One of the screwball greats, 1940’s His Girl Friday actually began life without the titular dame. It wasn’t until director Howard Hawks got involved that Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s hit play The Front Page – about newspapermen trying to break the story on a death row escapee – was reimagined with a woman playing star crime reporter Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell), and her editor Walter Burns (Cary Grant) rejiggered to also be her ex-husband. Breathlessly paced, His Girl Friday is renowned for its rat-a-tat repartee and is a sterling example of the comedy of remarriage, my personal fave screwball subgenre. – Kimberley Jones
Dec. 27-29
