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His Girl Friday/Cary Grant on Film: A Biography

Starring: Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell
Director: Howard Hawks
Dvd Release: 16th November, 1999
Number Of Discs: 1
Format: Black & White, NTSC, Region 0 Encoding

Subtitled In: Chinese, Japanese, Spanish

  Article Index:
[Background Info]
[DVD Review]
[Biographies]
[Articles/Resources]
[Link To This Article]

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Background Information: His Girl Friday
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His Girl Friday is a 1940 screwball comedy film which tells the story of a divorced couple of journalists who become involved in the escape of a convicted killer. It stars Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Bellamy & Gene Lockhart. The film is a remake of the 1931 film The Front Page & was adapted by Charles Lederer, Ben Hecht & Charles MacArthur from their play by the same title. His Girl Friday was directed by Howard Hawks. The film is consistently on the Internet Movie Database s list of top 250 films, was #19 on American Film Institute s 100 Years, 100 Laughs & has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. Posters Of His Girl Friday
Editorial DVD Review
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His Girl Friday is one of the five greatest dialogue comedies ever made. Howard Hawks had his cast play it at breakneck speed, & audiences hyperventilate trying to finish with one laugh so they can do justice to the four that have accumulated in the meantime. Rosalind Russell, not Hawks first choice to play Hildy Johnson, the ace newsperson whom demonic editor Walter Burns is trying to keep from quitting & getting married, is triumphant in the part, holding her own as one of the guys & creating an enduring feminist icon. Cary Grants Walter Burns is a force of nature, giving a performance of such concentrated frenzy & 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 & watch it again for the sake of the press-room gang, Roscoe Karns, Porter Hall, Cliff Edwards, Regis Toomey, Frank Jenks, & others, the kind of ensemble work that gets character actors onto Parnassus.
Biography: Cary Grant
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Cary Grant was an English -born American film actor. He was perhaps the foremost exemplar of the debonair leading man, not only handsome, but witty & charming. Born Archibald Alexander Leach in Bristol, he had a confused & unhappy childhood. His mother was removed to a mental institution when Archie Leach was only nine. Grants father never told him the truth, leaving his son abandoned by one parent & betrayed by the other. He only learned twenty years later that she was still alive. That left Archie Leach/Cary Grant with both a certain insecurity in his relations with women & a secretiveness about his inner life that may explain his bravado & charm. Those traits also come through more directly in many of his performances, in films as different as Suspicion & Notorious, directed by Alfred Hitchcock & tear-jerkers, such as Mr. Lucky. Grants unhappy childhood, by his own account, led him to crave applause & attention & to create a new persona that would attract it. After being expelled, in 1918 for an incident involving the girls toilets, he joined the Bob Pender stage troupe. Posters Of Cary Grant

Editors Choice: Charade, Walk Dont Run, That Touch Of Mink, North By Northwest, Indiscreet, An Affair To Remember, Operation Petticoat, Houseboat, View DVDology

Biography: Rosalind Russell
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Rosalind Russell was an American actress. She was born in Waterbury, Connecticut & attended the American Academy of Dramatic Art in New York City. She became known for her no-nonsense roles in such films as The Women & His Girl Friday. She married Frederick Brisson, a movie & play producer, on 25 October 1941. She died after a long battle with breast cancer in 1976 at the age of 69, although initially her age was misreported because she had shaved a few years off her true age. She was survived by her husband & her son, Lance Brisson. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1708 Vine Street. She is buried in Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery in Culver City, California. Posters Of Rosalind Russell

Editors Choice: Gypsy, His Girl Friday, View DVDology

Biography: Howard Hawks
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Howard Hawks was one of the more critically acclaimed directors of the Classic Hollywood Era. Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday - screwball comedy film. Hawks also produced The Thing From Another World, considered as one of the best science fiction films from the 1950s. It is also widely thought that he actually directed it, although the sole directors credit went to Christian Nyby. Hawks was notorious for fabricating stories about the movie business, usually in a way which inflated his already considerable contributions to it. One such story has it that Hawks told Ernest Hemingway that he could make a good movie out of the worst thing that Hemingway had ever written, at which point Hemingway challenged him to make a movie out of To Have & Have Not. Hawks film, which used a screenplay adapted by William Faulkner, may not be a classic, but it includes a number of memorable scenes, including Bacall s exercise in teaching Bogart how to whistle. Posters Of Rio Lobo

Editors Choice: Rio Lobo, El Dorado, His Girl Friday, Marilyn Monroe, Rio Bravo, The Outlaw, I Was A Male War Bride, Red River, View DVDology

Additional Articles & Resources:
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Howard Hawks: | IMDB Filmography | Wikipedia Article * |
Rosalind Russell: | Wikipedia Article * |
Cary Grant: | Carygrant.net | IMDB Filmography | Biography | Wikipedia Article * |
His Girl Friday: | Wikipedia Article * |
Link To This Article:
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