almost incomprehensible. I have a five-year-old VHS copy of a TV broadcast of the movie that has much better sound/picture quality. To make things worse, the feature menus on the DVD are poorly designed, so that you cannot tell what you are selecting. And the makers had the audacity to have a whole menu with the credits for production of the DVD. I can't believe how mad I got trying to use this DVD.

Luckily my friend had another version I could compare (and eventually buy). The "His Girl Friday/Cary Grant on Film" version is superb in comparison: Dialog is crisp, picture sharp. It has a bonus documentary, Tony Curtis introduction and the trailer. And IT COSTS LESS than the D3K. This version is a winner.

34 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Unbearable Image and Sound Quality, January 6, 2000

By	Richard Shupe "Rich Shupe" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: His Girl Friday (DVD)

Avoid this product at all costs. This great movie is ruined on this disc. The image quality is awful and continuously blurred. The sound quality is equally fuzzy. It's like watching a movie with your head wrapped in cheese cloth.

Amazon should stop selling this disc on the grounds of defective merchandise.

82 of 91 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Technical/quality issues, December 9, 1999

By	John M. Dlugosz (Allen, TX United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: His Girl Friday (DVD)

I'm sure you know that this classic movie is great. The DVD itself, on the other hand, is not what I've come to expect regarding restoration and remastering and whatnot. Bottom line is, the quality was as bad as the "bargain bin" VHS tapes of old movies that I quickly learned to avoid. In particular the sound was badly degraded, with a hiss that made it difficult to understand the dialog towards the beginning (that improved somewhat, but it was still bad). That's particularly annoying because I could clean it up better than that myself, with a trivial application of "Cool Edit" shareware! Clearly, this is a direct scan of poor quality original and zero work went into presenting it. The picture, too, is full of flickering spots and the whole thing has a soft out-of-focus look to it. If you just have to have this film in your collection, be resigned to the poor quality. If you're just looking, ask yourself if it's cheap enough for the lousy job.