The Front Page

The Front Page is a comedy set in the Chicago newspaper world of the late 1920s. Star reporter Hildy Johnson is ready to leave the business behind, marry his fiancée Peggy and take a quieter job in another city. His editor, Walter Burns, has no intention of letting his best man go, and when a condemned prisoner escapes on the morning of his scheduled execution, Burns sees his chance. He pulls Hildy back into covering the story, using every trick he can to keep him on the paper.

Billy Wilder directed and wrote the screenplay with his longtime collaborator I. A. L. Diamond, adapting the classic stage comedy about the press. It was Wilder's twentieth film as director, coming between Avanti! and Fedora, and it reunited Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, who play Hildy Johnson and Walter Burns. Susan Sarandon appears as Peggy, with Vincent Gardenia, David Wayne and Allen Garfield among a credited cast of 25. The production, made by Universal Pictures on a budget of about 4 million dollars, returned roughly 15 million dollars worldwide.

On TMDB the film holds a rating of 7.3 from 394 votes, while critics' reviews give it 6 out of 10 across 31 notices. That gap suggests audiences have stayed warmer to the film than reviewers did, which is notable for a late entry in Wilder's filmography.