Returns Policy
If you are unhappy with your purchase, you can return it to us within 14 days. More details
MovieMail's Review
Away from her partnership with Fred Astaire and playing a girl from the wrong side of the tracks, Rogers was allowed her to shine as a star in her own right, says David Parkinson.
Ginger Rogers had never been entirely happy as the junior in a partnership with Fred Astaire and had always insisted on taking assignments away from their legendary RKO musicals. In 1941, she finally convinced Hollywood of her worth as a legitimate actress when she won the Academy Award for Sam Wood's earnest adaptation of Christopher Morley's racy feminist novel, Kitty Foyle: The Natural History of a Woman.
It's often said that Rogers created the template for the `woman's picture' heroine in playing a girl from the wrong side of the Philadephia tracks, who marries Main Liner Dennis Morgan only to realise that he is too weak to be the man of her dreams. But the screen Kitty is nowhere near as courageous as her print counterpart. Indeed, she is perhaps more conventional in seeking happiness in marriage than the feisty females who gave Fred Astaire's dapper dandy the run around in such romantic gems as Top Hat (1935).
Nevertheless, Rogers exudes the spirit of modern womanhood, as she bounces back from her marital disappointment to forge a career at Odette Myrtil's New York fashion house and win the heart of suave doctor James Craig. The Production Code forced screenwriter Dalton Trumbo to tone down some of the book's more controversial incidents, but he still has Rogers face the prospect of being both a single mother and an adulteress.
During the HUAC investigation into Communism in Hollywood, Rogers and Trumbo would take diametrically opposing sides. But here they read off the same page in fashioning a character with more than a little in common with the persona that Rogers had already adopted in the romantic comedies Vicacious Lady (1938) and Bachelor Mother (1939) and would do again in the weightier dramas Primrose Path (1940) and Tender Comrade (1943), which was again written by Trumbo.
But this isn't all about Ginger. The underrated Dennis Morgan also impresses as the spineless charmer whose offer of an escape to South America sparks the flashback that takes Rogers back to the early 1930s, when her father warned her about getting carried away with her fantasies.
1940s romantic drama starring Ginger Rogers in her Oscar-winning role as Kitty Foyle - the girl from the wrong side of the tracks who falls in love for a dashing young socialite.
Kitty (Rogers) is infatuated by well-to-do Wyn Stafford (Dennis Morgan). But, scared of losing his place in respectable society, Wyn is reluctant to marry Kitty, who lacks the pedigree his family expects. Distraught, Kitty moves to New York and begins a new romance with decent Dr Mark Eisen (James Craig – The Devil and Daniel Webster). But she still yearns for Wyn; when he follows her to the city, she is forced to make a choice that will affect the rest of her life...
