A change in the screwball comedy

With His Girl Friday, the screwball comedy had clearly changed. I’m not even sure if purists would identify it as a screwball or not, although besides some minor details, the film is pretty much a basic screwball. But here it’s clear that the genre has evolved. The screwball’s rich vs. poor storyline is changed and instead we have a journalism satire with screwball leads.

With this story Howard Hawks and Charles Lederer have taken the screwball to the 1940s and done a gender change so that it goes from a basic satire to a hybrid satire/screwball comedy for a new audience. This is different from say My Man Godfrey, which clearly parodies the lifestyles of the rich, a common characteristic of the genre. In this film, there aren’t any rich people, but instead we have the working class from government employees to insurance workers, but most importantly the journalists.

I think, as with The Philadelphia Story, the times were changing and ten years after the first screwballs had come into common fashion, the genre needed a change. Although this script had been written in the 1920s, Hawks uses this satire to update the screwball by changing Hildy's gender and thus making this a romantic comedy. So Hawks takes the screwball and changes it here from mocking the rich to mocking journalism and local government. Now while the filthy rich are nowhere in sight, we still have an object of ridicule in the government officials and journalists.

To compare this film with My Man Godfrey, just like Irene Bullock isn't a conniving debutante like her sister Cornelia, Hildy isn't the careless journalist who writes anything just to get a story, kind of like her other colleagues. She's ambitious, she's a journalist, but she has a heart, a fact Walter takes advantage of. And Hildy, along with Walter, is the one who outsmarts the mayor in the end when the reprieve from the governor comes through and the mayor comes out looking crooked in front of two journalists. The underdog rises to the top after some hard-earned worked and lots of laughs.

And while there are some changes, here the one thing that remains the same is the screwball lead. In particular here we have the screwball hero who will go to all lengths to keep his lady, and all under the pretext of journalism. Walter makes it clear to Duffy that Hildy is gonna stay at the paper only she doesn't it know it yet. And he schemes his way by lying and appealing to Hildy and Bruce's moral judgment. But Hildy can see right through Walter every time and stays one step ahead of him. So much so that in the end when she starts crying that she thought Walter was really letting her go and turned out he wasn't, I thought she was gonna start laughing and say, gotcha! These two are perfect for one another, driving each other crazy and obviously inseparable. And Hildy realizes halfway through she can't turn her back on a story, and who does she call when Earl Williams escape? No one else but Walter. She all but ignores Bruce when he tries to get her to join him. Hildy's in her own world when she's writing and it's obvious it's a world she can only share with Walter.

It's been quite interesting watching His Girl Friday and trying to figure out, is it or isn't it a screwball. I think as the time passes the screwball obviously changed but while the criticism of the rich is absent in this film, there's still a group to criticize. That along with the romantic storyline makes this film as close to a screwball as you can get with the changing times, which makes for a fascinating update to the genre.