Thursday 23 May 2024

Kitty Foyle (1940 Sam Wood)

I must admit, Kitty Foyle was not the film I was expecting. I thought I'd be seeing Ginger Rogers as a nightclub singer who ends up in court on a murder charge. What film is that? She was in films from 1929, if you can believe it, was in the Busby Berkeley films 42nd Street and Gold Diggers of 1933, co-starred with Fred Astaire for the first time in Flying Down to Rio in 1933. Top Hat was 1935, Stage Door 1937... Ah - it's Roxie Hart (1942), which seems rather expensive - the original Chicago in fact.

Anyway, Dalton Trumbo wrote this (with additional dialogue by Donald Ogden Stewart), and it's a flashback movie - between ever more irritating shots of a snow globe, Kitty has to choose between Philadelphia money man Dennis Morgan, who's married and can't get a divorce, and nice doctor James Craig... I mean they're both a bit dull, frankly. What does that tell us? The film is 'realistic'? It was based on the rather more adult novel 'White Collar Girl' by Christopher Morley.

Ginger won the Oscar, that much I can tell you... the scene she's in hospital and realises her son has died is one that no doubt sealed that envelope... Robert de Grasse photographs her handsomely.

With Ernest Cossart (dad). Edward Cianelli and Gladys George are in it a bit. And Florence Bates. Roy Webb wrote the music. I liked the 1900 opening with Heather Angel.


Here comes that snow again...

The RKO Story reports that it was a big hit, gave Rogers the chance to go 'straight', even changing her hair colour to 'de-glamorise' her.


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