The Front Page is a 1974 American black comedy-drama film directed by Billy Wilder, and starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau.

A. L. Diamond[3] is based on Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's 1928 play of the same name (which inspired several other films, such as 1931's The Front Page, the 1940 comedy, His Girl Friday, and televised movies and series episodes).

Ruthless, egomaniacal managing editor Walter Burns, desperate to keep Hildy on the job, encourages him to cover the story, frustrating Peggy, who is eager to catch their train.

Earl is an impoverished, bumbling leftist whose offense was stuffing fortune cookies with messages, demanding the release from death row of equally overblown murder convicts Sacco and Vanzetti.

After Williams accidentally kills a police officer, the yellow press has painted Earl as another communist threat from Moscow, so Chicago citizens are eager to see him put to death.

Hildy and Peggy leave to get married, and Walter telegraphs the next railway station to alert them that the man who stole his watch is on the inbound train, and should be apprehended by the police.

Dr. Eggelhofer, a character only mentioned in the play, appears in the film as an eccentric, sex-obsessed Freudian psychiatrist whose theories are utterly incomprehensible to Williams.

[8] Diamond and Wilder also inserted several "in jokes" to the film, such as describing Burns as still being upset with the loss of his star reporter, Ben Hecht (who did work as a newsman in 1920s Chicago), to a Hollywood studio.

[12] Vincent Canby of The New York Times thought the story was "a natural" for Wilder and Diamond, who "have a special (and, to my mind, very appealing) appreciation for vulgar, brilliant con artists of monumental tackiness".

He continued, "Even though the mechanics and demands of movie-making slow what should be the furious tempo, this Front Page displays a giddy bitterness that is rare in any films except those of Mr. Wilder.

He described Walter Matthau and Austin Pendleton as "marvelous", and added, "Mr. Lemmon is comparatively reserved as the flamboyant Hildy, never quite letting go of his familiar comic personality to become dominated by the lunacies of the farce.

"[13] The British television network, Channel 4, called it the "least satisfying screen adaptation of Hecht and MacArthur's play", saying it "adds little to the mix other than a bit of choice language.

Lemmon and Matthau, competing with each other for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, lost to Art Carney in Harry and Tonto.

Wilder and Diamond were nominated for the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Comedy Adapted from Another Medium, but lost to Lionel Chetwynd and Mordecai Richler for The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz.