Scott at 2015-09-03 01:40:28:
His Girl Friday is a total delight, but more than that, an influential movie on several fronts.
* It was one of the first movies in which characters spoke over each other. The fashion up to this point was much like theater in which a character finished their line, then the next characters spoke. Director Hawks wanted a rapid-fire feel to the interchanges and encouraged the actors to cut in on each other.
* Rosalind Russell hired a writer to punch up her dialogue. This became standard practice and persists to this day.
* Hawks also encourage improvisation by the actors, something we see in the movies of Judd Apatow.
* Based on the play "The Front Page," the role of Hildy was originally written for a man. When Hawks heard a woman cover Hildy's part during an impromptu reading, he thought that made for an even better role. It's one of the first cases of gender-bending in a Hollywood movie.
* There's also a bit of meta filmmaking at work in the movie. For example, a running gag whereby people say of the Bruce Baldwin character that he looks a lot like that actor Ralph Bellamy. Baldwin is, indeed, played by Bellamy. Also at one point Walter says, "Listen the last man that said that to me was Archie Leach just a week before he cut his throat." Cary Grant's real name was Archie Leach. A bit of post-modern filmmaking to make Charlie Kaufman proud... BEFORE the post-modern era!
It's a great screwball comedy and also quite influential. If you haven't seen it, you should.