Cinema: The New Pictures: Jan. 22, 1940

His Girl Friday (Columbia). One day last spring, sporty Director Howard Hawks had an idea. It was a rather weird idea; he kept it to himself until he had bought (for $35,000) the rights to The Front Page, the Hecht-MacArthur stage hit, from which Lewis Milestone had already made a picture (1931). Hawks remade the picture, changed its title to His Girl Friday. The result is not just another remake, for Director Hawks’s weird idea was also to remake the sex of his leading character. Hildy Johnson, ace newshawk, played by tough-talking Lee Tracy on the stage, grim Pat O’Brien in pictures, has been cinemorphosed into Hildegarde Johnson, female reporter.

Not as weird as it sounds, the change not only furthers the comedy talents of Rosalind Russell (which were first frontpaged in The Women), but the picture’s love interest. Hildegarde appears as a young woman, trying to leave the news paper business. She begins bravely by divorcing her husband and managing editor, Walter Burns (Gary Grant), falls flat for Insuranceman Bruce (Ralph Bellamy), who has rubbers, an umbrella and a companionate mother.

There is the same flock of smutty, poker-playing newshawks whose description by the original Hildy is more politely paraphrased by Hildegarde. “Journalists! … A lot of lousy, daffy, buttinskis. . . . And for what? So a million hired girls and motormen’s wives’ll know what’s going on.”

Director Hawks has speeded up even the dialogue by forcing his actors to speak 240 words a minute (average conversational speed — 90 words a minute). Rough est spots in the original versions have been sandpapered or excised, the pressroom’s whiskey cynicism toned down to half of one per cent, but the comedy still has enough Hecht-MacArthur kick to make later interpolations smell synthetic. Synthetic sample: “What does he [Ralph Bellamy] look like?” Editor Burns: “Oh, he looks like that movie actor—Ralph Bellamy.”

Joe and Ethel Turp Call on the President (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). This appealing little picture, which aims to affirm the democratic dogma, implies some things its creators never intended. One of them is that to call on the President is one of the last things a U. S. Turp ever would or should think of doing.

Less pretentious than most of the publicity about it, considerably less inspired than Author Damon Runyon’s perfect name for its typical hero, the picture paves its lowly way with the good intentions of decent little people. Irony is implicit in the situation that brings two of them face to face with the President (played by Lewis Stone in his most complacent Judge Hardy manner).

William Gargan talks and looks Joe Turp, makes the film an authentic piece of Brooklyn regionalism. Ann Sothern rattles Ethel Turp’s tongue and one little brain cell in Joan Blondell style. Walter Brennan somehow manages to be touching instead of foolish, as the lifelong bachelor devoted to the woman who married the other fellow.

Brennan is Postman Jim, whose unrighteous arrest starts Joe and Ethel on their amazing visit to the White House. They penetrate the executive office just as the President is listening to an unnamed German führer call him a fool in a radio speech. When Joe and Ethel break in with their smalltown appeal for the postman, the President gives ear—allegedly because he wants to know what the man in the street is thinking. He never finds out from Joe Turp, though Joe confides his formula for dealing with führers: ”Best thing is, hang up and leave him to worry about what you’re going to do about it.” This political wisdom brings the President to his feet. Otherwise he sits out the Turps’ somewhat disjernted dialogue, assures them at the end that the letter carrier will be all right.

More in wonder than relief, cinemaudiences then learn that, by taking Joe Turp’s advice and keeping the führer guessing while Joe and Ethel told their story, the President has ridden out a crisis, kept the country out of war.

Oh, Johnny, How You Can Love (Universal) gets its title from the junky little 1917 wartime ditty now sweeping the U. S. (TIME, Jan. 15). But title and picture have hardly more than a nodding acquaintance. The picture is a left-handed reworking of the It Happened One Night formula, with the addition of 1) three auto crashes; 2) a $3,000 roadster nonchalantly pushed over a cliff by the heroine; 3) a cops-&-robbers gun fight; 4) a kidnapping; 5) general bedlam with firecrackers and skyrockets which seems to be Hollywood’s current way out of any comic impasse.

But even an uneven comedy with Allen Jenkins is as good as Allen Jenkins. This one is also as good as Isabell Jewell and Donald Meek. Smart little Cinemactress Jewell is a blonde in a roadside hashery. Smart little Cinemactor Meek, dressed in a cowboy outfit (“the realization of a boyhood dream”) is the inventive proprietor of a tourist camp. Jenkins is a gangster named Egbert.

When Egbert, running from the law, is obliged to force Tom Brown (a millionaire’s nephew who looks quite at home as a truckdriver) to drive to Canada, Egbert does not realize he is kidnapping a candy truck. “What’s he doing back there, mixing cement?” asks the runaway brat (Peggy Moran) who has previously forced Tom Brown to drive her Manhattanwards. “No,” says Driver Brown, as Egbert munches, “peanut brittle.”