 point you can post a question and we will and john will answer questions after his brief talk that is correct yep so yeah we'll see him and we'll we'll read them aloud and first thing we're going to do is we're going to have a little uh video that john has prepared which is going to be a lot of fun um so uh what do you think you guys should we go ahead and roll that beautiful footage right now let's do it all right hi everybody and welcome it's john far back with another series of classic tuesday sponsored by the bedford playhouse in beautiful bedford new york only this time it's virtual brought to you from my home office via the magic of zoom you know over the past century in tough uncertain times great movies have provided vital therapy allowing us to share something together and escape our worries at least for a couple of hours so with that in mind every tuesday night this month we're focusing on a timeless classic that's celebrating an anniversary this year tonight it's his girl friday from 1940 next week we have all about e from 1950 and on the 28th tunes of glory from 1960 now these movies are all very different but but they have one thing in common they all improve with age and with repeat viewings they also offer rich backstories which is where i come in we tend to think of movie remakes as a more recent phenomenon but they've actually been around as long as there have been great stories to tell and retell his girl friday is in fact a remake of a film released just eight years before called the front page the front page actually started as a monster hit play on broadway way back in 1928 starring osgood perkins whose son was actor anthony perkins the play also made stars out of its authors ben hecht and charles macArthur they'd first met as young reporters in the wild and crazy chicago of the 1920s both would go on to great success writing for the movies in 1939 their screenplay for the classic weathering heights was oscar nominated and a few years later hecht would write two back-to-back screenplays for two great hitchcock films spellbound and my personal favorite notorious now both the play and the 1931 film version of the front page featured walter and hilly as male characters no surprise since in those days the newspaper business are practically all men but under the inspired direction of how it hawks that would change in the 1940 remake now by this time hawks was one of the most respected names in hollywood he was known for his versatility he could turn out dramas comedies and thrillers with equal flair now hawks loved the front page and he loved ben hecht and charles macArthur you see they'd all work together back in 1934 on a screwball forest called 20th century starring john berymore and carol lombard now that film had been adapted from yet another smash hecht macArthur play so hawks was totally committed to this remake even though hecht and macArthur wouldn't be available to do the screenplay themselves instead they suggested hawks use their friend charles letterer who'd contributed dialogue to the 1931 film version one day early on hawks and letterer were attending a script conference and just by chance a female assistant in the parlance of the day a girl friday was reading the part of hildy all of a sudden the twists that hawks was looking for hit him like a thunderbolt this time around hildy the reporter would be female and better still her editor walter burns and she would be a divorced couple now this already great story would have a romantic element hawks next turned his attention to casting now he was just coming off two movies with kerry grant 1938's classic screwball bringing up baby and a drama the following year called only angels have wings the swath of handsome english actor was to put it mildly an unexpected choice to play a hardboiled american newspaper editor clark gable or spencer tracy would have been more obvious picks but hawks was convinced kerry grant could pull it off having worked with him on bringing up baby he appreciated grant's ability to handle quick comic pacing and dialogue and key to making this movie work was to make all the action dialogue lightning fast now both the play and first film had this speed but hawks wanted his version to go even faster he even wanted to try overlapping dialogue which was a totally new thing in pictures basically he tell his actors to expect that their first and last words of dialogue would get stepped on now he knew kerry grant could handle that but what female star could pull off hildy johnson well the first and obvious choice was gene arthur who just finished working with hawks and grant on only angels have wings she'd also played a female reporter the year before in frank capper's wonderful mr. deeds goes to town but she'd found it hard working with hawks and so she turned it down carol lombard was considered but she was too expensive for columbia pictures then in quick succession catherine heppern clotted cobert ginger rogers and irine dunn all said no by the time columbia negotiated with mjm de borough rosslyn russell for the part she knew she was far from first choice didn't make her too happy still at that time rogers wasn't as big a star as these other candidates it was only in that pivotal year 1939 that she'd finally got the chance to display her flair for comedy and mgms all-female picture the women so hurt feelings aside ross grabbed the part of hildy and ran with it and in hindsight it's hard to imagine anyone else doing it as well still she was nervous particularly at the outset this was her biggest part in her most high-profile movie plus she'd never worked with kerry grand or howard hawks before now over the first few days of shooting she said she was firing in all cylinders but she wasn't getting much encouragement or feedback from her director finally she just went up to him and asked if she could be doing anything better and hawks looked at her and replied in his laconic way you just keep pushing them around the way you're doing ross was immediately reassured now for his girl friday there would now have to be the other man the poor guy who thinks he's going to marry hildy and for that they got character actor ralf bellamy bellamy who'd have a long career appearing in later films like rosemary's baby and trading places was perfect casting for hildy's fiance bruce baldwin he'd already been the other man opposite kerry grant in another classic comedy two years prior leo mccarrie is the awful truth one of my favorites this would be a very happy reunion for him now howard hawks is unusual for the time in that he actually encouraged improvisation on his films particularly his comedies ross russell quickly realized that her costar had all the best lines so she literally hired a writer on her own dime to give her a steady supply of gags for each day of shooting the running joke was that every morning on set kerry would go up to her with a big grin and say well what have you got today kerry of course didn't need a writer happily contributed several zany lines breaking the so-called fourth wall with references to that fellow in the movies you know well ralf bellamy and then the last man that said that to me was archie leech just a week before he cut his throat archie leech was of course grant's real name well it was a fun but challenging shoot ultimately hawks made everything look smooth easy and natural but coordinating all the rapid dialogue with the actor's physical movements and gestures was tricky to say the least as an example the restaurant scene with walter hilly and bruce took a full four days to shoot one big positive the two stars kerry and ross really hit it off in fact they become close lifelong friends kerry even played matchmaker introducing ross to her future husband producer freddie bresson and serving as best man at their wedding the following year his girl friday was released in january 1940 to mostly positive reviews and solid business but mystifying as it sounds it received no oscar nominations nor had hawks two other brilliant comedies for that matter 20th century and bringing up baby for some reason the academy has often discounted comedies odd since they're the hardest type of film to do really well anyway it hardly mattered hawks grant russell and bellamy would all go on to more successful pictures and at russell's memorial service in 1976 it was kerry grant who delivered the eulogy meanwhile hinton macarthur's front page would continue to be given new life both on stage and screen billy wilder filmed another version in 1974 with walter matthew and jack lemon and 1988 brought switching channels starring burt reynolds cathleen turner and bedford's own christopher reeve which transplanted the story to the world of cable tv news none of these would come close to recapturing the magic of his girl friday now speaking of magic next week we'll be covering all about eve my pick for the greatest movie ever made about the theater you can stream at any time between now and then on amazon prime all about eve is the masterwork of writer director joseph l mankowitz who incidentally retired to bedford after a long and illustrious career now as you watch the film look for maryland roe in a small but pivotal role this movie helped make her a star also keep in mind that the role of margo chanting so closely associated with betty davis would have been played by actress claudette colbert had she not been injured on her previous film now that would have been a very different movie till next week thanks for watching and please stay safe hi guys all right we're back uh let's get uh i'm sure john will be right on in a minute um if you guys have any questions feel free to type in uh in that q and a box down at the bottom there you uh hover your mouse over and it should pop up and you'll see a little q and a section that'll give you the opportunity to type a question that uh john will so happily answer i know that's part of the fun of these uh kind of meetings that we're doing right now and um i know dan has a couple too uh dan i think you see a couple we do we do we have a couple of questions that were submitted in advance uh for some folks so uh john why don't we start off with a couple of these and then we'll open it up to anybody else who wants to ask okay uh so the first question i can we can hear you up so the first question uh i'm going to just read it straight out uh that came in is why isn't rosalyn russell more famous other than his girl friday she never seems to get the same recognition or notoriety that some of her contemporary is like catherine heparin do well it's an excellent question uh one thing i will say about ross russell is i don't think hollywood ever totally knew what to do with her um the the camera didn't love her she was not a she was very attractive i i always felt she's she looks great in this movie but she wasn't a a great beauty they had to really work on her uh with makeup and everything else uh and so she wasn't necessarily a natural for film and i also think that she preferred the theater so she was one of those actresses who did a lot of theater um and by the time she uh really hit it with his girl friday which was just a year after the women jeez she was 33 now in those days in hollywood that was old so she still managed to rack up quite a few oscar nominations and we all remember her from anti maim and gypsy and and picnic which is one of my favorite movies and so she did do movies but she didn't do them all the time and she would do lots of broadway shows and did very well on broadway so she had a very active career just wasn't dependent on the the movie business okay uh next question which is kind of in a similar vein to what you were talking about before was is this um is this considered one of the first feminist films given that howard hawks i guess had a bit of a reputation as a womanizer well i mean it's interesting that i i that's an interesting question because i mean howard hawks had a great marriage his wife was slim hawks and and to have and have not bogart and becaus first movie she's called slim well that was because they were all very good friends uh and hawks in his way was a feminist himself because if you look at his herb is his movies the women in those movies a lot of them uh had to operate in a quote-unquote man's world and did very well operating in a man's world um and if you look at gene arthur and only angels have wings or indeed lauren becau and to have and have not just two examples he didn't hit the the women the female characters in hawks films were tough and strong even angie dickinson and rio bravo i mean she could hold her own against john wane so in a in a in a funny way i think of howard hawks is is really a feminist i don't know whether he would have acknowledged that but the the the key women in his movies were strong and they operated successfully in a male world we have a we have a question here from stacey who's watching uh uh right now uh did anyone ever try to outdo the word per minute record of his girl friday and why the emphasis at the time on the verbal speed well it's a funny thing um if anybody tried to outdo that i don't think anybody can understand what was being said you can't go much faster than that and i think what hawks was trying to do was to build on something that the play and the original film had already done because the newspaper business is a war of words blah blah blah blah everything you know all those telephone scenes and hawks wanted to see just how fast he could go while making sure that what was being said or the essence of of what was being said could be understood so i don't think anybody could have gone much faster but but you have to understand in 1940 this was this was unheard of i mean nobody had ever seen anything like this robert altman's mash we you all may remember from 1970 really brought it back with the overlapping dialogue and everybody talking over each other this had not been done much in fact hardly at all and so hawks was trying to say i can i can go even faster but i i can't go too fast that people can't understand what's being said so i don't think anybody wanted to try to beat that record only because then everybody would be looking just like going i i don't understand you can only go so fast before people don't don't hear what's being said we have another question uh we have another question from uh uh lisa and robert and emily which is what is your favorite scene in the movie and they commented that you do a great carry grant well thank you very much i look like harry grant too which obviously helps um but no i think it's it's so hard to say that that restaurant scene that i brought up that took four days to shoot is so wonderful that probably is my favorite moment there's an intimacy and a dynamic going on between carry grant and ross russell uh that is so subtle and you kind of that's the scene where i kind of say to myself oh they're definitely going to get together i mean they they belong together for better or for worse even though he's not going to change he will never change and also i just want to mention how skilled ralph bellamy was i mean some of you may have seen the awful truth which is one of my favorite movies of all time but you know he has to play this role of kind of this dole who doesn't he he isn't quite getting it um but that takes acting too and the three of them are so wonderful in that scene uh it's the it is actually the one sequence that i like to go back and and watch again and again because again hawks makes it look so easy and natural and it's just another scene but if you go back and look at it uh and and watch all the dynamics and all the subtleties and the gestures and everything going on it's sublime it's really brilliant so we actually have uh we have two questions that are kind of in the same vein here one is from uh abbot and one is from chip which is uh talking about carry grant i guess uh in certain scenes he seems less carry grantish uh and then he sort of comes into the part so um you have any comment about his performance especially in the opening scene uh that he doesn't really start becoming carry grant per se until ralph bellamy joins the joins the scene any thoughts about that you know carry grant always had a bad rap everybody used to say carry grant plays carry grant and he never won an oscar competitively for that reason and you know it's so funny i it is i mean there are different degrees of carry grant and i think he was trying to play the scene you know he was trying to do a build as was appropriate to the script um but he was a tremendously skilled actor um and deserved a lot more credit than he got now you know he was one of the most popular and in-demand actors uh in hollywood so that wasn't really the issue but then he never won an oscar and he should have uh and again as i mentioned in my talk comedy was somehow discounted by the academy awards in a way that i never really understood comedy is the hardest thing to do well and there you had an actor who could play the dashing leading man in a hitchcock movie and then could turn around and do a brilliant comedy i mean when you i would invite you all if you haven't done it to look at his great comedies of the 30s and 40s you know topper the awful truth bringing up baby obviously his girl friday which you've just seen the philadelphia story which was the next movie he made in 1940 he was brilliant his comic timing and his physical his agility his physical agility uh was unsurpassed so um and i think this is one of his best performances because a lot of people said why don't they carry grand he's this english guy you know this swab english guy why are they making him a this tough hard boiled newspaper editor uh and yet he was perfect for the part he could he could do many many things he wasn't he was not a character actor he was not a character actor but he was a hell of a good actor and he was a great comic actor so i don't know if that answers the question but we have we actually have two more questions that are kind of again somewhat related um one is uh in the scene in the press room when carry grant tells his future mother-in-law to shut up uh that seems a little bit um out of the norm for the period of having a character behave that way and talk to a woman like that and um and a somewhat related uh for the time period question uh the cop killer gets off free in the end and um anything so the questions are i guess given the time that the film was made are those unusual all right let's take that one at a time um don't forget carry is supposed to be playing this very very tough hard boiled ruthless newspaper editor and obviously the you know the one of the funniest scenes frankly is when the the mother-in-law bruce's mother gets carried out and it is absolutely hilarious and he's ruthless walter burns will stop at nothing to get the story and to get the lady uh and uh no i mean it was very unusual and but it was farce so people were laughing i mean this was not uh this was not something that people were like oh well this is offensive that this woman would be carried out of there that was uh people were laughing uh as they should have been what was the second part of the question the second one was um in the the the killer the cop killer gets away gets gets off gets off at the end the film which seems to be against the production code of the time if that if that's correct you know there's the sense that i mean the the guy the way i read that movie i mean it isn't to me a very important part of the movie of quite honestly but it is like this is not a guy that is a criminal uh earl williams is not a killer he's not a threat to society he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and whatever but the the thing we have to keep in mind is he gets a reprieve from the governor so there's there's doubt as to whether or not he should be put to death um and that's the whole day no more of of the picture uh so um my view of it is that what what we should take away is that this is a guy who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and if there is mercy which ultimately there is on this guy that it's the right thing so it's never been something that's bothered me or oh gee should or williams you know was that unusual or should he have been convicted or anything else he's he seems like a scared rabbit who was who was almost a victim himself that's the way i read it right uh we have another one that was here online um any idea why the restaurant scene took four days to film there was again the the whole the the speed of the dialogue in the whole film was a real challenge from the point of view of synchronizing gestures and expressions and movement and everything else everything was sped up so it it became you know what would be normal sort of if you will blocking and choreography became a lot more intricate and challenging because um most movies didn't even have to try to deal with it this way so there was a lot of hit and miss or something oh no that didn't work no cut cut cut cut they had to get it just right and hawks was always relaxed but he was going to get it right and he didn't care and the movie did go over budget and over schedule but everybody understood why because they understood what his vision was they they were making a very unusual kind of movie and when you hear anybody talk about his girl friday there's one adjective that's always applied to it fast fast because fast because it is one of the fastest comedies ever made um and what's so special about it is that it really hadn't been done even the 1931 film version which was plenty fast and very clever didn't didn't go to this to this extent so and in many ways they were pioneering a new technique uh which which really wouldn't be uh duplicated or repeated for quite some time if you go and watch that movie mash robert alman's first really big hit in 1970 he really was going for that as well and did it very well but that's think about that that's 30 years later okay we have one more question that was submitted uh in advance uh and you've kind of already touched on this subject uh but the question is um can you throw a little love to ralph bellamy oh god ralph bellamy i love ralph bellamy i mean you know folks has been said before i mean think about dean martin dean martin played the straight man for many years uh opposite jerry lewis and what any comic will tell you is that playing the straight man is as difficult and challenging and requires as much skill as as playing the the comic uh and ralph bellamy could do it uh you you just have to look at the arc of his career um he did a wonderful movie which i recommend everybody where he played f dr in 1962 in a movie called sunrise at campabello he's a wonderful actor and and again he also had a very good career on the stage and his career i mean you know honestly how many actors have a career that extends into their you know 60s and 70s he had that and for a very good reason he was a superb actor but he was understated and he really knew how to play straight play the straight man which is tough it looks easy it's like hawks setting up that restaurant scene you say oh this looks you know this is very oh it's what a great scene it's hard it's hard to set it up it's hard to execute um and bellamy had that gift and uh he didn't mind he knew what he was playing and he he did it beautifully he was a fantastic actor so um again i invite you to to uh i mean our website best movies by far has if you just type in ralph bellamy look at the movies he's done he was a fantastic actor and he had a lot a lot of longevity so i give him a lot of love because he he was terrific he really was okay um if anyone else has any other questions to submit that's all the questions we've got so far does anybody uh listening have any more questions for john uh we do have one more from chip um this is actually really a comment but uh fast is one thing but what's amazing is that hawks manages to have to have a dozen actors speaking fast at the same time in completely different conversations and the direction of those scenes in the press room is astonishing which i think you referred to already john it was pretty complicated it's hard to do to set something yeah absolutely true because at the end of the day you could have that filmed and it would just sound like a lot of gibberish and nobody would you wouldn't be able to to make out anything so the challenge was to was to bring up the speed but make sure that we had a sense of what was going on and that we could hear stuff and that was what hawks was able to do and that really took a lot of work because that hadn't been done before um and he and he made it work and then the whole thing of of of making hildy johnson a female character um was was a stroke of genius and and i will say roslyn russell you know in a way she had so many good roles i didn't again another movie i would ask you all to go and watch is picnic one of the great sort of uh i call it americana but it's wiim based on a wiim hinge play um and the story on that is that ross russell uh didn't want to be and this was a mistake on her part she did the part she was fantastic in it she plays the sort of frustrated school teacher in kansas um and they the studio wanted to really push her to be nominated for best supporting actress and she didn't want that because she'd always been nominated for best actress uh and that was a mistake but uh you know she was absolutely fantastic the thing i would say to you all is look at the the look at bellamy look at ros russell look at carry grant go and find their best movies and watch them again because those are three amazing players uh and they had all of them had very very very good careers before and after this particular film again ros russell did a lot of theater but oh my goodness gypsy and andy maim and she was fabulous but picnic is one that i would have you uh have you look at as well and obviously next week we have all about eve i think probably many of you have seen that film but i'm trying to present movies that yes we've all seen them before but every time you see them the movie not only holds up the movie gets better so i would encourage you to watch all about eve again and the backstory on this movie is incredible so i hope you come back and tell your friends about this because we want to get we want to build this uh and then the following week we have tunes of glory which is a movie that we picked because it's not as well known but it's every bit as good as the first two entries it really is it's fantastic alec guiness and john mills and again a wonderful backstory but very much in the context of the british film industry which is its own little family and you'd hear a lot more about that so i hope you all come back and um and i'm happy to answer any more questions or do you think we're done there i think uh unless does anyone else have anything i think that about wraps it up so thank you very much john and everybody thank you all and i hope we'll see you back next week we have one little uh public service announcement we've been asked to make um we are the the playhouse is uh going to be a a food pantry collection point starting tomorrow um with starting what you're working with the bedford armark rotary club so uh if you are so inclined to help donate to uh give us give an assist for people in this time where we're all uh all these little help please do so and um we will thank you very much we will uh if there are any questions that come in after we'll have john see we can respond to them privately i just volunteered you for that it's good i'm happy to do it all right yeah thank you very much everybody thanks dan thanks everybody for tuning in and uh we'll see you next time good night everybody good night