Hacker Cinema
His Girl Friday
1940 · Film · 92 min
Directed by Howard Hawks
Walter Burns is an irresistibly conniving newspaper publisher desperate to woo back his paper’s star reporter, who also happens to be his estranged wife. She’s threatening to quit and settle down with a new beau, but, as Walter knows, she has a weakness: she can’t resist a juicy scoop.
3 positive5 neutralfrom 8 commenters
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
12 comments on Hacker News
> "I'm so proud that I got to play a strong female character who isn't a sexualised or a damsel in distress, or the opposite of that".
The Hawksian woman:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawksian_woman
I cannot recommend Ball of Fire and His Girl Friday highly enough. For a more modern Hawksian woman, there is Leigh in:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_on_Precinct_13_(1976_film)
I also really enjoy Johnny Guitar where two strong women essentially lead the movie. I still don't know how it was ever made in its time.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/johnny-guitar-one-of-the-greatest-westerns-and-the-furthest-extreme-of-the-hollywood-system
> But if you're implying that money exists to force people to work I'd consider the possibility that you're describing what is essentially a form of slavery. Or at least extreme political control.
Bingo. Many people do =not realize that calling money for labor "wage slavery" was a term used in the 1700's and was common even into the 1940's. It was even uttered by Hiddy in the 1940's movie "His Girl Friday".
-- Hildy Johnson : The next time you see me, I shall be riding in a Rolls Royce giving interviews on success.
Murphy , McCue, reporter , Wilson, reporter , Bensinger , Endicott : Goodbye.
Hildy Johnson : So long, you wage slaves.
Murphy , McCue, reporter , Wilson, reporter , Bensinger , Endicott : Bye.
Hildy Johnson : Well, when you're climbing up fire escapes and getting kicked out of front doors and eating Christmas dinners at one-arm joints - don't forget your pal, Hildy Johnson. --
So are people who do not want UBI are pro slavery? That is a good question. If you think about the one common complaint that UBI will mean people will not work, just this about that in the terms of a plantation owner talking about his slaves.
https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtid=2&psid=3041
"Because slaves had no direct incentive to work hard, slaveowners combined harsh penalties with positive incentives. Some masters denied passes to disobedient slaves. Others confined recalcitrant slaves to private jails."
They even tried instilling a "positive mindset" in the slave!
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2716797
How is this that much different than our current system?
I’ll play:
The Thin Man (1934), It Happened One Night (1934), Dodworth (1936), Fury (1936), The Awful Truth (1937), Grand Illusion (1937), You Only Live Once (1937), Wizard of Oz (1939), Only Angels Have Wings (1939), The Great Dictator (1940), His Girl Friday (1940), Philadelphia Story (1940), Rebecca (1940), The Maltese Falcon (1940), Citizen Kane (1941), A Woman’s Face (1941), The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), The Ox-Bow Incident (1943), Casablanca (1943), Double Indemnity (1944), Mildred Pierce (1945), It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), Great Expectations (1946), The Big Sleep (1946), The Red Shoes (1948), A Letter to Three Wives (1949), Sunset Boulevard (1950), All About Eve (1950), A Place In The Sun (1951), High Noon (1952), Roman Holiday (1953), The Wages of Fear (1953). (I slipped two French films in.)
Almost anything by Hawks during those years. Or Hitchcock. Almost anything with Bogart. Or Grant. Or by Wilder.
Tons of noir films skirted the rules.
Look, I’m not a fan of the Hays code but some of those movies were to me better because of what they had to imply.
This is after the Hays code but as an example I recently watched the original 3:10 to Yuma and the remake. I hated the remake. What appeals to me about Elmore Leonard stories is that despite being about bad guys, they have a degree of charm to them (Out of Sight, Justified, Jackie Brown, Get Shorty,etc). The remake took all of the charm out of the original and replaced it with graphic violence and cruelty.
How many movies does your avg movie goer know or can name movies from the 40s? Maybe, maybe half a dozen (it's a wonderful life, casablanca, citizen kane, Disney Fantasia and Pinocchio, and his girl Friday. I'm pretty sure your average person can name an order of magnitude more video games from pong to mario to sonic to modern day AAA games. And over time, some will have staying power, like I hope Breath of the Wild will.
You can’t go wrong with any of Howard Hawks’s films. I really like His Girl Friday.
John Carpenter was a big fan of the Hawksian woman archetype. You can see it on display in Assault on Precinct 13.
Eventually you will encounter him. His Girl Friday is a favorite movie.
I can give you my list as I've also been watching lots of "old" movies. Though "old" can mean almost anything depending on who you ask. Note: I'm picky so while I love movies if I check my ratings (I take notes because I forget what I watched), it turns out I only like about one out of 10 movies. Or maybe to put it in a slightly better light, only 1 of 10 or so is worth recommending. Some might be okay but not okay enough to tell someone "you should seek out this movie"
Anyway, here's some from my list from the last year (the list of ones I didn't like is MUCH longer and includes many that are highly rated on IMDB)
"Now, Voyager" (1942)
"Boom Town" (1940)
"The Best Years of Our Lives" (1947)
"The Little Princess" (1939)
"Destry Rides Again" (1939)
"Baby Face" (1933)
"Adam's Rib" (1949)
"In a Lonely Place" (1950)
"It Happened One Night" (1934)
"The Woman of the Year" (1942)
"The Awful Truth" (1937)
"Broken Arrow" (1950)
"The Lady Eve" (1941)
"His Girl Friday" (1940)
"12 O'Clock High" (1949)
"You Can't Take It With You" (1938)
"The Far County" (1954)
"Random Harvest" (1942)
"The Bad and the Beautiful" (1952)
"The Philadelphia Story" (1940)
"Cry Danger" (1951)
"This Gun For Hire" (1942)
"Casablanca" (1942). I didn't get it at 23 where as I shook from crying at 50. Basically I needed to truly feel Rick's loss and what he was going through (Bogart's character). At 23 I didn't. At 50 I did. I suppose you could have similar experiences to Rick at a younger age or you could never have them and then not have it do anything for you.
I don't think any of them are "lesser known". Basically I just look up IMDB. If it's rated > 7 and sounds mildly interesting I'll take a look. Tons of them don't work for me. Those above did. As recent examples of ones that didn't "The Strange Love of Martha Ivers" (1946), "Dark Passage" (1947), "Waterloo Bridge" (1940), "The Bishop's Wife" (1947), "Spellbound" (1945), "Fort Apache" (1948). Those are just from the last 2 weeks (^^;)
> Far from the days of just informing and listing main arguments...
There really hasn't ever been that, in the US at least.
Yellow Journalism [0] has been around for ~120 years now. The 1800 US Presidential campaign was very slanderous and personal [1]. His Girl Friday (1940)[2] starring Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant is a great comedy about journalism and the all the shady things that go on. Reading through all those events, the tricks are the same ones that we humans fall for time and again. Sure, FAANG and the like have made it faster, more up-tempo. But the lies have always gotten half-way around the globe before the truth put it's pants on.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1800_United_States_presidential_election#Campaign
[2] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032599/ (No really, it's great! Go watch it!)
Content ID seems pretty robust* for non-live content. I uploaded a copy of one of the few wide-release U.S. movies in the public domain ("His Girl Friday" [0]) and was hit with a takedown notice instantaneously as the upload finished. I didn't contest it at the time, and I wonder if it's because Content ID was triggered by the Columbia Pictures fanfare/logo in the opening.
[0] https://archive.org/details/his_girl_friday
edit: By "robust", I actually mean, "a bit overly proactive", in that the system seems to be efficient in its detection, but the system's design seems unavoidably vulnerable to false positives.
Her name is Hilde? The same as the heroine Hilde Johnson in the greatest movie about journalism (yes, that includes All The President's Men IMHO), His Girl Friday? You couldn't ask for better journalism parents :).
BTW His Girl Friday, directed by Howard Hawks, is not only one of the best movies of its era, it is one of the few great movies that are truly in the public domain. You can watch it on Internet Archive:
https://archive.org/details/his_girl_friday
One data point: I tried submitting "His Girl Friday", one of the most famous movies to have fallen into public domain, from the copy hosted on archive.org:
https://archive.org/details/his_girl_friday
As soon as it was finished uploading, I was notified that a copyright owner (Sony Pictures, which I guess owns the remnants of the defunct studio that produced His Girl Friday) had issued a takedown notice. Amusingly, a minute later, I received the usual "Congratulations, your video is now on YouTube!" email that you get when successfully publishing a video.
After getting a takedown notice, you have the option to dispute it, which I did, providing evidence that His Girl Friday is indeed in the public domain. A short time later, I got a note saying that my dispute was rejected, and that I could choose to fight it -- but that the decision would be up to the rights holder (Sony). However, if the rights owner chose again to deny me, my YouTube account would be penalized and I could possibly lose uploading capabilities.
I didn't really care enough to fight it (though I've kept the screenshots and emails to document the process)...anyone else get to this stage and succeed (or fail)?
These days, the commonly accepted wisdom is that movies were always as bad as they are now, and anyone who says otherwise is just idealizing the past. I offer the following evidence that the quality of movies is not constant over time:
1939: Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, Gone With The Wind, The Wizard Of Oz, Stagecoach, Ninotchka, Wuthering Heights
1940: Rebecca, Fantasia, His Girl Friday, The Grapes of Wrath, The Philadelphia Story, The Great Dictator
1941: Citizen Kane, The Maltese Falcon, The Lady Eve, Sullivan's Travels
Rather than relying on personal taste, I took these from various 'top 100' lists. I haven't seen all of them myself, but the ones I have seen are a mile apart from anything released this year, or any recent year.