PEL Presents (sub)Text: Production for Use in “His Girl Friday”

<p>Before she settles down to life of homemaking, security, and insurance policies with Bruce Baldwin in Albany, star reporter Hildy Johnson has one more story to write for her ex-husband and ex-boss Walter Burns, editor of the Morning Post. Hildy must write up an interview with convicted killer Earl Williams that will grant him a last-minute reprieve on the basis of insanity. The ingenious angle she finds to prove he’s insane: Earl listened to so many soapbox speeches in the park about the socialist concept of “production for use” that when a gun was placed into his hands, he had to shoot it.</p> <p>Howard Hawks’s 1940 film His Girl Friday knits together two plots from two very different genres. One is a romantic comedy that intends to reunite its main couple in something like wedded bliss. The other is a dark drama of murder and corruption, complete with a gallows lurking just outside the window and a suicide attempt that takes place on screen. Yet Earl Williams and Hildy Johnson’s fates in their respective plots are twinned. Both are, in a sense, looking for their own reprieves. And Hildy has her own production-for-use dilemma. What was she made for—the life of a newspaperman, or the life of a housewife? To what kinds of production should we devote our own lives? What are we made for—risk and adventure or security and insurance? Wes &amp; Erin discuss.</p> <p>Subscribe: <a href="https://subtextpodcast.com/">(sub)Text</a> won’t always be in the PEL feed, so please subscribe to us directly: <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sub-text-literature-and-film-podcast/id1526882382"> Apple</a> | <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/2PQ2gT1DbrsOb7g1Dune1V?si=Omtb29FFTkGj9Oo6yrteKA"> Spotify</a> | <a href="https://subscribeonandroid.com/subtextpodcast.com/feed/podcast/"> Android</a> | <a href="https://subtextpodcast.com/feed/podcast/">RSS</a></p> <p>Bonus content: The conversation continues on our after-show <a href="https://subtextpodcast.com/category/(post)script/">(post)script</a>. Get this and other b