Directed by Howard Hawks • 1940 • United States
Starring Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Bellamy
One of the fastest, funniest, and most quotable films ever made, HIS GIRL FRIDAY stars Rosalind Russell as reporter Hildy Johnson, a standout among cinema’s powerful women. Hildy is matched in force only by her conniving but charismatic editor and ex-husband, Walter Burns (played by the peerless Cary Grant), who dangles the chance for her to scoop her fellow news writers with the story of an impending execution in order to keep her from hopping the train that’s supposed to take her to Albany and a new life as a housewife. When adapting Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s smash hit play “The Front Page,” director Howard Hawks had the inspired idea of turning star reporter Hildy Johnson into a woman, and the result is an immortal mix of hard-boiled newsroom setting with ebullient remarriage comedy.
Directed by George Stevens • 1943 • United States
Starring Jean Arthur, Joel McCrea, Charles Coburn
Jean Arthur, Joel McCrea, and Charles Coburn find that three’s a crowd in this delightful screwball romp. Set during the 1940s wartime housing shortage, THE MORE THE MERRIER stars Arthur as Washin...
Directed by Preston Sturges • 1941 • United States
Starring Joel McCrea, Veronica Lake
Tired of churning out lightweight comedies, Hollywood director John L. Sullivan (Joel McCrea) decides to make O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU?—a serious, socially responsible film about human suffering. After his pr...
Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer • 1945 • United States
Starring Tom Neal, Ann Savage
From Poverty Row came a movie that, perhaps more than any other, epitomizes the dark fatalism at the heart of film noir. As he hitchhikes his way from New York to Los Angeles, a down-on-his-luck nightclub pianist ...
