MIRLVNV

I remember watching HIS GIRL FRIDAY (1940, dir. Howard Hawks) for a genre focused class in college.

The logline from IMDB is as follows:

A newspaper editor uses every trick in the book to keep his ace reporter ex-wife from quitting and remarrying, using an exclusive interview with a death row convict as an enticement to buy himself some time to win her back. (IMDB)

It’s a timeless film. The reporter ex-wife, Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell) shows an all too familiar struggle that women still face today: Family or Career? But there’s a deeper theme to this film, and that’s men not knowing how to accept no.

Hildy is severely manipulated into changing her life choices– choices that she truly intended to follow through with– due to the “tricks” that her ex-husband/newspaper editor, Walter Burns (Cary Grant), carries out to sabotage her new life and keep her for himself. Unfortunately, Walter is successful.

My genre class started out as it normally does with a light discussion of the plot and our opinions on the movie. Then one peer rose his hand. I made sure my microphone was on mute before I groaned. He was the epitome of the “alpha male” mindset. This 27-year-old man came to the enlightening conclusion that all of this manipulation and the outcome of her failing to start her new desired life was all her fault.

All the women in the class took a collective sigh. Some rolled their eyes. (I was one of them.)

And his reasoning? “It’s obvious that Hildy didn’t really want to start a new life because at the start of the movie, she came to her old job to talk to her ex-husband.” Then he started to blather on about how women never really end relationships for the right reasons, women don’t just say what they want, she should have been “stronger,” women this, women that.

First of all, the reason why she came to the office in the first place was to tell Walter to stop sending her postcards and telegrams everyday. She came WITH her fiance to show Walter that she is serious about starting her new life and he needed to let her go. It was a final goodbye; perhaps more of a good riddance and a warning.

We tried to explain this crucial piece of information to our peer. He didn’t understand. “Well, she obviously didn’t say no enough” or “She probably wasn’t clear enough.”

Was a divorce not clear enough? Was a new fiance not clear enough? Was her persistent “no’s” not clear enough?

Upon watching watching the film, it becomes clear that Walter manipulates Hildy throughout the whole movie to make her stay. He manipulates the fiance of Hildy into thinking that he is ripping her away from her one true passion of news reporting. He manipulates Hildy into thinking that she doesn’t want a boring life as a housewife and love bombs her. He manipulates every single character in this film that could give him any possible advantage. Anything to boost his ego as the owner of the best newspaper in town. I’m not even fully convinced that he loved Hildy as a wife; he loved her as a talented worker. Subservient and exploitative.

All Hildy said that she wanted from the beginning of the movie was to live a better life with a man who “treats me like a woman.” She wanted kids. A house to take care of. She didn’t want to work anymore in the newsroom despite her talent as a writer– she was burnt out. Most importantly, Hildy knew that she could find a man that treated her better and listened to her.

My peer was simply using the plot and the fact that Walter (who I think can definitely be categorized as the antagonist) got the girl at the end and lived happily ever after. Maybe Walter did, but Hildy sure didn’t. She was manipulated with job offers and false promises that we know would not come to fruition based on the many cons that Walter did throughout the movie. Hildy was so happy to get her hands on a big story and Walter took advantage of that, making her forget for just a moment why she hated the newspaper business in the first place. My peer was simply confirming his biases on the roles of women and men. Women aren’t really allowed to say no to men. And it’s not just Walter that we see this with– there are several instances in which a woman is trying to speak up for herself against the men and they just flat out ignore them– even getting to the point of physically removing a woman out of the newsroom.

The most heart-wrenching part for me was at the end when Walter suggests that him and Hildy get married again. She still had stars in her eyes from the thought of her becoming a nationally recognized reporter as she asked if they could have a real honeymoon this time at Niagara Falls, hinting that they never had a proper one after their first marriage. He promises her. Then seconds after, there’s a breaking story happening in a town nearby. Walter immediately takes the chance to change the honeymoon destination from Niagara falls to the town where the news story is happening. She just goes along with it, as if this has happened before. Broke my heart.

From a movie based in the late ’30s, it’s understandable that situations like these are just a reflection of the times. But I also would argue that without proper dialogue, movies like these will just affirm people’s biases on gender stereotypes. Especially when these themes still occur today. Women are still constantly choosing between starting a family or continuing their career. Women are still trying to say no.