Thrice Told Tales: The Front Page

The title card that opens 1931’s The Front Page reads: “It all happened in the Dark Ages of the Newspaper Game - when to a reporter ‘getting that story’ justified anything short of murder. Incidentally, you will see in this picture no resemblance to the men and women of the press of today… Ready? Well, once upon a time…”

Isn't it a wonderful thing to think of? Reporters caring more about a scoop than promoting a political agenda? Maybe it really was like this once, and in the film, the reporters value selling papers more than being in a politician’s good graces.

The film is based on a Broadway play written by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur (which happened to have entered the public domain last year). It was directed by Lewis Milestone, who had just won the Best Director Oscar for All Quiet on the Western Front the year before, and it doesn’t feel like a filmed stage play. The show opens up with the gallows and car chases that couldn’t have been portrayed on the stage, and the camera moves with sweeps and close-ups. Even the opening credits are creative, with the cast presented by flipping through a newspaper.

And it’s a pretty good cast. Adolphe Menjou was nominated for an Oscar for his portrayal of Walter Burns, a newspaper editor who will do anything to keep his ace reporter on staff. Pat O’Brien (who played Knute Rockne, All American) plays that ace reporter, Hildy Johnson. Hildy is trying to quit the paper in order to marry a woman whose uncle runs a big advertising firm. But Walter wants Hildy to cover one last story, the hanging of Earl Williams, a cop-killing anarchist.

There are other outstanding cast members, too. Mae Clarke plays Mollie Malloy, a streetwalker who befriended the killer. The year 1931 was good for Clarke, who made six other films that year, including two other classics, Public Enemy with James Cagney and Frankenstein with Boris Karloff. It’s pretty amazing to hear her called a “streetwalker.” In a couple of years, Hollywood screenwriters wouldn’t dare to use such a word.

(Another element that wouldn’t pass a few years later: the script makes a point that Williams is being executed for killing a “colored cop” in an election year – so executing Williams means “colored votes.” There is also a line about the birth of a “pickaninny.” The same line was used when the film was remade in 1940. It became just a "baby" in 1974.)

And you have to love Edward Everett Horton as Bensinger, the prissy reporter who writes poetry. You may remember Horton as a comedy delight in the Astaire and Rogers musicals and the narrator of Fractured Fairy Tales.

This film works as a satirical comedy, but also as a tribute to a golden age of journalism dominated by hard-working and hard-drinking average Joes before the news game was taken over by J-School grads.

Surely such a movie didn’t need to be remade, especially if the new version changed the hero of the film from a man to a woman. (You know, like Ghostbusters 2016.)

But it happened. In 1940, director Howard Hawks remade the classic, and he cast a woman in the role of ace reporter Hildy Johnson. His version was renamed His Girl Friday.

What was he thinking? Apparently, he was thinking really well, because he made a very good film into a great film. What did he do right?

First of all, changing Hildy from a man to a woman isn’t done just to celebrate Girl Power. In the original, Burns is a boss and mentor to Hildy, so the two men have a strong connection. In this remake, Cary Grant plays Editor Burns and Rosalind Russell plays Reporter Hildy, and they not only had a professional relationship – until recently, they were married. It adds wonderful layers of tension.

And did I mention you get to watch CARY GRANT and ROSALIND RUSSELL bicker and plot?

Not only that, screenwriter Charles Lederer includes unexpected meta-humor in the film. When describing Hildy's fiancé on the phone, Burns describes him as looking like “that Hollywood actor, you know, Ralph Bellamy” (the role is played by Ralph Bellamy).

Another improvement over the original film is that His Girl Friday is 90 minutes long, while the original film is an hour and forty minutes. It has been said that 90 minutes is the ideal length for a comedy, and Hawks makes that happen by having people talk very, very fast.

Hawks made a classic.

So, this remake worked. Could someone make it even better? Perhaps. What if the film were in the hands of one of cinema’s greatest filmmakers, the director of Double Indemnity, Some Like It Hot, and The Apartment: the great Billy Wilder?

Well, you know how people complain that great films shouldn’t be remade? Wilder’s 1974 version of The Front Page is evidence that their complaint is valid.

This is the first version that explicitly states that the story takes place in Chicago rather than a mythical city.

What did he do wrong? First of all, this version is fifteen minutes longer than His Girl Friday. And it changes aspects of the plot. That original script by Hecht and MacArthur works like a fine timepiece. Changes in the 1974 version spoil some of the twists and surprises in the plot.

Another problem with the film is that Wilder uses the freedom of the post-Hays Code era to add more swearing and vulgar humor, which takes away much of the charm of the characters’ interactions. In the original play, one classic line of dialogue used a vulgarity. In the 1931 film, the line is said, but the naughty word is obstructed by a car horn (without leaving you guessing what was said). In the Billy Wilder version, the power of the word in that line is stolen by the frequency of similar (and cruder) language that precedes it.

Surprisingly, Wilder, who was in his twenties when the play was on Broadway, includes anachronisms in the film, which is supposed to take place in 1929. Backstage at the movie theater, we see a poster for All Quiet on the Western Front, which came out in 1930, and Lemmon does an imitation of Edward G. Robinson in Little Caesar, which came out in 1931.

But the biggest problem with the film is the casting. Wilder shouldn't have cast Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon in the roles of Burns and Hildy. How could this be a mistake, you ask? Aren’t we talking about two of the finest comedy actors in cinema history?

Yes, they are that. But when they played these roles, they were too old.

When Menjou played Burns, he was 41, while Grant was 36. Matthau was 54. More importantly, when Pat O’Brien played Hildy, he was 32. Russell was 33. You could believe they were at a point in life when they were still trying to decide whether career or family should be the top priority in life. Lemmon was 49, far too old for the role of Hildy. Even worse, Susan Sarandon, who plays Hildy's fiancé, was thirty at the time. The age discrepancy is worrisome.

Carol Burnett tells the story of taking a flight with The Front Page as the day’s film. After the film, the plane was quiet. She asked the stewardess if she could make an announcement in which she apologized for her performance as Mollie Malloy. The passengers then broke into loud applause.

So, what’s the moral here?

Doing remakes is a horrible idea. Except when it works.

(Thrice Told Tales is an inexplicable ongoing series of posts about stories that have been told three or more times in films.)