Pat O’Brien

(On Cable TV, November 2019) One of the reasons why Hollywood keeps remaking films is that in the best-case scenario, you don’t just have a decent commercial product with built-in brand recognition—you get a new classic that completely replaces the original. In theory, this can happen more easily because the remake can take a look at the original and improve upon its weaknesses. This is certainly not a new thing—Hollywood has been in the remake game since the silent era, and there was a particularly high number of remakes in the 1930 as the studios “upgraded” their silent films to more popular talkies. But I’m blurring lines, here, because if the 1931 version of The Front Page is an adaptation from a Broadway play (one co-written by Ben Hecht, who would become one of Hollywood’s first famous screenwriters), it’s not a remake. On the other hand, it was remade three times, and the first of them—1940’s His Girl Friday—has become an all-time classic eclipsing the 1931 original. (Meanwhile, the 1974 remake of the same name featuring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau is a pleasant but not essential diversion, while 1988’s Switching Channel is all but forgotten today.)  Where I’m going with this epoch-spanning consideration of remakes is that considering the existence of His Girl Friday (the best take on the story) and the 1974 version (the most accessible one to modern audiences), only die-hard film historians or curious cinephiles have any reason to go back to the 1931 original. And yet: Had it never been remade, The Front Page would still be remembered as a funny screwball take on the tough-and-tumble world of print journalists at the turn of the 1930s, almost breathtaking in its Pre-Code cynicism. The technical qualities of the film are a bit rough, while Adolphe Menjou and Pat O’Brien are merely fine as the protagonists. It’s not a bad movie! But when put against His Girl Friday, it’s clear that director Lewis Milestone is not working in the same world-class league as Howard Hawks did in his remake, nor are the actors as crackling as they were in the remake. The film will forever work in the shadow of its successor—part of the proof being that the easier way to purchase the film today in its best quality is as an extra in the Criterion Edition of His Girl Friday. Sure, have a look if you’re already familiar with the other films … but see the other ones first if you haven’t.