My Cinematherapy movie Rx for you if you’ve got the Working Girl Blues? I’ve always felt His Girl Friday is a great Cinematherapy movie to watch when you are frustrated by your job (or lack of one) and want to try on someone else’s career for a spell and imagine work that excites you. Plus, with this flick, you get to enjoy the fireworks between Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell and spend an hour and a half or so in a world where divorce is merely a first-act plot point to provide an obstacle to a smoldering love affair being rekindled. Makes a gal wanna believe…
So here’s the scoop. In this 1940 movie directed by Howard Hawks, written by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, based on their play “The Front Page,” Rosalind Russell plays a reporter and Cary Grant is her former boss who is ready for that sturdy wooden match to spark and rekindle his passion for her. Yeah, there was that divorce thing a while back, and he knows his ex has a plan to marry some Egbert and settle down to raise a family, but he’s got an Important Career to attend to, so a renewed relationship is the last thing he’s looking for.
Uh huh.
Face it. He’s scored far too many scoops to let a chance to reunite go up in smoke, even if he doesn’t realize it. There’s a happy ending he and she are headed for if they can just make sure she misses her train to Mr. Wrong-for-a-go-get-’em-gal-like-her.
Load up His Girl Friday, set the screen to play subtitles so you can catch the faster-than-an-ADHD-brain dialogue, and remember, it’s possible to have a love affair with yourself and your job as well as a guy.
That said, let’s just take a moment to appreciate Cary Grant as a classic RomCom hunk. I’d say he goes head-to-head with Clark Gable in this category, although back in the 70s, my fifteen-year-old self was on Team Gable all the way. I’ll take both of them silkscreened on a kissable pillow or as a celebrity crush, birth and death dates be damned. In the movies, Gable and Grant live forever, so why not indulge in crushing on them?
—Nancy Peske
His Girl Friday: A Cinematherapy Rx for when you’re suffering from the Working Girl Blues
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