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Unfortunately as soon as Walter spots Hildy he launches into his well rehearsed spiel, a cocktail of charm and rapid-fire questions. Hildy can barely squeeze a word in edgeways as Walter reminisces over their divorce and how she should immediately resume working at the Morning Post. Since she's uninterested in both of these ideas, Hildy finally manages to put Walter in a box and give him the news. All she wants to be is a real woman, raising children and leading a normal life; the attraction of being a newshound has paled. Walter can't believe it, so he baits her into letting him meet this "perfect" Bruce. Pretty soon Walter's taken them to lunch and is running rings around poor, bemused Bruce. He lags far behind their verbal cut and parry.
While His Girl Friday is very clearly a Howard Hawks production, it's also an actors dream vehicle -- if your name's Cary Grant. Here the talented and versatile performer appears to be in his element, casually dropping witticisms whilst enjoying himself immensely. Such is the rich harmony between Grant and his lines that watching him is a guilty pleasure, like licking a spoon freshly dipped in cream. His urbane charm never found a warmer berth. The surprise is that Russell matches Grant step for step, deftly avoiding veiled comments and scoring a few flesh wounds herself. When the pair crank up their delivery, scattering words as leaves in a storm, the intensity is enough to make one swoon. You want the dance to continue forever yet, at the same time, it can't end too soon; sensuous delirium.
Smack in the centre of the story, there's a great chemistry between Grant and Russell; it's magical, electric, spiky, attractive and a whole lot of fun. The unsubtle sexual overtones add a buzz, quite a departure from the original man orientated stage play! Beyond the two leads His Girl Friday features a fine spread of actors. Bellamy plays the chump, an Albany boy out of his depth in the company of these city types. There's honour in his position. Poor Bruce just can't work out why his chivalry is out of date in Chicago. Maybe the pack of reporting hyenas that throngs his step aren't a good example; journalists like Roy Bensinger (Ernest Truex) and Jake McCue (Roscoe Karns) are great hacks but poor human beings. When they get a story on the ground, it's as if they're savaging a carcass. Perhaps that's how Earl Williams (John Qualen) feels? Sentenced to death, he's the bait that Walter uses to keep Hildy in Chicago.
Curiously, when you move away from the script and cast, His Girl Friday is really a very ordinary film. Hawks puts so much energy into the performances, ensuring fizz and vim, that he neglects almost everything else. As fast as the cast career around, always chasing a deadline, they can't escape the barely breathing sets. For all that Joseph Walker keeps his camera flying, urged on by Hawks, His Girl Friday can't evade its theatrical origin. Now while this isn't necessarily a "bad thing", it is a weakness. On the other hand, it's hard enough as it is to concentrate on the overlapping yet rarely incoherent dialogue; this is a film that needs to be watched again and again, just to pick up the cunning in-jokes. Maybe Hawks realised this and kept his movie simple.
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