In this second film version of the hit play by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur The Front Page, New York newspaper reporter Hildy Johnson (played by Pat O'Brien in 1931) is now a sassy, confident woman (Rosalind Russell). Hildy has had enough of the newspaper life and is going to quit and marry dependable (boring) Bruce Baldwin (never-gets-the-girl Ralph Bellamy) and move to Albany. The thing is, her editor and ex-husband Walter Burns Cary Grant) doesn't want either thing to happen and tricks Hildy into covering just one more story – that of a deluded radical charged with murder. What follows is a super-charged side-splitting satire of the headline-hungry newspaper business and of course, a bit of romance.<br /><br />Howard Hawks directs his stars and a brilliant cast of supporting players (Billy Gilbert, a real scene-stealing stand-out) at a breathless pace, using overlapping dialog to increase the feeling of frenzy. You'll want to watch this one again and again to catch all of the terrific dialog. Some of those witty lines (at least as legend has it) were improvised, such as when Grant describes Bruce Baldwin, saying that he "looks like that film actor, Ralph Bellamy." Later, during a rapid-fire telephone exchange, Grant responds to another actor's line with "The last person to say that to me was Archibald Leach just before he cut his throat!" (Archibald Leach of course, being Grant's real name.) Named to the National Film Registry in 1993.