His Girl Friday
Last night we watched His Girl Friday, the classic film of fast banter and slimy journalism featuring Cary Grant speaking at high speed and Rosalind Russell, who really, but really knows how to wear hats. A few points that struck me while watching:
1. Everyone, but everyone, smokes like a chimney -- except for the murderer. And Ralph Bellamy, who loses the girl. Hero? Smokes. Journalists? Smoke. Evil politicians? Smoke. Cops? Smoke. Rosalind Russell? Is for all intents and purposes growing cigarettes out of her fingers.
We're so accustomed these days to the "only bad guys smoke" in films that even though I knew how the film ended I was half expecting Rosalind Russell to end up with the non-smoking murderer or Ralph Bellamy. How the hell did actors in the 1940s not all simultaneously come down with lung cancer?
2. All of the casual and not casual sexism: the reporter who is constantly looking up women's skirts and positions himself on staircases to do so; the way the journalists treat the murderer's sorta-girlfriend (she calls them on it, as does Rosalind Russell's character a few seconds later, and most of them look faintly ashamed and it ends their poker game); Walter insulting a random woman on the telephone (she hangs up on him); the way Ralph Bellamy's mother is casually picked up, tossed over a man's shoulder and carried out of the room (she's in her 60s.) Interestingly, this woman is the only woman who is actually manhandled -- and she's the only woman onscreen who doesn't have a job.
And yet, against this, the film also insists that the main character, Hildy, played by Rosalind Russell, doesn't really want a traditional marriage and children and to be taken care of and romance. Instead, the film says, what she really wants is a career. To the point where despite her protests, despite her valid irritation that her first honeymoon was interrupted by work, pretty much every character, including Ralph Bellamy who is offering the alternative, assumes that she will want to continue working. The film completely approves of Walter's various manipulations to get Rosalind back on the job and away from a traditional, normal role. The journalists are all betting that this will succeed -- and even has to succeed; they accept Hildy as a full time professional journalist and their equal, and immediately guess that she's hiding a major story from them (she is) and that she's capable of doing so (she is.) One of the journalist's gives Hildy's planned marriage about three to six months, noting that she can't be happy away from the job. As it turns out, he's dead on.
Which in turn is undercut by the film's gleeful insistence that Walter is absolutely within his rights to con and emotionally manipulate his ex-wife into doing something that she insists she doesn't want to do because, well, he knows what she really wants. As it turns out, he's right; she is mostly happy at the end of the film, if frustrated at getting cheated out of a honeymoon again, and the journalists are right too: Hildy is a great writer, and that's what she's meant to do.
3. Technically, this is a point that struck my brother, not me, but wow some voices are extremely distinctive: he recognized Ralph Bellamy as the same guy from Trading Places on voice alone. Granted Ralph Bellamy appeared in about a hundred movies, more or less, so generally speaking if you're trying to figure out if Bellamy was in anything prior to 1990 the answer is probably yes, but still.
1. Everyone, but everyone, smokes like a chimney -- except for the murderer. And Ralph Bellamy, who loses the girl. Hero? Smokes. Journalists? Smoke. Evil politicians? Smoke. Cops? Smoke. Rosalind Russell? Is for all intents and purposes growing cigarettes out of her fingers.
We're so accustomed these days to the "only bad guys smoke" in films that even though I knew how the film ended I was half expecting Rosalind Russell to end up with the non-smoking murderer or Ralph Bellamy. How the hell did actors in the 1940s not all simultaneously come down with lung cancer?
2. All of the casual and not casual sexism: the reporter who is constantly looking up women's skirts and positions himself on staircases to do so; the way the journalists treat the murderer's sorta-girlfriend (she calls them on it, as does Rosalind Russell's character a few seconds later, and most of them look faintly ashamed and it ends their poker game); Walter insulting a random woman on the telephone (she hangs up on him); the way Ralph Bellamy's mother is casually picked up, tossed over a man's shoulder and carried out of the room (she's in her 60s.) Interestingly, this woman is the only woman who is actually manhandled -- and she's the only woman onscreen who doesn't have a job.
And yet, against this, the film also insists that the main character, Hildy, played by Rosalind Russell, doesn't really want a traditional marriage and children and to be taken care of and romance. Instead, the film says, what she really wants is a career. To the point where despite her protests, despite her valid irritation that her first honeymoon was interrupted by work, pretty much every character, including Ralph Bellamy who is offering the alternative, assumes that she will want to continue working. The film completely approves of Walter's various manipulations to get Rosalind back on the job and away from a traditional, normal role. The journalists are all betting that this will succeed -- and even has to succeed; they accept Hildy as a full time professional journalist and their equal, and immediately guess that she's hiding a major story from them (she is) and that she's capable of doing so (she is.) One of the journalist's gives Hildy's planned marriage about three to six months, noting that she can't be happy away from the job. As it turns out, he's dead on.
Which in turn is undercut by the film's gleeful insistence that Walter is absolutely within his rights to con and emotionally manipulate his ex-wife into doing something that she insists she doesn't want to do because, well, he knows what she really wants. As it turns out, he's right; she is mostly happy at the end of the film, if frustrated at getting cheated out of a honeymoon again, and the journalists are right too: Hildy is a great writer, and that's what she's meant to do.
3. Technically, this is a point that struck my brother, not me, but wow some voices are extremely distinctive: he recognized Ralph Bellamy as the same guy from Trading Places on voice alone. Granted Ralph Bellamy appeared in about a hundred movies, more or less, so generally speaking if you're trying to figure out if Bellamy was in anything prior to 1990 the answer is probably yes, but still.