​Journalism classic ‘The Front Page’ finally gets its due on Blu

One of the most popular and most-remade films dealing with journalists, the media, politicians and their relationships with newsworthy issues, began its life as a 1928 Broadway play by two former reporters. Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur based the characters and events upon their own first-hand experiences at Chicago newspapers.

The 1931 screen version of “The Front Page” is an amazingly fluid and fast-paced adaptation of the famous darkly satiric stage show about jaded newspapermen covering an execution, made at a time when many films were using the new technology of talking pictures to restage popular theatrical productions in front of a static camera.

Within three years of its Broadway premiere, “The Front Page” reached the screen almost intact, but with Lewis Milestone’s direction taking advantage of cinematic techniques to enhance the already-fast pacing of the dialogue. Nine years after that came a popular remake retitled “His Girl Friday,” with an extensive rewrite that changed its hero into a female reporter (Rosalind Russell) clashing with her editor (Cary Grant) who was now also her ex-husband. There were later radio and TV versions (as both TV movies and a TV series), a respectable but flawed 1974 film with Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, and a heavily revised 1988 variation called “Switching Channels” with Kathleen Turner and Burt Reynolds, which again made the reporter a woman and also changed the setting from newspaper to television journalism.

For some reason the copyrights on the first two (and best) movie versions were never renewed, and those films have been available on a number of mediocre image-quality bargain DVDs from various public domain distributors and can even be viewed as streaming video online. Fans will be pleased to know that on Aug. 11, Kino Video is giving the 1931 film of “The Front Page” a good-quality Blu-ray and DVD release, scanned in high-definition from 35mm film elements preserved at the Library of Congress.

The plot is set almost entirely in the press room of a criminal courts building, as bored reporters are waiting to witness the hanging of a convicted cop-killer believed to be a dangerous communist agitator. The fast-talking star reporter for one paper stops in to say he won’t be sticking around because he just quit his job to get married and settle down, but the words are hardly out of his mouth when the convict escapes from the incompetent sheriff and his officers, and the other reporters rush out to learn what’s going on.

The condemned man suddenly shows up, unexpectedly mild-mannered and confused. Naturally this causes the reporter’s journalism instincts to kick in, hoping to get a huge scoop for his paper before he leaves, but his editor wants him to stay until everything is resolved. The reporter and editor decide to hide him in order to get an exclusive story when they realize his execution has been manipulated by conniving politicians hoping for votes. All they need to do is keep the rival reporters and trigger-happy cops from discovering him, while the reporter’s fiancée and mother-in-law-to-be impatiently demand he finish up and come with them.

Hecht and MacArthur were masters of well-written stories as well as witty, fast-paced and scathingly satiric dialogue that kept them in great demand as Hollywood screenwriters, especially after the coming of sound. Hecht already had several major film story credits when his stage hit with MacArthur, “The Front Page,” was bought by Hollywood.

The film’s veteran Hollywood producer was all of 25 years old -- millionaire boy wonder Howard Hughes, who had made Oscar-caliber films like “The Racket” (1928) and “Two Arabian Knights” (1927), and was especially noted for his lavishly produced World War I aviation spectacle “Hell’s Angels” (1930). These can all be seen on TCM from time to time, and “Hell’s Angels” is on a nice DVD but not yet on Blu-ray.

With “The Front Page,” Hughes came up with a film dramatically and cinematically much superior to his previous productions. It remains one of the best films of his career and of Milestone’s, who had directed “The Racket” and “Two Arabian Knights,” and had recently completed the Oscar-winning “All Quiet on the Western Front.” It's amazing how much they were able to slip by the censors before the Production Code crackdown a few years later. One of the best newspaper comedy-dramas ever made, it is just as good as Howard Hawks’ “His Girl Friday” remake, with the satire of the news media and crooked politicians holding up very well.

The Blu-ray’s picture quality is quite good overall, copied from a photochemically preserved release print with some minor wear. This doesn't provide the sparkle of an original negative, but it is drastically better than the murky VHS, DVD and streaming copies available. It also tends to seem sharper and more consistent on an HDTV set than when projected onto a big screen. Audio quality, however, varies from barely audible to just okay to pretty good, sometimes within the same scene. Bonus features include an interesting audio commentary, two radio adaptations of the play, and a nice little featurette on film preservation at the Library of Congress.

“THE FRONT PAGE” on Blu-ray – Movie: A / Video: A- / Audio: B- / Extras: B-