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14 unusual facts about The Front Page


Doro Merande

Her final Broadway appearance was in the 1969 revival of The Front Page, playing the cleaning woman, as she had also done in the film and television versions.

Eight Worlds

A journalist who was originally named Mario, but took a new name from The Front Page.

Harriet E. MacGibbon

There were regular productions, including Ned McCobb's Daughter, The Front Page, The Big Fight, and a "transcontinental tour" starring MacGibbon in The Big Fight, which began in Boston, took in New Haven and Hartford, and ended at Caine's storehouse.

Hubbard Street

Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's hit play "The Front Page" was set in the Chicago Criminal Courts Building on 54 West Hubbard Street.

Ian Gallanar

He has directed a number of productions with the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company including Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, Coriolanus, Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Lysistrata, The Front Page, As You Like It, Cyrano de Bergerac, Twelfth Night and many others.

John D. MacArthur

MacArthur's brother Charles MacArthur was an American playwright and screenwriter, best known as co-author of the play The Front Page.

Lance Rentzel

Donning costumes inspired by The Front Page, "Cubby O'Switzer" (Rentzel) and "Scoops Brannigan" (Dryer) peppered players and coaches from both the Minnesota Vikings and Pittsburgh Steelers with questions that ranged from the clichéd to the downright absurd.

Osgood Perkins

In the next twelve years he would appear in 24 Broadway productions, including The Front Page and Uncle Vanya.

Tammany Young

Born in New York City, Young appeared on Broadway, in The Front Page (1928) by Ben Hecht and The New Yorkers (1930) (Herbert Fields and Cole Porter), and was considered a “good luck actor” by Broadway producers.

The Front Page

John Varley's 1991 science fiction novel Steel Beach takes the story — and the change of sex — to another level; the plot includes a sex-change by a male reporter named Hildy Johnson.

Additionally, Hecht and MacArthur's story for the 1939 film Gunga Din recycles their basic plot of trying to persuade someone from leaving his job, in this case Douglas Fairbanks Jr.'s character attempting to resign his post in the British army and comrades Grant and Victor McLaglen conniving to prevent it.

Walter Baldwin

He originated the role of Bensinger, the prissy Chicago Tribune reporter, in the Broadway production of The Front Page.

Walter Howey

Walter Crawford Howey (born Fort Dodge, Iowa, January 16, 1882; died Boston, March 21, 1954, age 72) was a Hearst newspaper editor and the model for Walter Burns, the scheming, ruthless managing editor in Hecht and MacArthur's play The Front Page.

Howey was the prototype for Walter Burns, the scheming, ruthless managing editor, in Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's play The Front Page (1928).