> Although Hawks was no great supporter of feminism, most of his leading ladies would become icons for the movement. "That happens to be the kind of girl I like," he would say, "so it's fun to be with 'em. I know 'em better. You might term them honest and direct" (Hawks quoted in Lizzie Francke, Script Girls: Women Screenwriters in Hollywood). Among Hawks' liberated women are the characters played by Jean Arthur in Only Angels Have Wings (1939), Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not (1944) and The Big Sleep (1946) and Jane Russell in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953).

> This was the film that established Rosalind Russell's screen identity as a tough working woman who could hold her own with any man.

> His Girl Friday was also one of the films that established Russell as one of the screen's top comediennes. She made it in the wake of her surprise success in The Women (1939), and it would lead directly to her return to Columbia Pictures for one of her signature roles, would-be writer Ruth Sherwood in My Sister Eileen (1942).

> Two inside jokes in the film: Grant refers to a man named Archie Leach, which was the actor's real name, and says that Russell's fiancé looks like "That actor - Ralph Bellamy," who actually played the role. Both were ad-libs. > Another inside joke: when Grant is pushing John Qualen, as the convicted killer, back into the roll top desk, he says, "Get back in there, you Mock Turtle." Grant had played the Mock Turtle in the 1933 film version of Alice in Wonderland.

> Russell's striped suits were inspired by the look of newspaperwoman-turned-screenwriter Adela Rogers St. John.