Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell) – a star newspaper reporter for the Morning Post who has a smart answer for almost everything – reappears four months after her divorce from manipulative editor Walter Burns (Cary Grant) to inform him that she’s marrying insurance salesman Bruce Baldwin (Ralph Bellamy) and settling down to lead the normal life he never gave her.

Not wanting her to leave, the smooth talking Burns cons Hildy into traveling to Albany to “do a yarn” on wrongfully accused murderer Earl Williams (John Qualen) set for execution by hanging the next day. As the cynical newsmen manning the criminal courts press room scramble for any bit of news, Hildy uses her brains and instinct to land an interview with Williams.

Before Hildy turns in her story, she learns that Burns has had her fiance arrested, first for stealing a watch Burns had planted on him, then again for soliciting a prostitute. Hildy quits, but the lure of a scoop proves too strong when Williams shoots his way out of jail, finds Hildy and asks her to hide him. Much farce ensues.

His Girl Friday is flat out one of the best comedies ever made. I popped it in not really in the mood for a Rosalind Russell movie from 1940; I gave myself five minutes to get tired and put something with aliens on. From an opening tracking shot that moves across the reporters, copy editors and switchboard operators, women and men, working together on the paper, I was hooked.

If only Bryan Singer could have made the Daily Planet in Superman Returns half as interesting as the Morning Post here. It’s not that it’s noisy, but the overlapping dialogue, perfectly choreographed movement of the performers and cynical wit delivered at lightning speed had me smirking most of the time I was watching this.

Directed by Howard Hawks and adapted by Charles Lederer, this is the second of at least four screen adaptations of Ben Hecht & Charles MacArthur’s 1928 play The Front Page. It was first shot in 1931, re-envisioned here, remade by Billy Wilder in 1974 with Jack Lemmon & Walter Matthau, then contemporized with Burt Reynolds, Kathleen Turner and Christopher Reeve in 1988 as Switching Channels.

Legend has it that Hawks thought The Front Page had the finest dialogue ever written. To prove it, he started reading the Burns role at a party, while a woman read Hildy. The Hecht/MacArthur play starred two men, but Hawks apparently liked how Hildy’s dialogue sounded coming from a woman, and decided to rewrite the part.

Burns: “You’ve got the brain of a pancake. This isn’t just a story you’re covering, it’s a revolution! This is the greatest yarn in journalism since Livingstone discovered Stanley!”

Hildy: “It’s the other way around.”

Burns: “Oh, well, don’t get technical at a time like this.”

Rosalind Russell’s performance is one of the finest of the era. Amid the fireworks of dialogue, she manages to be far easier to relate to as a human being than Katharine Hepburn was in Bringing Up Baby. Yes, cliches abound with the journalist willing to do anything for a story, or being pulled back into the game when she thought she was done, but Russell’s rapport with Grant is sheer perfection.

Cary Grant makes a great pompous jerk, whose feelings for his ex-wife expose soft edges that conflict with his work as a ballbusting prick. The movie also gives us politicians willing to execute an innocent man for votes, or newsmen willing to fabricate stories (no, really!) to sell papers. The “colored vote,” Reds, radicals and the European War are also mentioned as elements society was grappling with. The result is a much darker undercurrent than you get in most comedies today.

Hawks loved exploring the snap, crackle and pop between a man and a woman meeting each other for the first time, or in this case, reunited again. There are few, if any, mothers, children or married couples in Hawks’ films and, in between the laughs, the movie also offers a pretty savage take on marriage and domesticity that I found funny.

Terrific character actors in the supporting bits. Great Golden Age of Hollywood movie star chemistry. Acidic, rapid fire wit. Highly recommended.