His Girl Friday (1940)

A topnotch newspaper reporter (Rosalind Russell) is quitting her job to get married to an insurance salesman (Ralph Bellamy). But her editor (Cary Grant), who's also her ex-husband, dupes her into covering one more story on a condemned murderer (John Qualen). Based on the play THE FRONT PAGE by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur (previously filmed in 1931) and directed by Howard Hawks. In an inspired bit of rewriting, Hawks and his screenwriter Charles Lederer changed the gender of the male reporter in the original play thus giving the film the battle of the sexes angle and Russell the comedic peak of her career. She and Grant (also at his best) deliver the film's rapid fire dialog like thoroughbred champions. But Hawks has surrounded them with a cast of first rate character actors, all of them killing it. With all this frenetic activity, both verbal and physical, it's easy to underrate Bellamy's dupe. Screwball comedy doesn't get better than this! The perfect cast includes Gene Lockhart, Porter Hall, Ernest Truex, Roscoe Karns, Abner Biberman, Billy Gilbert, Helen Mack, Alma Kruger, Regis Toomey and Marion Martin.