Directed by: Lewis Milestone

Starring: Adolphe Menjou, Pat O'Brien, Mary Brian, Edward Everett Horton, Walter Catlett, George E. Stone, Mae Clarke, Slim Summerville, Matt Moore, Frank McHugh

FROM THE BOARDS TO THE SCREEN — THAT'S AN AIN ABSOLUTELY CLASSIC
Before The Front Page was a movie, it was a celebrated 1928 Broadway play by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, two writers who knew the newspaper world firsthand.
But its journey didn't end when the curtain came down.
The story was strong enough to make the leap from the Broadway stage to the motion-picture screen in 1931 — and then keep going. Hollywood returned to it in His Girl Friday (1940), Billy Wilder's The Front Page (1974), and the modernized Switching Channels (1988).
It was the beginning of one of American comedy's great journeys from stage to screen.
And that's exactly why The Front Page belongs in Absolutely Classics.
A classic isn't defined simply by its age. It's a story that survives its original moment — a story powerful enough to be rediscovered, reinterpreted and handed from one generation of artists and audiences to another.
Shakespeare traveled from the page and the boards to the movies. Great novels became great films. Ancient stories and theatrical traditions have survived for centuries — and, eventually, the camera found them too.
That's part of the Absolutely Classics treasure chest: the stories that wouldn't stay in one place.
From page to stage.
From stage to screen.
From one generation to the next.
The technology changes. The storytellers change. The stars change. But a great story keeps finding another audience.

STORY
Hildy Johnson has had enough.
The ace newspaper reporter is ready to abandon the insanity of Chicago journalism, marry his sweetheart Peggy Grant and begin something resembling a normal life. There is only one problem standing between Hildy and freedom: his editor, Walter Burns.
And Walter Burns has absolutely no intention of letting his best reporter go.
Played with magnificent, unscrupulous charm by Adolphe Menjou, Burns will lie, manipulate, scheme and bulldoze anyone necessary to keep Hildy on the job. Then condemned prisoner Earl Williams escapes just before his scheduled execution, handing Hildy the biggest story in Chicago — and handing Burns exactly the weapon he needs to drag his star reporter back into the newspaper business.
Soon the press room becomes a pressure cooker of reporters, politicians, police, corruption, romance, an escaped prisoner and one spectacularly manipulative newspaper editor.
The Front Page moves with the speed of the newsroom it portrays. Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur had both worked as Chicago newspapermen, and their famous 1928 play turned the newspaper business into a world of gallows humor, cynicism, competition and verbal warfare. The 1931 movie arrived when Hollywood was still learning what talking pictures could do — and demonstrated that dialogue didn't have to slow a movie down.
Sometimes it could make a movie fly.

AIN BACKSTAGE SECRETS & AINTOIDS

ADOLPHE MENJOU — AND WHAT A WALTER BURNS
AIN audiences who know Adolphe Menjou primarily as the impeccably dressed sophisticate get to watch him turn that polished exterior into a weapon.
His Walter Burns is charming, calculating, infuriating and utterly shameless.
Burns doesn't merely want Hildy to remain his reporter.
He intends to make it happen.
And Menjou's performance was noticed: he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.

MENJOU WASN'T SUPPOSED TO PLAY WALTER BURNS
Louis Wolheim was originally cast as Walter Burns.
When Wolheim died suddenly during preparations for the film, Adolphe Menjou stepped into the role.
What might have been a completely different Walter Burns became one of Menjou's signature performances — and earned him his Oscar nomination.

THREE MAJOR ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATIONS
The Front Page received three particularly impressive Academy Award nominations:
Best Picture
Best Director — Lewis Milestone
Best Actor — Adolphe Menjou
Not bad for a newsroom full of people behaving very badly.

BEFORE THERE WAS CARY GRANT AND ROSALIND RUSSELL...
Modern audiences may recognize this story even if they don't immediately recognize the title.
Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's The Front Page was later transformed by Howard Hawks into His Girl Friday(1940), starring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell.
That adaptation made one revolutionary change: reporter Hildy Johnson became a woman — and Walter Burns became not only Hildy's editor but her ex-husband.
The result became another classic.
AIN audiences can now go backward and discover where that cinematic relationship began.

PAT O'BRIEN BEFORE PAT O'BRIEN WAS A STAR
Pat O'Brien plays Hildy Johnson, the reporter desperately attempting to escape Walter Burns and the newspaper business.
Contemporary publicity called The Front Page O'Brien's first movie role, although records indicate that he had made earlier film appearances.
What matters historically is that this became one of the early major screen showcases for the man who would develop into one of Hollywood's most recognizable character stars.

THE MEN WHO WROTE IT KNEW THE NEWSROOM
Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur weren't imagining newspaper life from a comfortable Hollywood office.
Both had worked as newspapermen in Chicago.
Their experiences helped give The Front Page its unmistakable atmosphere: reporters competing mercilessly for stories, cynical jokes in terrible circumstances, politicians manipulating the press and journalists who complain endlessly about the profession while being unable to walk away from it.

HOLLYWOOD WAS STILL LEARNING HOW TO TALK
Sound movies were still relatively young in 1931.
Early talkies could sometimes feel static because cameras and actors were constrained by primitive sound-recording technology.
Lewis Milestone attacked that problem differently.
The Front Page demonstrated how fast dialogue, overlapping personalities, movement and editing could make a talking picture feel energetic rather than confined.
The words weren't an obstacle.
The words were the engine.

AND PEOPLE NOTICED IT IN 1931
Contemporary critics specifically remarked upon the movie's rapid-fire dialogue and unusually effective use of sound.
That matters when watching the film today.
We're accustomed to movies where characters talk quickly.
Audiences in 1931 were watching filmmakers discover how exhilarating that could be.

HOWARD HUGHES WAS BEHIND IT
Yes — that Howard Hughes.
Hughes's Caddo Company produced The Front Page, with United Artists distributing the picture.
Hughes was already demonstrating the combination of enormous ambition, money, filmmaking and risk-taking that would make his Hollywood career almost as fascinating as his life outside the movies.

THERE ARE TWO DIFFERENT VERSIONS
Here's a wonderful AINtoid.
Two versions of The Front Page survive — and they aren't simply different-quality copies of the same movie.
Separate takes were used for the American domestic release and an international version.
For decades, the version commonly circulating was derived from the international edition. The Academy Film Archive and The Film Foundation eventually restored the American domestic version, revealing differences in editing, dialogue and shot composition.
So if two copies of The Front Page don't look exactly alike...
You may actually be looking at two different versions.

THE ACADEMY RESTORED IT
In 2016, the Academy Film Archive and The Film Foundation completed a 4K digital restoration of the American domestic version, using surviving film and sound elements.
The restoration helped bring back a version of the movie that hadn't been widely seen for decades.

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS SAID: KEEP THIS ONE
In 2010, the Library of Congress selected The Front Page for preservation in the National Film Registry because of its cultural, historical or aesthetic significance.
That puts it in extraordinary company.
And it means AIN isn't simply presenting an entertaining 1931 comedy.
We're presenting a recognized piece of American film history.

FROM THE FRONT PAGE TO HIS GIRL FRIDAY
There may be no better demonstration of a great story's durability.
The newspaper world created by Hecht and MacArthur has been adapted repeatedly for stage, screen and television.
But for movie audiences, the fascinating journey runs directly from:
Adolphe Menjou and Pat O'Brien in The Front Page
to
Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday.

Same DNA.
Completely different chemistry.
And two enduring movies.