Late, Late Edition

By J.C.

THE FRONT PAGE

Directed by BILLY WILDER

Screenplay by BILLY WILDER and I.A.L. DIAMOND

When Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur wrote their hotfooted newspaper comedy nearly half a century ago, they started a kind of show-business dynasty. Besides stage revivals, there was a television series in 1949, and now a third movie version of The Front Page is out. The first film was produced in 1930, almost as soon as Hollywood found its tongue. It starred Pat O'Brien as Hildy Johnson, dervish of the deadline and past master of the fictitious fact, and Adolphe Menjou as his congenially mean-spirited editor, Walter Burns. Ten years later Howard Hawks changed the title to His Girl Friday, casting Gary Grant as Burns and Rosalind Russell as a female Johnson. Hawks made the pair not only friendly antagonists but former mates. When Burns tries to break up Johnson's romance in this version, he is attempting to win back a wife as well as keep a valued reporter. The result was a classic, one of the funniest and fastest farces ever put on the screen.

The new Front Page restores John son's masculinity, which is only the first of its many mistakes. This production seems to end Front Page's proud line. Perhaps it is not fair to compare it with so excellent a film as Girl Friday. But it is fair to say that this movie could be matched against almost anything (possibly except Airport 1975 and Earthquake) and still look bad.

Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond (who have collaborated on Some Like It Hot and The Apartment) give a friendly nod to Hecht's ghost by having Hildy speak of the time "Ben Hecht was leaving for Hollywood." But neither Hecht nor MacArthur could be expected to countenance what has been done to their original. Dialogue that should crackle like a telegraph has been slowed to the listless deliberation of a traffic cop writing out a ticket. Jack Lemmon makes a curiously enervated Hildy, and Walter Matthau's Burns is a shambling cynic too similar to his Odd Couple characterization for comfort.

Fearful Crime. The Wilder-Diamond adaptation consists mostly of frequent, unfortunate embellishments. Wilder and Diamond conjure up, for instance, an Oriental cathouse that is never seen but frequently talked about, generally with such references as "I sure could use a little of that sweet and sour right now." They also create a sequence hi which Burns visits Hildy's fiancee (played with popeyed persistence by Susan Sarandon) and passes himself off as Johnson's probation officer. This kicks off a scene of lengthy anxiety about Hildy's fearful (but imaginary) crime, which turns out to be flashing.

It may be during that early scene or it may be shortly after, when Hildy spits out a bit of Wilder-Diamond dialogue and Carol Burnett goes into a strident impersonation of a cut-rate hooker, that the movie curdles. But the thought occurs very early on that the latest The Front Page is an odd place to find Billy Wilder. The sap and the snap are gone.

This is a movie conceived with indifference and made with disinterest, like a piece of occupational therapy.

.J. C

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