Strange Radiation Archive
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Apr 7 08: get me rewrite!
I saw the Clark GableCary Grant1-Rosalind Russell screwball classic His Girl Friday last night for the first time, in the company of a friend who has been after me for months that my old-movie exposure is so low as to risk revocation of my Gay Card. (He’s threatening megadoses of Joan Crawford. I am uneasy.) Anyway, I need to get this out there, in the hopes that someone will enlighten me: was that intended to read as a happy ending?
Because GableGrant spends the whole movie in repeated attempts to scuttle his ex-wife’s impending marriage — by having her fiancé arrested on bogus charges three times and also arranging for the kidnapping of her intended mother-in-law by his friend the local thug — and generally refusing to take “we’re divorced” for an answer, doing everything in his power to take Russell’s stated dream of leaving the newspaper business for a quiet life of domesticity in Albany away from her. Hijinks ensue, Gable’sGrant’s efforts pay off, and Russell agrees to marry him again.
To recap: The manipulative asshole wins, the nice guy gets sent home to Albany, and Russell remarries the guy who has shown no signs of being any different than he was when she divorced him. And we’re supposed to… cheer? Laugh? What?
I don’t know why I found myself as outraged by this as I did. The film has obvious merits: snappy rapid-fire dialogue, a plot that moves along at a zillion miles an hour, strong performances. But I couldn’t get past that fundamental aspect of the plot. I guess it should be chalked up to 1930s sexism; but as much as I could dismiss a couple of moments of casual racism as being a product of the movie’s day, I just couldn’t do it where GableGrant was concerned.
Am I the only one here? And was this kind of plot a standard screwball device? Because if so I may be in trouble.
1 D’oh! Thanks, pixelfish.