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The Front Page

Newspaper reporter Hildy Johnson is engaged to Peggy Grant and is planning to move to New York for a higher paying advertising job. When Earl Williams escapes from the sheriff, Hildy seizes the opportunity by using his honeymoon money to pay off an insider. However, the editor is slow to repay him back in the hopes that he'll keep covering the case. Before His Girl Friday, and before the modern newsroom comedy, there was The Front Page, the 1931 pre-Code classic that still crackles with the energy of a city desk on deadline. Produced by a young Howard Hughes and directed by Lewis Milestone (fresh off All Quiet on the Western Front) this is the first, and still one of the sharpest, adaptations of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s legendary Broadway hit. As two former Chicago newspapermen, Hecht & MacArthur poured every hard-boiled memory they had into a play about ink-stained hustlers, political corruption, and the eternal tug-of-war between a star reporter who wants out, and the editor who will do anything to keep him in. Adolphe Menjou is magnificent as the ruthless, silver-tongued Walter Burns. Pat O’Brien matches him beat for beat as Hildy Johnson, the ace who just wants to get married and go straight. Together they fire off dialogue so fast it still feels dangerous. It’s cynical. It’s hilarious. It’s pure newspaper poetry. And it’s waiting for you right now on Pulp Time.

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