His Girl Friday is a 1940 American screwball comedy film directed by Howard Hawks, starring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell and featuring Ralph Bellamy and Gene Lockhart.

The plot centers on a newspaper editor named Walter Burns who is about to lose his ace reporter and ex-wife, Hildy Johnson, newly engaged to another man.

[4] Walter Burns, the hard-boiled editor for The Morning Post of Chicago, learns his ex-wife and former star reporter, Hildegard "Hildy" Johnson, is about to marry insurance man Bruce Baldwin and settle down as a housewife in Albany.

Walter, determined to sabotage these plans, entices a reluctant Hildy to cover one last story: the execution of Earl Williams, a white bookkeeper portrayed as a shy, confused man, convicted of murdering a black policeman.

On the run, Williams sneaks into the deserted press room and holds Hildy at gunpoint; the lure of a big scoop proves too tempting for her to resist.

The sheriff has no issues against the "reds", so he suggests to try to get closer to such voters; the Mayor explains that all that is needed is their approval to keep their jobs in the upcoming election.

[5] Hawks' production that became His Girl Friday was originally intended to be a straightforward adaptation of The Front Page, with both the editor and reporter being male.

Hawks liked the way the dialogue sounded coming from a woman, resulting in the script being rewritten to make Hildy female and the ex-wife of editor Walter Burns played by Cary Grant.

Ryskind developed a new ending in which Walter and Hildy start fighting immediately after saying "I do" in the wedding they hold in the newsroom, with one of the characters stating, "I think it's gonna turn out all right this time."

Katharine Hepburn, Claudette Colbert, Margaret Sullavan, Ginger Rogers, and Irene Dunne were offered the role, but turned it down.

[18] The film is noted for its rapid-fire repartee, using overlapping dialogue to make conversations sound more realistic, with one character speaking before another finishes.

[18] Reportedly, the film was sped up because of a challenge Hawks took upon himself to break the record for the fastest dialogue on screen, at the time held by The Front Page.

[21] In her autobiography Life Is a Banquet, Russell wrote that she thought she did not have as many good lines as Grant, so she hired her own writer to "punch up" her dialogue.

When his character is arrested for kidnapping, he describes the horrendous fate suffered by the last person who crossed him: Archie Leach (Grant's birth name).

[26] Another line that people think is an inside remark is when Earl Williams attempts to get out of the rolltop desk he's been hiding in, Grant says, "Get back in there, you Mock Turtle."

[18] Although Grant also might’ve been referencing an earlier line from the stage version, which is delivered in act one by Bensinger, (the owner of the infamous roll-top desk) in which he describes the condemned Williams’ last meal as: “…Mock turtle soup, chicken pot pie, hashed brown potatoes, combination salad, and pie a la mode.” [27] Release of the film was rushed by Cohn and a sneak preview of the film was held in December, with a press screening on January 3, 1940.

"[30] The Variety reviewer wrote "The trappings are different—even to the extent of making reporter Hildy Johnson a femme—but it is still Front Page and Columbia need not regret it.

Charles Leder (sic) has done an excellent screenwriting job on it and producer-director Howard Hawks has made a film that can stand alone almost anywhere and grab healthy grosses.

"[31] Harrison's Reports wrote "Even though the story and its development will be familiar to those who saw the first version of The Front Page, they will be entertained just the same, for the action is so exciting that it holds one in tense suspense throughout.

"[33] John Mosher of The New Yorker wrote that after years of "feeble, wispy, sad imitations" of The Front Page, he found this authentic adaptation of the original to be "as fresh and undated and bright a film as you could want".

The website's critics consensus reads: "Anchored by stellar performances from Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, His Girl Friday is possibly the definitive screwball romantic comedy.

"[36] In the 2012 Sight & Sound poll of the greatest films of all time, His Girl Friday appeared on several lists, including those of critic David Thomson[37] and director Quentin Tarantino.

At the beginning of the film, Hildy says that she wants to be "treated like a woman", but her return to her profession reveals her true desire to live a different life.

[39] In His Girl Friday, even though the characters remarry, Hawks displays an aversion to marriage, home, and family through his approach to the film.

In His Girl Friday, Walter Burns manipulates, acts selfishly, frames his ex-wife's fiancé, and orchestrates the kidnapping of an elderly woman.

[46] Hawks attached verbal tags before and after specific script lines so the actors would be able to interrupt and talk over each other without making the necessary dialogue incomprehensible.

Howard Hawks emphasizes the pace difference between Hildy’s two possible lives, by having plot elements and staging mirror the editing, where slow and languid moments are interspersed with sub-second shots of newsworthy freneticism.

As gunshots provide a diegetic backdrop of time, ellipses shots become more obvious; the first reporter immediately cuts from reaching the table to talking on the phone.

[59] In this first film adaptation of the Broadway play of the same title (written by former Chicago newsmen Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur), Hildy Johnson was male.

"[70] Rosalind Russell's performance as Hildy Johnson was cited[citation needed] as the model for the character of Lois Lane in the Superman franchise.