Kitty Foyle

Media:	VHS Tape
Directed by:	Sam Wood
Starring:	Ginger Rogers, Dennis Morgan, James Craig
Release date:	03 February, 1998
List price:	~~$14.95~~
Our price:	that is 100% off!

Kitty Foyle

Average rating: Stars

Real Love vs. Fantasy

Ginger Rogers was very popular and with two strong performances in 1940, she took home the Oscar in spite of strong competition. Rogers was Kitty Foyle, the embodiment of the American working girl attached to the fairy-tale of love, having to decide between that daydream and the real thing in Sam Wood's entertaining film based on Christopher Morley's popular book.

Ginger is Kitty Foyle, a working girl from Philadelphia who falls for her boss Wyn Strafford (Dennis Morgan) in what she thinks is everything she's dreamed about all her life. Wood used a snowglobe as a transitional device to Kitty's flashbacks of their romance just as George Stevens had used a phonograph in Penny Serenade the previous year. Kitty and Wyn are no longer together, their brief marriage ending in divorce when it finally becomes clear to Kitty that her Irish American moxie can not overcome Wyn's old money family in their Darby Mill--Griscom Street romance.

Kitty has moved on and has a chance for something real with a young but poor doctor portrayed by James Craig. But it is a down to earth and more practical love, and when Wyn suddenly appears to take her away once more, but not as his wife, she must decide which path to choose. As she packs to run away with Wyn, she argues with her conscience and remembers.

Ernest Cossart is very good as Kitty's pop, trying to steer her in the right direction. He may have been born four drinks below par, as Kitty affectionately teases him, but he is wise enough to see Wyn's weak character, which will never allow him to break from his society family and make a real life with his daughter. Kitty will face two tragedies simultaneously in this warm and sentimental story of an American working girl trying to have it all.

Rogers did deserve the Oscar because she is everything in this film. She may have have been the only actress around who could have so readily been accepted to represent an entire generation of young women during the 1940's. They viewed her as one of their own, even though the glamour of Hollywood was part of her story as well. She was the American girl made good, and her performance here is flawless.

A fine ending showed not only Kitty's Irish American moxie, but her growth and maturity as well. This is a fine film with a terrific performance from Ginger Rogers that is very much a product of the era it was made. A fine score from Roy Webb adds to this gentle story of letting the fairy-tale of love go in favor of the real thing. A must own for Ginger's fans and a good one for film buffs to add to their collection.

Kitty Foyle - Ginger Rogers, Dennis Morgan and more

Women of the Covered Typewriter

Ginger won the Oscar for playing this part despite some stiff competition. She's decidedly out of character as a white-collar girl with an old school attitude. I love when she grumbles, "People always make a big deal about the Old West and the brave women of the covered wagons. They don't seem to care as much about their modern-day equivalents, the secretaries--the women of the covered typewriters." With her quivering lower lip and her turned-up chin, she makes us care for Kitty Foyle, a girl from the poor side of the tracks who makes good with the rich playboy Wynnewood Strafford the III, or for short, "Win," played skillfully by the wonderful Dennis Morgan, possibly Hollywood's most under-rated star player of the 1940s. Morgan could sing too but he was best playing men whose love for their leading lady was always tested by some kind of addiction or other handicap, some sort of weakness. Here his Achilles heel is his family and their swanky social position.

Gladys Cooper would have a fit if she found out that Dennis was dating Ginger Rogers, and in the book of course, Kitty and Win don't get married but carry on a "back street" sex affair anyhow. Moviegoers even in 1940s were agile enough to read between the lines and to guess that the baby Ginger loses in the movie was a real "love child." You'd have to have a heart of stone not to feel strangle prickles behind your eyes, like tears, when Ginger realizes that she has lost the baby. Luckily Dr. Mark is there to pick up the pieces--James Craig, another very good actor, playing a young intern who loves Kitty even despite the fact that her father's a boozehound and she will never enter the Social Register or Main Line Philly society. I wonder if Grace Kelly ever saw KITTY FOYLE and based some of her choices in men on Kitty's Philadelphia binary. Between this film and BACHELOR MOTHER you would think Ginger Rogers a very maternal figure, but anyone who met her in real life knew that there was no room for children in her heart; in some ways she was a very lonely lady despite her many accomplishments and all the famous men she attracted to her side (think "Lady in the Dark," probably the part she played that was the most like the real life Ginger Rogers.")

The subtitle of this movie was "The Natural History of a Woman" and was supposed to provide a quasi-scientific, or sociological, study of class. Far from it, but it's a treat anyhow.

Ginger Rogers, Dennis Morgan and more - Kitty Foyle

Always beutiful, fresh & funny.

Many old films & the movie stars in them look old & don't stand up well. But Ginger Rodgers does. She won an Oscar as Kitty Foyle 1940 & that was an excellent choice. With her in it the movie has aged very well.
Basically she is having a conversation with herself on a very fatefull night. She has to choose between a rich, married man she loves & a poor, but good man, a doctor for the underclass (but with a great sense of humor). He also loves her & who wouldn't. She likes him a lot. The movie is a flashback on her relationship with these two men. What will she do? She has until midnight to decide.