His Girl Friday Rocks.

HIS GIRL FRIDAY is one of my absolute favorite movies of all time.
everyone should see that movie at least ten times, why? because i said so.
Why is it my favorite? because i've been in love with Cary Grant since i was 10 ( who isn't?) and Rosalind Russell is just about as bad ass as a chick can get.

But i'm not just gonna blog about why i love this movie, i figured i'd share some interesting facts about the movie that you may not have known.

It's a remake of the 1931 film "The Front Page" which is in itself a film adaptation of an original play.
It's a premake (i just made that word up) of the 1974 film "The Front Page" which, as much as I like Billy Wilder is just kind of "meh." Now both of these other versions are about two men in the newspaper business. This is the only version where Hildy is a chick. (A/N-Apparently the 1988 film SWITCHING CHANNELS was also male/female, TCM.com rocks and knows more than me.)
Anyway, the legend goes that during auditions, Howard Hawks' secretary read Hildy's lines and Hawks liked the way they sounded so much that he had the character rewritten as a woman and as Walter's wife...make that ex-wife.

Rosalind Russell was also not the first female up for the lead. She was something like seventh down the line, but like I said before, she's bad ass, so even though she was miffed she wasn't first choice she recognized it was a stellar role and kicked ass in the part.
In the documentary CARY GRANT: A CLASS APART, which i cant link, cause it's a movie- someone (who, i can't remember) tells us that the script for this film rounded off at something like 190 pages. That's over three hours. the film clocks in at about 92 minutes. Hawks had the actors talk fast and overlap the dialogue and the result is completely riveting. (actually, come to think of it, that was my biggest problem with Wilder's version of the film. They didn't talk as fast. The film just dragged on and I was yelling the lines out before the actors could speak them. I always say if you can't make something better don't remake it.)

When Cary Grant tells Evangeline to "occupy" Bruce, she asks him what he looks like and Grant says "He looks like uh... that fella in the movies, you know uh, Ralph Bellamy." According to Bellamy this line was improvised by Grant.
Grant's line "The last man that said that to me was Archie Leach, just a week before he cut his throat." is another improvised line, for Cary Grant fans this is especially funny as Archibald Leach is Grant's birth name.
According to this note - the average rate of human speech is 100-150 words per minute- The dialogue in HGF has been timed at 240 words per minute.
There is no music in the film except over the beginning credits and over the last couple of minutes.
Howard Hawks once screened his version of the film side by side with the 1931 version to prove that his was faster.

Aside from the fun facts, this movie is just a perfect example to throw in someone's face when they tell you that old movies are boring because they're slow.