Talk:His Girl Friday

Query

Why is the title of the film 'His Girl Friday'? Lachatdelarue (talk) 2 July 2005 20:56 (UTC)

A "girl Friday" is a mid-20th century term for a female assistant who performs a wide range of chores. It's an adaptation of "man Friday", which in turn comes from the character "Friday", Robinson Crusoe's native servant in Robinson Crusoe. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 05:15, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

I've added this etymology because I think it's worth mentioning. Maikel (talk) 22:11, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

I moved it into a note, because it's note worthy of its own section. Ed Fitzgerald _{t / c} 03:23, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

an, an _optometrist_, though...? o__o";;; -- eiryuu 42.61.215.133 (talk) 15:03, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Overlapping dialogue

I read somewhere that this was the first cinematic example of overlapping dialogue. Can anybody corroborate this? Clarityfiend 04:27, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

• I don't think it's practical to corroborate this. It may very well be true (at least as far as English speaking films are concerned) but proving it is nigh impossible. Many early "talkies" (especially the unsuccessful ones) are no longer available in any form other than a few still photos because the prints were all allowed to deteriorate beyond the point of saving for posterity. Nobody imagined that there was money to be made decades later by selling the broadcast rights to television. Storing the films in a cool dry place costs money, and there didn't seem to be any point in spending it at the time. Any one of these lost films may have had overlaping dialogue in them, but we'll never know for certain. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wyldstaar (talk • contribs) 22:28, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

• Citizen Kane, another film released in 1940, has overlapping dialog, but Welles didn't use it nearly as often as Hawks. Given that early talkies often had flat, stultifying scripts, it's unlikely overlapping dialog was used earlier. The point is not who used it first, but that Hawks was the first to incorporate it as a fundamental component of the dialog. WilliamSommerwerck (talk) 12:43, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Tarantino

I removed "Noted to be Quentin Tarantino's fourth favorite movie." It's not particularly notable and is already in the Tarantino article. Besides, according to that article, his favorites seem to change with time. Clarityfiend 05:28, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I think it is a noteworthy bit of trivia, however I think a more accurate way of stating it is that Tarantino structured a lot of the dialogue in his seminal classic Pulp Fiction to deliberately mimic the rapid-fire dialogue delivery of His Girl Friday. Howard Hawks is Tarantino's favorite director, his favorites always include a couple Hawks pictures.

Regardless, even though I do find it an interesting bit of trivia, I don't see any way to gracefully incorporate it into the existing article, so it's probably best to leave it out. --Ella Plantagenet (talk) 17:17, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Hudsucker Proxy

The Hudsucker Proxy is heavily colored by this movie, especially the newsroom scenes. Is it worth a mention?

Trivia

In the Trivia section of this article it is stated that, "Walter tells Ralph Bellamy's character that he looks a lot like an actor...Ralph Bellamy."

As I recall the scene, Walter is on the phone describing the Bellamy character to an accomplice of his named "Louie." It is during this converstaion that Walter mentions to Louie that the Bellamy character looks like that actor Ralph Bellamy. He never to my recollection makes this observation directly to Bellamy.

69.120.111.236 10:56, 24 November 2006 (UTC)Ubermouze

Adaptation

The Adaptation section contains a sentence which states that His Girl Friday inspired the 1974 film, The Front Page. What? How precisely does a movie which is itself an adaptation of the stage play The Front Page from 1928 manage this feat? Yes, His Girl Friday was the most successful adaptation of the play, but that doesn't make it noteworthy as an inspiration for the 1974 film. If it inspired anything in the 1974 film, it was the hope that it would be just as successful. 1988's Switching Channels was more inspired by His Girl Friday than the 1974 version of The Front Page, yet there's no mention of it at all. It also states that Jack Lemmon and Walter Mathau are playing the roles of Rosalind Russel and Cary Grant. This is also patently false, as the characters in the original play version of The Front page were Hildy Johnson and Walter Burns. I am completely removing this sentence.Wyldstaar (talk) 22:18, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

multi-track recording

Actually, multi-track recording was available at the time. The RCA system laid down seven tracks on 35mm film. It was used for Orchestra Wives, Sun Valley Serenade and most notably, Fantasia. Even if Howard Hawks had been aware of it and wanted to use it, the ever-stingy Harry Cohen would have nixed it. WilliamSommerwerck (talk) 23:43, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

"A woman"

"But during auditions, a woman, Howard Hawks' secretary, read reporter Hildy Johnson's lines" - did this woman have a name or was she some mere chattel undeserving of being treated like a human being? Both of the links used as references are dead. DuncanHill (talk) 14:45, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

• Hi, DuncanHill, I did not personally write that sentence in this article, but I have been working on improving this article so thank you for letting me know that the links were dead. I have replaced them with a different reference. I have been spending a lot of time reading about this film and I have seen that statement about Hawks's secretary many times and in many sources. Unfortunately, none of them give her a name that I have seen so far. I am far from done with the article; however, and will definitely be keeping my eyes open for her name. It's possible that that fact that she is not named might very well reflect the views of and treatment of women during the time period. Skyes(BYU) (talk) 18:17, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the attention to the ref - I seem to remember other TCM links being duff elsewhere. Good luck with your researches - as you say, attitudes to women at the time were rather poor. It's such a good film (I was watching it today, which is what brought me here), it really does add to the article to know more about how it was made. DuncanHill (talk) 19:45, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

Albany

I read in the Interpretation section: "and they consider staying with Bruce in Albany." That was a joke by Burns. I removed that clause. (I can hardly believe a critic said that.) Zaslav (talk) 08:36, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

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• His Girl Friday.webm

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 20:22, 15 April 2020 (UTC)