Top 10 Newspaper Movies

As notorious press-hater Russell Crowe stars in the new journalism thriller State of Play, TIME looks back at the silver screen's ten best journalism films.

His Girl Friday, 1940

Everett
  • Print

As a winsome crackpot awaits execution for murder, the most cynical bunch of reporters in movie history crack jokes. One paper's managing editor, Walter Burns (Cary Grant), will do anything (including kidnapping an old lady) to get an exclusive — and to win back his star reporter Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell), who is also his ex-wife about to marry an insurance-peddling lump (Ralph Bellamy). It was director Howard Hawks who had the inspiration to switch sexes on the male Hildy from Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's famously misanthropic whirlwind Broadway farce, thus adding romantic chicanery to Walter's rap sheet. Fast-fast and funny-funny, the film moves with a pickpocket's grace and the morals of a...wait, journalists don't have morals.

See TIME's 1940 review of His Girl Friday

His Girl Friday, one of TIME's 100 Greatest Movies Ever

View the full list for "Top 10 Newspaper Movies"