YMMV / The Front Page

• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • When Hildy and Walt are arguing in Walt's office, Hildy mentions having been out of town covering "the monkey trial". Jack Lemmon would go on to play Henry Drummond in the 1999 adaptation of Inherit the Wind.
  • While obviously meant to be a satire of news media, the film becomes a lot funnier when you remember that just a couple years after its release, Carol Burnett sued the National Enquirer for libel, making quotes like this one all the more ironic:
    Earl Williams: You don't have to answer this, Mollie, but is it true what they said in the papers?
    Mollie Malloy: Is what true?
    Earl Williams: That you were going to marry me on the gallows.
    Mollie Malloy: Well, if it's in the papers, it must be true. They wouldn't print a lie.
• Values Dissonance: Most of the reporters in the play are casually racist, though much of this language was cleaned up for the movies.
• Values Resonance: The story deals with corrupt city officials who exploit issues like crime, race and the Red Menace to get elected. The play has an exchange where the reporters point out that the Sheriff is trying to exploit Earl Williams' situation to distract attention from the police department's brutal treatment of black people.
• Write What You Know: Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, who wrote the original 1928 play that the film was based on, were former Chicago newspaper reporters.

---