“‘This picture is laid in a mythical kingdom.' The heck it is: there has probably never been a more accurate portrayal of the headline-chasing, cynical newspaper reporter than that shown here in the first sound filming of the long-running Hecht-MacArthur play. A bit of the ‘salty' dialogue had to be scrapped for the (movie) audiences...but the screenwriters have filled in those gaps with equally hilarious, if not equally shocking, lines that bite and sizzle.
“Like the later remake, which had Pat O'Brien's part re-written for Rosalind Russell (Howard Hawks' His Girl Friday), this film opens with the identical scenes, slightly transposed.... Adolph Menjou takes a memorable stroll through the printing plant of his newspaper with the camera accompanying him in a long, difficult tracking shot (unusual in early films).... In this version, there is (also) an extremely intricate and artful scene wherein the gallows counterweight falls directly on the camera lens. Much of the lay-out for this film was stolen almost frame-for-frame for His Girl Friday...(Hawks pays tribute to Milestone by lifting...bodily from one film to another...)...but this scene was not lifted, presumably because it was...too memorable to steal....
“The newsroom itself is a ghastly, cluttered mess (much worse than the one shown in His Girl Friday). There are cigarette butts and moulding coffee cups and litter...; the room is described as smelling ‘like an owl's foot....'” --G.D. Wilsonne, Kit Parker Films