The original play had been adapted for the screen
in 1931, and as
His Girl Friday in 1940 (and would be remade again with 1987's
Switching Channels).
Billy Wilder was quoted by his biographer,
Charlotte Chandler, as saying, "I'm against remakes in general ... because if a picture is good, you shouldn't remake it, and if it's lousy,
why remake it? ... It was not one of my pictures I was particularly proud of." After years of producing his films, Wilder passed producing chores to
Paul Monash, and concentrated on screenwriting and directing, when
Jennings Lang suggested that he film a new adaptation of
The Front Page for
Universal Pictures. The idea appealed to Wilder, a newspaperman in his younger days, who recalled, "A reporter was a glamorous fellow in those days, the way he wore a hat, and a raincoat, and a swagger, and had his camaraderie with fellow reporters, with local police, always hot on the tail of tips from them and from the fringes of the underworld." Although the two earlier screen adaptations of the play were set in their contemporary times, Wilder decided that his would be a
period piece set in 1929, primarily because the daily newspaper was no longer the dominant news medium in 1974. Wilder hired
Henry Bumstead as
production designer. For exterior shots, Bumstead suggested that Wilder film in
San Francisco, where the buildings were a better match than
Los Angeles for 1920s Chicago. The final scene on the train was filmed in San Francisco, where a railroad enthusiast provided a vintage railway car for the setting. The interior shot of the theater in an earlier scene was done at the
Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles. The opening credits scenes were filmed at the
Los Angeles Herald Examiner. Wilder and Diamond insisted that their dialogue be delivered exactly as written, and clearly enough to be understood easily.
Jack Lemmon, who portrayed Hildy Johnson, later said, "I had one regret about the film. Billy would not let us overlap our lines more. I think that would have made it better ... I feel it's a piece in which you
must overlap. But Billy, the writer, wanted to hear all of the words clearly, and he wanted the audience to hear the words. I would have liked to overlap to the point where you lost some of the dialogue." Two characters not in the play were added to the film. Dr. Eggelhofer, a character only mentioned in the play, appears in the film as an eccentric, sex-obsessed
Freudian psychiatrist whose theories are utterly incomprehensible to Williams. The other added character is Rudy Keppler, a young reporter who is seduced in the bathroom by the older reporter, Roy Bensinger. Because of Wilder's tendency to "cut in the camera", a form of spontaneous editing that results in a minimal footage being shot, editor
Ralph E. Winters was able to assemble a rough cut of the film four days after principal photography was completed. The film was Wilder's first to show a financial return since
The Fortune Cookie, and his last box-office hit of any significance. The director regretted not sticking to his instincts over remakes. ==Reception==