The Front Page (1931)
On the eve of quitting the newspaper business to marry, ace reporter Hildy Johnson is pulled back in when a condemned prisoner escapes on the night of his execution. His unscrupulous editor, Walter Burns, will do anything, including hiding the fugitive in a roll-top desk, to keep Hildy chained to the story.
Lewis Milestone’s fast, overlapping adaptation of the Hecht-MacArthur stage hit was produced by Howard Hughes and earned three Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture. The Front Page has been remade repeatedly, most famously as His Girl Friday (1940); the 1931 original is now in the public domain and on the National Film Registry.
Background
The Front Page adapts the hit Broadway play by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, itself drawn from the pair’s own experience as newspaper reporters in Chicago, and was produced by Howard Hughes. Director Lewis Milestone brought a fast, overlapping style of dialogue delivery to the film version, following a reporter who is pulled back into one last story, a condemned man’s escape, on the eve of his planned retirement from journalism to get married.
What to watch for
Watch for how the newsroom’s cynicism and rapid-fire banter set the template for a whole strand of American comedy that followed, most directly the 1940 remake His Girl Friday, which changed the reporter’s role to a woman and turned the story into a romantic comedy. The 1931 original earned three Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, and is worth watching on its own terms as well as alongside its more famous remake to see how differently the same material plays with that one change.
