The Front Page | |
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Directed by | Lewis Milestone |
Screenplay by | Bartlett Cormack Charles Lederer |
Based on | The Front Page by Ben Hecht Charles MacArthur |
Produced by | Lewis Milestone Howard Hughes |
Starring | Adolphe Menjou Pat O'Brien Mary Brian Edward Everett Horton |
Cinematography | Glen MacWilliams |
Edited by | W. Duncan Mansfield |
Color process | Black and white |
Production company | The Caddo Company |
Distributed by | United Artists |
Release date |
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Running time | 101 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Box office | $700,000 [1] |
The Front Page is a 1931 American pre-Code screwball black comedy film directed by Lewis Milestone and starring Adolphe Menjou and Pat O'Brien. Based on the 1928 Broadway play of the same name by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, the film was produced by Howard Hughes, written by Bartlett Cormack and Charles Lederer, and distributed by United Artists. The supporting cast includes Mary Brian, Edward Everett Horton, Walter Catlett, George E. Stone, Mae Clarke, Slim Summerville, and Matt Moore. At the 4th Academy Awards, the film was nominated for Best Picture, Milestone for Best Director, and Menjou for Best Actor.
In 2010, this film was selected for the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". [2] [3] [4] The film is in the public domain. [5]
Two versions of the film exist, each made up of different takes, one for the international market and director Lewis Milestone's preferred version for its original U.S. domestic release. Both versions are available on home video. [6]
In an unnamed large city with multiple daily newspapers, star reporter Hildebrand "Hildy" Johnson and his Morning Post editor, Walter Burns, hope to cash in on a big story involving an escaped convicted murderer, Earl Williams. Williams is scheduled to go to the gallows at 7 o'clock the following morning for an anarchist-related murder of a black policeman. Esteemed newspaperman Johnson is about to quit the journalism trade and is on his way to marry his sweetheart Peggy Grant and relocate to New York City where an advertising job awaits him. Not surprisingly, his unscrupulous boss Burns does not want him to quit. He wants Johnson to remain on his staff so he can cover the major news story for the Morning Post.
Although he is an avowed anarchist, it is revealed that Williams is likely an innocent man who has been wrongly convicted of the policeman's murder due to rising anti-red sentiments in his city.
Accordingly, Burns will do anything to make sure Johnson works on that angle of the story — including delaying his wedding trip. Hours before Williams' scheduled execution, while being interviewed by an Austrian alienist and reenacting the murder, Williams manages to escape custody with the help of Sheriff Pinky Hartman's gun which the inept lawman had carelessly loaned to the doctor. With the assistance of Johnson and Burns, the newspapermen hide the fleeing Williams in a rolltop desk in a room usually occupied by a bevy of newspaper reporters gathered to cover Williams' execution. Johnson's soon-to-be mother-in-law, Mrs. Grant, sees Johnson and Burns hide Williams in the desk. To silence her, Burns has some of his cronies roughly escort her out of the building.
Sheriff Hartman and the mayor of the city get a missive from the governor. It is a reprieve for Williams. However, Williams' execution would be a political boon for the two men in an upcoming election, so they refuse to accept it. Instead, they send the messenger away with a bribe and the address of a house of ill repute. Johnson's future mother-in-law eventually returns to the press room and Williams is found in the desk. The reporters all rush to call bulletins into their editors, each with widely varying and greatly exaggerated details about how the fugitive Williams was re-arrested.
Johnson and Burns are about to be arrested by Sheriff Hartman for aiding a fleeing criminal and kidnapping Mrs. Grant when the messenger from the governor reappears. Saying he is happily married and his conscience cannot let him accept the bribe, he tells the reporters about the politicians' refusal to accept the governor's pardon for Williams. The politicians quickly agree to drop their charges against the reporters in exchange for them not mentioning their own wrongdoings in the newspapers.
Despite offers of a promotion at the Morning Post from Burns, Johnson says he is retiring from the newspaper business to go on his wedding trip. Burns seems to accept Johnson's career decision gracefully, even giving Johnson his prized gold watch as a thank-you gift for his services as a star reporter for the Morning Post. However, moments after Johnson and Mary depart for the railroad station, Burns arranges for the police to arrest Johnson at the train's first stop on the pretense that Johnson has stolen his watch.
The Front Page was preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2016. [7]
In addition to this film, the play has been adapted on several other occasions. CBS radio turned it into a one-hour June 28, 1937 episode of Lux Radio Theatre with Walter Winchell and James Gleason, [8] and a half-hour June 22, 1946 episode of Academy Award Theater with O'Brien and Menjou reprising their original roles. [9] NBC radio ran a one-hour May 9, 1948 episode of the Ford Theater starring Ed Begley and Everett Sloane. [10] [11]
The story was adapted for Howard Hawks's comedy His Girl Friday (1940), in which Hildy was recast as a woman played by Rosalind Russell, the ex-wife of Walter (Cary Grant), giving the story a romantic spin. There was also a 1974 remake of The Front Page starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau; and another version was made as Switching Channels (1988) with Burt Reynolds, Kathleen Turner and Christopher Reeve.
The Front Page is a Broadway comedy about newspaper reporters on the police beat. Written by former Chicago reporters Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, it was first produced in 1928 and has been adapted for the cinema several times. The play entered the public domain in the United States in 2024.
Fury is a 1936 American crime film directed by Fritz Lang that tells the story of an innocent man who narrowly escapes being burned to death by a lynch mob and the revenge he then seeks. The film was released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and stars Sylvia Sidney and Tracy, with a supporting cast featuring Walter Abel, Bruce Cabot, Edward Ellis and Walter Brennan. Loosely based on the events surrounding the Brooke Hart murder in San Jose, California, the film was adapted by Bartlett Cormack and Lang from the story Mob Rule by Norman Krasna. Fury was Lang's first American film.
His Girl Friday is a 1940 American screwball comedy film directed by Howard Hawks, starring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell and featuring Ralph Bellamy and Gene Lockhart. It was released by Columbia Pictures. The plot centers on a newspaper editor named Walter Burns who is about to lose his ace reporter and ex-wife, Hildy Johnson, newly engaged to another man. Burns suggests they cover one more story together, getting themselves entangled in the case of murderer Earl Williams as Burns desperately tries to win back his wife. The screenplay was adapted from the 1928 play The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur. This was the second time the play had been adapted for the screen, the first occasion being the 1931 film which kept the original title The Front Page.
Catherine Rosalind Russell was an American actress, comedian, screenwriter, and singer, known for her role as fast-talking newspaper reporter Hildy Johnson in the Howard Hawks screwball comedy His Girl Friday (1940), opposite Cary Grant, as well as for her portrayals of Mame Dennis in Auntie Mame (1958) and Rose in Gypsy (1962). A noted comedienne, she won all five Golden Globes for which she was nominated. Russell won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical in 1953 for her portrayal of Ruth in the Broadway show Wonderful Town. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress four times during her career before being awarded a Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1973.
Nathan Lane is an American actor. Since 1975, he has been seen on stage and screen in both comedic roles and dramatic roles. Lane has received numerous awards, including three Tony Awards, six Drama Desk Awards, an Olivier Award, three Emmy Awards, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. Lane received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2006 and was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2008. In 2010, The New York Times hailed Lane as "the greatest stage entertainer of the decade".
Young Mr. Lincoln is a 1939 American biographical drama western film about the early life of President Abraham Lincoln, directed by John Ford and starring Henry Fonda. Ford and producer Darryl F. Zanuck fought for control of the film, to the point where Ford destroyed unwanted takes for fear the studio would use them in the film. Screenwriter Lamar Trotti was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing/Original Story.
William Lee Tracy was an American stage, film, and television actor. He is known foremost for his portrayals between the late 1920s and 1940s of fast-talking, wisecracking news reporters, press agents, lawyers, and salesmen. From 1949 to 1954, he was also featured in the weekly radio and television versions of the series Martin Kane: Private Eye, as well as starring as the newspaper columnist Lee Cochran in the 1958–1959 British-American crime drama New York Confidential. Later, in 1964, he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and a Golden Globe for his supporting role in the film The Best Man.
William Joseph Patrick O'Brien was an American film actor with more than 100 screen credits. Of Irish descent, he often played Irish and Irish-American characters and was referred to as "Hollywood's Irishman in Residence" in the press. One of the best-known screen actors of the 1930s and 1940s, he played priests, cops, military figures, pilots, and reporters. He is especially well-remembered for his roles in Knute Rockne, All American (1940), Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), and Some Like It Hot (1959). He was frequently paired onscreen with Hollywood star James Cagney. O'Brien also appeared on stage and television.
John Joseph Francis Mulhall was an American film actor beginning in the silent film era who successfully transitioned to sound films, appearing in over 430 films in a career spanning 50 years.
The Front Page is a 1974 American black comedy-drama film directed by Billy Wilder, and starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. The screenplay by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond is based on Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's 1928 play of the same name, which inspired several other films and televised movies and series episodes.
Roxie Hart is a 1942 American comedy film directed by William A. Wellman, and starring Ginger Rogers, Adolphe Menjou and George Montgomery. A film adaptation of a 1926 play Chicago by Maurine Dallas Watkins, a journalist who found inspiration in two real-life Chicago trials she had covered for the press. The play had been adapted once prior, in a 1927 silent film. In 1975, a hit stage musical premiered, and was once more adapted as the Oscar-winning 2002 musical film.
That's Right – You're Wrong is a 1939 American musical film directed by David Butler and released by RKO Radio Pictures. The film stars Kay Kyser and his band, with a cast that included Adolphe Menjou, Lucille Ball, Edward Everett Horton, Roscoe Karns, and Ginny Simms. It was the first film to feature Kyser and his band, and its success led to their headlining several more pictures over the next five years. The title was a Kyser catchphrase, used on his radio show when a contestant correctly gave a wrong answer to a "right or wrong" question.
Black Arrow is a 1944 American Western Serial film directed by Lew Landers and starring Roberts Scott, Adele Jergens, Robert Williams and Kenneth MacDonald.
A Dangerous Profession is a 1949 American film noir directed by Ted Tetzlaff, written by Warren Duff and Martin Rackin, and starring George Raft, Ella Raines, and Pat O'Brien. The supporting cast features Jim Backus.
Windy City is a 1982 musical with a book and lyrics by Dick Vosburgh and music by Tony Macaulay. It is based on the 1928 play The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur.
The Man Who Walked Alone is a 1945 American B film romantic comedy film produced by PRC Pictures, Inc., directed by Christy Cabanne, with top-billed Dave O'Brien and Kay Aldridge, along with Walter Catlett and Guinn Williams.
Charlie Chan in Reno is a 1939 American mystery film directed by Norman Foster, starring Sidney Toler as the fictional Chinese-American detective Charlie Chan, based on an original story "Death Makes a Decree" by Philip Wylie.
Fascinating Youth is a 1926 American silent romantic comedy film directed by Sam Wood. It starred Charles "Buddy" Rogers, along with Thelma Todd and Josephine Dunn in supporting roles. Many well-known personalities made guest appearances in the film, judging a beauty contest in one scene, and Clara Bow makes a cameo appearance in her second film for Paramount Pictures.
Love Is News is a 1937 American romantic comedy film starring Tyrone Power, Loretta Young, and Don Ameche. The movie was directed by Tay Garnett and was the first film for which Power had top billing. The picture was remade in 1947 as That Wonderful Urge, with Power again and Gene Tierney.
The Front Page is a CBS Television series, broadcast beginning September 29, 1949, and starring John Daly and Mark Roberts, with Richard Boone, Curt Conway and Janet Shaw. The live 30-minute show, based on the 1928 play The Front Page by Charles MacArthur and Ben Hecht, aired Thursdays at 8pm ET.
... with the first being the 1931 Lewis Milestone–directed The Front Page, which also fell into the public domain.