The Front Page

While the staging was limited, the acting was believable and the camera work was great for the technology available. After watching "Front Page" again after watching "Girl Friday", I was struck by the original's emphasis on the role of the newspaper in revealing political corruption. But, the question remains, who's the girl? Not the actress but the girl in the picture hanging on the wall in back of Adolph Menjou's head during the final scenes... Since the movie was released in 1931, it can't be Jane Russell. She's to busty to be Katherine Hepburn (Howard Hughes' friend). The only reason I noticed it was that she appears nude and Howard Hughes probably put it there to see if the 'censors' would notice.

If it weren't for the even better Howard Hawks remake, "The Front Page" would probably be much more well-remembered today. It's entertaining in its own right, with a slightly different feel from the remake, and it is better than most movies of its own era in at least a couple of important respects. While you can still tell at times that it is from the very early sound era, it does use sound and dialogue more smoothly and constructively (that is, rather than as a mere novelty) than do most early 30's movies.

Adolphe Menjou has the role of Walter Burns, and he is a good fit, giving the character just a slightly different turn from the way that Cary Grant would later play it. The role of Hildy Johnson is somewhat bland in this one - it was the genius of Hawks in changing this role into a more worthy foil for Burns that made "His Girl Friday" so outstanding - but in compensation, some of the other reporters get more to do here. The supporting cast has a number of good character actors, especially Edward Everett Horton as the fussy Bensinger, and it's good that they were given some worthwhile moments of their own. Certainly the great remake deserves its own reputation, but this version deserves to be remembered as well.

A bustling Chicago press-room is about to lose top "Examiner" writer Pat O'Brien (as Hildy Johnson), who wants to quit reporting after fifteen years, to marry Mary Brian (as Peggy Grant). But, managing editor Adolphe Menjou (as Walter Burns) wants Mr. O'Brien to stay, and cover stories like the execution by hanging of George E. Stone (as Earl Williams). The plot thickens when Mr. Williams escapes from jail, and tightens when O'Brien meets the convicted killer.

"The Front Page" was held in high regard for the way director Lewis Milestone made a staid, one-room stage play really MOVE on the big screen. There were "Academy Award" nominations for "Best Picture", "Best Director", and "Best Actor". The later went to Mr. Menjou, although O'Brien is arguably the film's leading actor. Menjou had taken over the role when Louis Wolheim died; either man would have been up for a "Supporting Actor" award, had they been given.

"This story is laid in a mythical kingdom," by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, the writers who deserved "The Front Page" award.

******* The Front Page (3/19/31) Lewis Milestone ~ Pat O'Brien, Adolphe Menjou, Mary Brian, Edward Everett Horton

The Front Page was the 12th, and 9th credited, feature film directed by Lewis Milestone, Russian Jewish emigré born in what is now Moldova in 1895 whose directing career spanned from the end of WWI to the early days of the Beatles, thus the core of the XXth Century. A director of moderate talent, Milestone enjoyed disproportionate renown in his day, directing everything from screen adaptations of Brodaway comedies, inter alia the effort under review, and musicals, to prestige literary adaptations such as All Quiet on the Western Front (1930, for which he won an Oscar for best director, which, helás, didn´t make him a better director...) or Of Mice and Men (1939), graduating in the 50s to big budget productions like Les Misérables (1952) or Mutiny on the Bounty (1962). Fun factoid: he also directed the original Ocean´s 11 (1960) the first film to feature the full Rat Pack.

The Front Page adapts to the screen an eponymous play by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, about a group of hardboiled Chicago newspapermen bent on scooping on the imminent execution of a presumed subversive agitator (George E Stone), mandatory love interest provided by the scheduled wedding of journalist Hildy Johnson (Pat O´Brien, much more at ease playing Irish priests and the like) to fiancée Peggy Grant (Mary Briant), event which conflicts with the professional duties, interests and urges of Hildy.

The Front Page was one of the first films to use the rotambulator, an ancestor of the dolly, which allowed for a few press room sequences with dialogue shot in circular motion, not unlike similar scenes in much later efforts by Quentin Tarantino (viz Reservoir Dogs, 1992), providing for some relief for what otherwise comes across as excessive, undestandably in a stage adaptation and an early talkie, talkyness. The remaining relief comes from Ben Hecht´s delighful dialogue.

Supplementary sort of interest for contemporary viewers is the political and sexual innuendo, both verbal and physical, that pre-code comedy allowed. For all this, in 2010, The Front Page was included in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in consideration of it being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

All aforementioned qualities nothwistanding, the films lives of script and dialogue mostly, and direction is often unimaginative and delivery wooden. Onliners do save the show. A favourite: Hildy´s boss Walter Burns (Adolphe Menjou, best on screen) to Hildy, trying to persuade him not to folllow Cupid´s ephemeral lure and stay in the newspaper business: "Yes, I know, I too was in love once, with my third wife...".

One of the biggest problems facing filmmakers in the early sound era was not a technical one, but one of what form the stories should take. Now that the spoken word was a means of expression, stage plays became a prime source for movie material. The only trouble was that, while the theatre is not necessarily an inferior medium, if you shoot a play simply as it is, no matter how good it would be in the theatre, on the screen it becomes static and dull. There are ways round this problem, and they demonstrate how much of a difference it makes the way in which a movie is filmed.

The Front Page's director, Lewis Milestone, was an ostentatious attention-grabber who liked to make every use of the technology at hand. But all his showing-off was for a purpose. As oppose to the limited dimensions of the stage, Milestone is always staging things in extremes of width and depth, especially when introducing major characters. A really neat manoeuvre is when a cop visits the newsroom during a game of poker. The camera sits on the middle of the small table and pans round as each reporter is harangued in turn. A man walking round a table is a fairly low-key bit of business, but this technique makes it simply whirl. There is only one point where I feel it's too much, when the camera "bounces" up and down on the faces of the reporters as they sing a taunting song. But the great thing is Milestone also knows when to tone it down and let the players shine. He often uses a long, still take for a key scene, such as Pat O'Brien and Adolphe Menjou's talk at the bar.

But an equally important contribution is the sense of realistic camaraderie between the principle members of the cast. The atmosphere in the newsroom straddles comedic exuberance and realistic banter, and as such is absolutely in the spirit of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's original work. Adolphe Menjou shows impeccable control, with movements that are almost cartoonish, such as the little backward lean into his stride off after announcing "I'll kill him!" It's a fresh approach, but one that would catch on, being very much the vein of Clark Gable's Oscar-winning performance in It Happened One Night (1934). Lead man Pat O'Brien is at his most extrovert and, in the process, his most likable. Walter Catlett is unflappably brilliant, and there is also a chance to see Edward Everett Horton honing the persona that would make him a fixture throughout the next decade.

The result is probably the most vibrant and effective stage adaptation of the early talkies, and it set the tone of much of what was to come, straddling the gap between the wild farce of the Marx Brothers and the sophisticated comedies like Dinner at Eight. Later directors (George Cukor, most notably) would learn to tone down Milestone's approach and create stage-to-screen adaptations that flowed smoothly and were purely cinematic, but The Front Page was nevertheless an important jolt to an industry still trying to find its way, and a lesson in how to make a script low on action and confined in space into something dynamic and brassy.