WOMEN PLAYING MEN, or specifically, male roles, was the theme of a post last week, provoked by the new Angelina Jolie movie, Salt. And while I did not think of it at first, over time—and after some of your comments—it occurred to me that my single favorite movie, inhabiting my single favorite performance by anyone in any movie, is a classic film in which a woman plays a part originally written for a man. Know which one?
It’s the movie His Girl Friday, a 1940 screwball comedy, starring Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant. While it was originally intended to be a straight shooting of the Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur play, The Front Page, during auditions for the film, the great director Howard Hawks had his secretary read Hildy’s lines, and so loved the tone of the dialogue coming from a woman, that the script was rewritten to make him a her.
And that is how magic is made.
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