Do Androids Dream of His Girl Friday? - Episode 98

What happens when Falk gets stuck in a screwball comedy? Can Falk weed out the humans from the androids? Do androids dream of His Girl Friday? Listen to find out!

Do Androids Dream of His Girl Friday? , episode 98 of This Gun in My Hand, was manufactured not by the Tyrell Corporation but by Rob Northrup, using dialogue from the 1940 public domain film His Girl Friday, which was adapted from the 1928 public domain play The Front Page. The part of Walter Burns was played by Cary Grant, with Rosalind Russell as Hildy Johnson and Ralph Bellamy as Bruce Baldwin. This episode and all others are available on Youtube with automatically-generated closed captions of dialog. Visit http://ThisGuninMyHand.blogspot.com for credits, show notes, archives, information on how to subscribe, and to buy my books, such as Little Heist in the Big Woods and Other Revisionist Atrocities. How do I survive a screwball comedy? With This Gun in My Hand!

Show Notes:
1. The 1940 film His Girl Friday was adapted from a 1928 stage play titled The Front Page, both in the public domain. Dialogue in this episode was taken from His Girl Friday. (Link below.) It’s excellent but has (CONTENT WARNING) the kind of racism and sexism you might expect in a 1940 film. There’s also a one hour Lux Radio Theater adaptation starring Fred MacMurray and Claudette Colbert; a Screen Guild Theater radio adaptation starring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell squeezed down into a half hour; and an even more offensive, grittier 1970 film of The Front Page starring Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon. And there’s a 1931 film version of The Front Page which I have yet to watch.
https://archive.org/details/his_girl_friday

Credits:
The opening music clip was from The Sun Sets at Dawn (1950), with transitional music from His Girl Friday (1940) and the closing music was from Killer Bait (1949), all films in the public domain. Most of the music and sound effects used in the episode are modified or incomplete versions of the originals.

The two women saying “pixielated” were from the Campbell Playhouse radio adaptation of “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town,” broadcast February 11, 1940, public domain. 

Sound Effect Title: bustle in the pub
License: Public Domain
https://freesound.org/people/organicmanpl/sounds/403285/

Sound Effect Title: teletype_medium_speed.wav
By stratcat322
License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0
https://freesound.org/people/stratcat322/sounds/169259/

The image accompanying this episode is a modified detail of a promotional photo by A. L. Schafer for the 1940 film His Girl Friday showing Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell and Ralph Bellamy sitting next to each other. Superimposed over Ralph Bellamy’s face is the robot from The Phantom Creeps (1939) from another promotional photo (photographer unknown).