promises to take her on the honeymoon they never had in Niagara Falls. Then Walter learns that there is a strike in Albany, which is on the way to Niagara Falls. Hildy agrees to honeymoon in Albany. Cast Production Development and writing While producing Only Angels Have Wings (1939), Howard Hawks tried to pitch a remake of The Front Page to Harry Cohn of Columbia Pictures. Cary Grant was almost immediately cast in the film, but Cohn initially intended Grant to play the reporter, with radio commentator Walter Winchell as the editor. Hawks' production that became His Girl Friday was originally intended to be a straightforward adaptation of The Front Page, with both the editor and reporter being male. But during auditions, a woman, Howard Hawks' secretary, read reporter Hildy Johnson's lines. Hawks liked the way the dialogue sounded coming from a woman, resulting in the script being rewritten to make Hildy female and the ex-wife of editor Walter Burns played by Cary Grant. Cohn purchased the rights for The Front Page in January 1939. Although Hawks considered the dialogue of The Front Page to be "the finest modern dialogue that had been written", more than half of it was replaced with what Hawks believed to be better lines. Some of the original dialogue was left the same, as were all of the characters' names with two exceptions: Hildy's fiancé (now no longer a fiancée) was given the name Bruce Baldwin, and the name of the comic messenger bringing the pardon from the governor was changed from Pincus to Pettibone. Harry Cohn of Columbia Pictures approved Hawks' idea for the film project. Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, the writers of the original play, were unavailable for screenwriting. Consequently, Hawks considered Gene Fowler as the screenwriter, but he declined the job because he disliked the changes to the screenplay Hawks intended to make. Hawks instead recruited Charles Lederer who had worked on the adaptation for The Front Page to work on the screenplay. Though he was not credited, Hecht did assist Lederer in the adaptation. Additions were made at the beginning of the screenplay by Lederer to give the characters a convincing backstory so it was decided that Hildy and Walter would be divorced with Hildy's intentions of remarriage serving as Walter's motivation to win her back. During writing, Hawks was in Palm Springs directing Only Angels Have Wings, yet stayed