A Woman’s Touch in ‘His Girl Friday’

Director Howard Hawks once said of the difference between tragedy and comedy: “It’s all in the point of view.”

Take Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s “The Front Page,” the classic stage comedy about Chicago newspapermen in the 1920s.

“It’s the story of a poor little guy, an escaped murderer, and his girl commits suicide,” Hawks told film historian Joseph McBride. “Now, you can’t tell anybody that you’re gonna make a comedy about an escaped murderer. It has no relation to a comedy except for the way that Hecht and MacArthur treated the thing.”

By focusing on the fast-talking newspapermen covering the murderer’s jail break--star reporter Hildy Johnson and his conniving editor Walter Burns--Hecht and MacArthur made Broadway history.

Their raucous and irreverent comedy also made Hollywood history after Hawks got hold of the material and put a new spin on it.

“His Girl Friday,” Hawks’ 1940 “Front Page” remake starring Cary Grant as the editor and Rosalind Russell as the reporter, screens as part of Chapman University’s Screwball Comedy Series tonight.

As Hawks tells it in McBride’s 1982 book “Hawks on Hawks” (University of California Press), the inspiration for “His Girl Friday” came at a dinner party at his home one night when he and his guests were discussing dialogue. Hawks said he believed that the finest modern dialogue in the world came from Hecht and MacArthur.

To prove his point, Hawks recruited one of his guests, a woman, to read the reporter’s part in “The Front Page” while he read the editor’s part.

Halfway through the reading it struck him: “My Lord, it’s better with a girl reading it than the way it was!”

As Hawks saw it, “The Front Page” is really about the scrappy relationship between two men who really love each other. With only a small change in dialogue, he felt, it would be easy to turn it into a love story between a man and a woman.

Hawks really knew he was onto something when he called Hecht in New York to see if he’d help write the screenplay.

“What do you think about changing Hildy Johnson and making her a girl?” Hawks asked.

Replied Hecht: “I wish we’d thought of that.”

* “His Girl Friday” screens at 7 tonight in Chapman University’s Argyros Forum, Room 208, 333 N. Glassell St., Orange. Free. Not rated. Running time: 92 minutes. Free. (714) 997-6765.

‘Gentleman’s

Agreement’

The decision earlier this year to present legendary director Elia Kazan with an honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement at the upcoming Academy Awards ceremony provoked a whirlwind of protest over honoring someone who named names during the McCarthy era.

But while there are those who still feel contempt for Kazan’s past political stance, no one questions his filmmaking achievements.

Kazan won his second Oscar for best director for “On the Waterfront” (1954). But he earned his first for “Gentleman’s Agreement,” a 1947 adaptation of Laura Z. Hobson’s novel about a writer (Gregory Peck) who pretends to be Jewish for a story he’s writing and discovers pervasive anti-Semitism.

The film, featuring Dorothy McGuire, John Garfield and Celeste Holm (winner of a best supporting actress Oscar), screens Friday as part of an Orange County Museum of Art series examining films that look critically at social justice.

Arthur Taussig, the museum’s adjunct film curator, will introduce the film and lead a post-screening question-and-answer session.

* “Gentleman’s Agreement” screens at 6:30 p.m. Friday in Lyon Auditorium in the Museum Education Center of the Orange County Museum of Art, 850 San Clemente Drive, Newport Beach. Not rated. Running time: 118 minutes. Admission: $3. (949) 759-1122.

A Showcase of Video Projects

New Video Work, a showcase of recent projects by Orange County video artists, will be held Saturday at the Lab mall in Costa Mesa.

A 5 p.m. public reception will precede the 6-9 p.m. screening, co-presented by the Lab and the UC Irvine Film and Video Center, on a large screen in the mall’s outdoor living room area.

Documentary, experimental and ambient video essays that cover a wide range of subject matter and styles will be showcased. Works include the pilot for Roger Hall’s “Orange County Surf News” public access program, David Womack’s short video essay, “Trailers,” and Elizabeth Ho’s ambient video essay, “Could This Be New York?”

* New Video Work screens from 6 to 9 p.m. Saturday at the Lab, 2930 Bristol St., Costa Mesa. Free. (949) 824-7418.

African Film Series

Chapman University’s African Film Series continues Tuesday with a screening of “Wend Kuuni” (God’s Gift), director Gaston Kabore’s 1982 drama about the Mossi tribe in pre-colonial Africa. The prize-winning color feature is the first Black African movie ever awarded a Cesar, the French equivalent of an Oscar.

* “Wend Kuuni” screens at 8 p.m. Tuesday in Argyros Forum, Room 208, at Chapman University, 333 N. Glassell St., Orange. Not rated. Running time: 75 minutes. Free. (714) 997-6765.