The Front Page (1974 film)
Encyclopedia
The Front Page is a 1974
1974 in film
The year 1974 in film involved some significant events.-Events:*February 7 - Blazing Saddles is released in the USA.*August 7 - Peter Wolf, lead singer of The J...

 American
Cinema of the United States
The cinema of the United States, also known as Hollywood, has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. Its history is sometimes separated into four main periods: the silent film era, classical Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood, and the contemporary period...

 comedy
Comedy film
Comedy film is a genre of film in which the main emphasis is on humour. They are designed to elicit laughter from the audience. Comedies are mostly light-hearted dramas and are made to amuse and entertain the audiences...

-drama film
Drama film
A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...

 directed by Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder was an Austro-Hungarian born American filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, artist, and journalist, whose career spanned more than 50 years and 60 films. He is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Hollywood's golden age...

 and starring Jack Lemmon
Jack Lemmon
John Uhler "Jack" Lemmon III was an American actor and musician. He starred in more than 60 films including Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Mister Roberts , Days of Wine and Roses, The Great Race, Irma la Douce, The Odd Couple, Save the Tiger John Uhler "Jack" Lemmon III (February 8, 1925June...

 and Walter Matthau
Walter Matthau
Walter Matthau was an American actor best known for his role as Oscar Madison in The Odd Couple and his frequent collaborations with Odd Couple star Jack Lemmon, as well as his role as Coach Buttermaker in the 1976 comedy The Bad News Bears...

. The screenplay by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond is based on the 1928 play of the same title
The Front Page
The Front Page is a hit Broadway comedy about tabloid newspaper reporters on the police beat, written by one-time Chicago reporters Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur which was first produced in 1928.-Synopsis:...

 by Ben Hecht
Ben Hecht
Ben Hecht was an American screenwriter, director, producer, playwright, and novelist. Called "the Shakespeare of Hollywood", he received screen credits, alone or in collaboration, for the stories or screenplays of some 70 films and as a prolific storyteller, authored 35 books and created some of...

 and Charles MacArthur
Charles MacArthur
Charles Gordon MacArthur was an American playwright and screenwriter.-Biography:Charles MacArthur was the second youngest of seven children born to stern evangelist William Telfer MacArthur and Georgiana Welsted MacArthur. He early developed a passion for reading...

, which was previously adapted for the screen under its original title
The Front Page (1931 film)
The Front Page is a 1931 American comedy film, directed by Lewis Milestone and starring Adolphe Menjou and Pat O'Brien. Based on a Broadway play of the same name, the film was produced by Howard Hughes, written by Bartlett Cormack and Charles Lederer, and distributed by United Artists. The...

 in 1931 and as His Girl Friday
His Girl Friday
His Girl Friday is a 1940 American screwball comedy film directed by Howard Hawks, an adaptation by Charles Lederer, Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur of the play The Front Page by Hecht and MacArthur...

in 1940. The play also served as the inspiration for Switching Channels
Switching Channels
Switching Channels not to be confused with channel surfing is a 1988 American comedy film remake of The Front Page . It stars Kathleen Turner as Christy Colleran, Burt Reynolds as John L...

in 1988.

Plot

Chicago Examiner
Chicago's American
Chicago American, an afternoon newspaper in Chicago, Illinois, was the last flowering of the aggressive journalistic tradition depicted in the play and movie The Front Page....

reporter Hildy Johnson has just quit his job in order to marry Peggy Grant and start a new career when, shortly prior to his scheduled execution, convicted revolutionary Earl Williams escapes from death row
Death row
Death row signifies the place, often a section of a prison, that houses individuals awaiting execution. The term is also used figuratively to describe the state of awaiting execution , even in places where no special facility or separate unit for condemned inmates exists.After individuals are found...

 in the Cook County Jail
Cook County Jail
The Cook County Jail, located on in Cook County, Illinois, is the largest jail in the United States of America housing approximately 9,800 men and women. The facility is located at 3015 S California Ave in the city of Chicago...

 and secretes himself in a rolltop desk
Rolltop desk
A rolltop desk is a 19th century reworking of the pedestal desk with, in addition, a series of stacked compartments, shelves, drawers and nooks in front of the user, much like the bureau à gradin or the Carlton House desk...

 in the Criminal Court Building
Courthouse Place
Courthouse Place, also known as the Cook County Criminal Court Building, is a Richardsonian Romanesque-style building at 54 West Hubbard Street in the Near North Side of Chicago. Designed by architect Otto H. Matz and completed in 1893, the build stands on the prior location of a public market...

 press room. In reality, Earl is an impoverished, bumbling leftist
Left-wing politics
In politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for social change to create a more egalitarian society...

 with a penchant for stuffing fortune cookies
Fortune Cookies
Fortune Cookies is the second album by Alana Davis, released in 2001. It peaked at #34 on Billboard's Heatseekers Album chart at the time of its release.-Track listing:...

 with messages demanding the release of Sacco and Vanzetti
Sacco and Vanzetti
Ferdinando Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were anarchists who were convicted of murdering two men during a 1920 armed robbery in South Braintree, Massachusetts, United States...

, but the yellow press
Yellow journalism
Yellow journalism or the yellow press is a type of journalism that presents little or no legitimate well-researched news and instead uses eye-catching headlines to sell more newspapers. Techniques may include exaggerations of news events, scandal-mongering, or sensationalism...

 of Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

 has painted him as a dangerous threat from Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

 and as a result the city's citizens are anxious to see him put to death.

Mollie Malloy, the condemned man's girlfriend and a self-described "$2 whore
Prostitution
Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...

 from Division Street," reveals his hiding place to Hildy, who is unable to resist the lure of what could be the biggest scoop
Scoop (term)
Scoop is an informal term used in journalism. The word connotes originality, importance, surprise or excitement, secrecy and exclusivity.Stories likely considered to be scoops are important news, likely to interest or concern many people. A scoop is typically a new story, or a new aspect to an...

 of his soon-to-be-over journalistic career. Ruthless, egomania
Egomania
Egomania is an obsessive preoccupation with one's self and applies to someone who follows their own ungoverned impulses and is possessed by delusions of personal greatness and feels a lack of appreciation. Someone suffering from this extreme egocentric focus is an egomaniac...

cal managing editor
Managing editor
A managing editor is a senior member of a publication's management team.In the United States, a managing editor oversees and coordinates the publication's editorial activities...

 Walter Burns, desperate to keep Hildy on the job, encourages him to stay and cover the story. When Earl is in danger of being discovered, Mollie creates a distraction by leaping from the third-floor window,which she does survive with a few injuries.

When Earl is caught, Hildy and Walter are arrested for aiding and abetting a fugitive but are released when they discover the mayor and sheriff had colluded to keep secret a last-minute pardon
Pardon
Clemency means the forgiveness of a crime or the cancellation of the penalty associated with it. It is a general concept that encompasses several related procedures: pardoning, commutation, remission and reprieves...

 of Earl by the governor. Walter grudgingly accepts the fact he is losing his ace reporter and presents him with a watch as a token of his appreciation. Hildy and Peggy set off to get married, and Walter telegraphs the next railway station to alert them to the fact the man who stole his watch is on the inbound train and should be apprehended by the police.

Production

Despite his dislike of remake
Remake
A remake is a piece of media based primarily on an earlier work of the same medium.-Film:The term "remake" is generally used in reference to a movie which uses an earlier movie as the main source material, rather than in reference to a second, later movie based on the same source...

s, Billy Wilder - after years of producing his own films - was only too happy to relinquish the producing chores to Paul Monash
Paul Monash
-Life and career:Paul Monash was born in Harlem, New York, in 1917, and grew up in The Bronx. His mother, Rhoda Melrose, acted in silent films. Monash earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a master's degree in education from Columbia University...

 and concentrate on screenwriting and directing when Jennings Lang
Jennings Lang
Jennings Lang was an American film producer, as well as a screenwriter and actor.- Biography :...

 suggested he film a new adaptation of The Front Page for Universal Pictures
Universal Pictures
-1920:* White Youth* The Flaming Disc* Am I Dreaming?* The Dragon's Net* The Adorable Savage* Putting It Over* The Line Runners-1921:* The Fire Eater* A Battle of Wits* Dream Girl* The Millionaire...

. The idea appealed to Wilder, a newspaperman in his younger days, who recalled, "A reporter was a glamorous fellow in those days, the way he wore a hat, and a raincoat, and a swagger, and had his camaraderie with fellow reporters, with local police, always hot on the tail of tips from them and from the fringes of the underworld." Whereas the two earlier screen adaptations of the play were set in their own contemporary times, Wilder decided his should be a period piece
Period piece
-Setting:In the performing arts, a period piece is a work set in a particular era. This informal term covers all countries, all periods and all genres...

 set in 1929, primarily because the daily newspaper no longer was a dominant news medium in 1974.

Wilder hired Henry Bumstead as production designer
Production designer
In film and television, a production designer is the person responsible for the overall look of a filmed event such as films, TV programs, music videos or adverts. Production designers have one of the key creative roles in the creation of motion pictures and television. Working directly with the...

. For exterior shots, Bumstead suggested Wilder film in San Francisco, where the buildings were a better match for 1920s Chicago than they were in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

. The final scene on the train also was filmed in San Francisco, where a railroad enthusiast provided a vintage railway car for the setting. The interior shot of the theatre in one of the earlier scenes was done at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles. The opening credits scenes were filmed at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner.

Wilder and Diamond were notorious for insisting their dialogue be delivered exactly as written and clearly enough to be understood easily. Jack Lemmon
Jack Lemmon
John Uhler "Jack" Lemmon III was an American actor and musician. He starred in more than 60 films including Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Mister Roberts , Days of Wine and Roses, The Great Race, Irma la Douce, The Odd Couple, Save the Tiger John Uhler "Jack" Lemmon III (February 8, 1925June...

, who portrayed Hildy Johnson, later said, "I had one regret about the film. Billy would not let us overlap our lines more. I think that would have made it better . . . I feel it's a piece in which you must overlap. But Billy, the writer, wanted to hear all of the words clearly, and he wanted the audience to hear the words. I would have liked to overlap to the point where you lost some of the dialogue."

Because of Wilder's tendency to "cut in the camera," a form of spontaneous editing that results in a minimal amount of footage being shot, editor Ralph E. Winters
Ralph E. Winters
Ralph E. Winters , born in Canada, was one of the industry's leading film editors.After cutting his teeth on a series of B movies in the early 1940s, including several in the Dr...

 was able to assemble a rough cut of the film four days after principal photography was completed.

Although the film was Wilder's first to show a profit since Irma la Douce
Irma la Douce
Irma la Douce/Irma la Dolce is a 1963 romantic comedy starring Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine, directed by Billy Wilder.It is based on the 1956 French musical Irma La Douce by Marguerite Monnot and Alexandre Breffort.-Plot:...

, the director regretted not sticking to his instinct about remakes. "I'm against remakes in general," he said a few year's after the film's release, "because if a picture is good, you shouldn't remake it, and if it's lousy, why remake it? . . . It was not one of my pictures I was particularly proud of."

Cast

  • Jack Lemmon
    Jack Lemmon
    John Uhler "Jack" Lemmon III was an American actor and musician. He starred in more than 60 films including Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Mister Roberts , Days of Wine and Roses, The Great Race, Irma la Douce, The Odd Couple, Save the Tiger John Uhler "Jack" Lemmon III (February 8, 1925June...

     as Hildebrand 'Hildy' Johnson
  • Walter Matthau
    Walter Matthau
    Walter Matthau was an American actor best known for his role as Oscar Madison in The Odd Couple and his frequent collaborations with Odd Couple star Jack Lemmon, as well as his role as Coach Buttermaker in the 1976 comedy The Bad News Bears...

     as Walter Burns
  • Susan Sarandon
    Susan Sarandon
    Susan Sarandon is an American actress. She has worked in films and television since 1969, and won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the 1995 film Dead Man Walking. She had also been nominated for the award for four films before that and has received other recognition for her...

     as Peggy Grant
  • Vincent Gardenia
    Vincent Gardenia
    Vincent Gardenia was an Italian American stage, film, and television actor.-Early life:...

     as Sheriff "Honest Pete" Hartman
  • David Wayne
    David Wayne
    David Wayne was an American actor with a career spanning nearly 50 years.-Early life and career:...

     as Roy Bensinger
  • Allen Garfield
    Allen Garfield
    Allen Garfield, born and sometimes credited as Allen Goorwitz , is an American film and television actor.-Biography:...

     as Kruger
  • Charles Durning
    Charles Durning
    Charles Durning is an American actor. With appearances in over 100 films, Durning's memorable roles include police officers in the Oscar-winning The Sting and crime drama Dog Day Afternoon , along with the comedies Tootsie, To Be Or Not To Be and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, the last two...

     as Murphy
  • Herb Edelman
    Herb Edelman
    Herbert "Herb" Edelman was an American actor of stage, film and television. He was twice nominated for an Emmy Award for his television work. One of his best remembered roles was as Stanley Zbornak, the ex-husband of Dorothy Zbornak on the long-running situation comedy, The Golden Girls...

     as Schwartz
  • Austin Pendleton
    Austin Pendleton
    Austin Pendleton is an American film, television, and stage actor, a playwright, and a theatre director and instructor.-Life and career:...

     as Earl Williams
  • Carol Burnett
    Carol Burnett
    Carol Creighton Burnett is an American actress, comedian, singer, dancer and writer. Burnett started her career in New York. After becoming a hit on Broadway, she made her television debut...

     as Mollie Malloy
  • Martin Gabel
    Martin Gabel
    Martin Gabel was an American actor, film director and film producer.-Life and career:Gabel was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Ruth and Israel Gabel, who was a jeweler...

     as Dr. Max J. Eggelhofer
  • Harold Gould
    Harold Gould
    Harold V. Goldstein , best known by his stage name Harold Gould, was an American actor best known for playing Martin Morgenstern in the 1970s sitcoms Rhoda and The Mary Tyler Moore Show and as Miles Webber in The Golden Girls...

     as The Mayor/Herbie/Green Hornet
  • John Furlong
    John Furlong
    John Furlong was an American actor. He dubbed the voice of Russ Meyer in all of Meyer's film appearances. He died on June 23, 2008.-Filmography:* Mudhoney * Blazing Saddles * The Front Page...

     as Duffy
  • Jon Korkes
    Jon Korkes
    Jon Korkes is an Hungarian-born American stage, movie, and television actor.-Life:He was born in Budapest on the 1. January, 1945 as a son of Jetti Korkes. He moved to the States, after the revolution in Hungary, in 1956. First he works for theaters, just later starts to act in movies and television...

     as Rudy Keppler
  • Cliff Osmond
    Cliff Osmond
    Cliff Osmond is an American character actor and television screenwriter most famous for his role of "Barney" in Billy Wilder's "Kiss Me, Stupid"...

     as Officer Jacobi
  • Paul Benedict
    Paul Benedict
    Paul Benedict was an American actor who made numerous appearances in television and movies beginning in the 1960s...

     as Plunkett
  • Dick O'Neill
    Dick O'Neill
    Dick O'Neill was an American stage, film and television character actor best known for playing Irish cops, fathers, judges and army generals. He began his acting career as an original company member of Arena Stage in Washington, D.C.He served in the Navy then returned to the theater. In the late...

     as McHugh
  • Biff Elliot
    Biff Elliot
    Biff Elliot is an American actor. He is perhaps best known for his role as popular detective Mike Hammer in the 1953 version of I, the Jury, and as his guest appearance in the Star Trek episode "The Devil in the Dark".-Early life:...

     as Police Dispatcher
  • Barbara Davis as Myrtle

Critical reception

Vincent Canby
Vincent Canby
Vincent Canby was an American film critic who became the chief film critic for The New York Times in 1969 and reviewed more than 1000 films during his tenure there.-Life and career:...

 of the New York Times thought the story was "a natural" for Wilder and Diamond, who "have a special (and, to my mind, very appealing) appreciation for vulgar, brilliant con artists of monumental tackiness." He continued, "Even though the mechanics and demands of movie-making slow what should be the furious tempo, this Front Page displays a giddy bitterness that is rare in any films except those of Mr. Wilder. It is also, much of the time, extremely funny." He described Walter Matthau and Austin Pendleton as "marvelous" and added, "Mr. Lemmon is comparatively reserved as the flamboyant Hildy, never quite letting go of his familiar comic personality to become dominated by the lunacies of the farce. He always remains a little outside it, acting. Carol Burnett has an even tougher time as Molly Malloy . . . This role may well be impossible, however, since it requires the actress to play for straight melodrama
Melodrama
The term melodrama refers to a dramatic work that exaggerates plot and characters in order to appeal to the emotions. It may also refer to the genre which includes such works, or to language, behavior, or events which resemble them...

 while everyone around her is going for laughs . . . Mr. Wilder has great fun with the period newspaper detail . . . and admires his various supporting actors to such an extent that he allows them to play as broadly as they could possibly desire." He concluded, "The hysteria is not as consistent as one might wish, nor, indeed, as epic as in Mr. Wilder's own One, Two, Three
One, Two, Three
One, Two, Three is a 1961 American comedy film directed by Billy Wilder and written by him and I.A.L. Diamond. It is based on the 1929 Hungarian one-act play Egy, kettö, három by Ferenc Molnár, with a "plot borrowed partly from" Ninotchka, a 1939 film co-written by Wilder...

. The cohesive force is, instead, the director's fondness for frauds, which, I suspect, is really an admiration for people who barrel on through life completely intimidating those who should know better."

Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...

 called it the "least satisfying screen adaptation of Hecht and MacArthur's play," saying it "adds little to the mix other than a bit of choice language. The direction is depressingly flat and stagy, Wilder running on empty. While it is easy to see why he was attracted to this material . . . he just does not seem to have the energy here to do it justice. Matthau and Lemmon put in their usual faultless turns, but cannot lift a pervading air of pointlessness."

TV Guide
TV Guide
TV Guide is a weekly American magazine with listings of TV shows.In addition to TV listings, the publication features television-related news, celebrity interviews, gossip and film reviews and crossword puzzles...

rated the film 2½ out of four stars and noted, "This slick remake of the ebullient original falls short of being the film it could have been, despite the presence of master filmmaker Wilder and his engaging costars . . . Despite the obvious charismatic interaction between Lemmon and Matthau, the film is oddly stilted. In an overly emphatic turn, the miscast Burnett easily gives the most awful performance of her career. She projects only one emotion - a gratingly annoying hysteria. One never enjoys the film so much as when her character throws herself out of a window."

Awards and nominations

The film was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy but lost to The Longest Yard, and Lemmon and Matthau, competing with each other for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, lost to Art Carney
Art Carney
Arthur William Matthew “Art” Carney was an American actor in film, stage, television and radio. He is best known for playing Ed Norton, opposite Jackie Gleason's Ralph Kramden in the situation comedy The Honeymooners....

 in Harry and Tonto
Harry and Tonto
Harry and Tonto is a 1974 road movie written by Paul Mazursky and Josh Greenfeld and directed by Mazursky, starring Art Carney.-Synopsis:...

.

Wilder and Diamond were nominated for the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Comedy Adapted from Another Medium
Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay
The Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay is one of the three screenwriting Writers Guild of America Awards, one that is specifically for film...

 but lost to Lionel Chetwynd
Lionel Chetwynd
Lionel Chetwynd is a London-born Canadian-American screenwriter, motion picture and television film director and producer.-Life and career:...

 and Mordecai Richler
Mordecai Richler
Mordecai Richler, CC was a Canadian Jewish author, screenwriter and essayist. A leading critic called him "the great shining star of his Canadian literary generation" and a pivotal figure in the country's history. His best known works are The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, Barney's Version,...

 for The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz.

Wilder won the David di Donatello Award
David di Donatello
David di Donatello, named after Donatello's David, is a movie award assigned each year for cinematic performances and production by Ente David di Donatello, part of Accademia del Cinema Italiano. It is the Italian equivalent to the Academy Award. There are 24 categories as of 2006.- History :The...

 for Best Director of a Foreign Film, and Lemmon and Matthau shared Best Foreign Actor honors with Burt Lancaster
Burt Lancaster
Burton Stephen "Burt" Lancaster was an American film actor noted for his athletic physique and distinctive smile...

 for Conversation Piece
Conversation Piece (film)
Conversation Piece is an award-winning 1974 film by Italian director Luchino Visconti.The film features an international cast including the American actor Burt Lancaster, the Austrian Helmut Berger and the Italians Silvana Mangano and Claudia Cardinale and the French actress Dominique Sanda in a...

.

DVD release

GoodTimes Entertainment
GoodTimes Entertainment
GoodTimes Entertainment, Ltd. was a home video company that originated in 1984 under the name of GoodTimes Home Video. Though it produced its own titles, the company was well-known due to its distribution of media from third parties and classics...

 released the Region 1 DVD on June 17, 1998. The film is in fullscreen
Pan and scan
Pan and scan is a method of adjusting widescreen film images so that they can be shown within the proportions of a standard definition 4:3 aspect ratio television screen, often cropping off the sides of the original widescreen image to focus on the composition's most important aspects...

 format with an audio track in English and subtitles in English, Spanish, and French.
On May 31, 2005 it was re-released in a widescreen
Widescreen
Widescreen images are a variety of aspect ratios used in film, television and computer screens. In film, a widescreen film is any film image with a width-to-height aspect ratio greater than the standard 1.37:1 Academy aspect ratio provided by 35mm film....

 edition DVD by Universal Home Video.
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