Plot Intro
Eva Lovelace (Katharine Hepburn) is an aspiring actress just arrived in New York City and desperate for a role on Broadway. She comes into the acquaintance of aspiring playwright Joseph Sheridan (Douglas Fairbanks Jr) and theatre producer Louis Easton (Adolphe Menjou) as well as various other actors, actresses and critics. But as time goes on and her career fails to fully take off, Eva becomes increasingly desperate…
And here we arrive at the Titan (or Titaness?) of Best Actress winners. The American Film Institute, which compiles many movie-themed “Best of” lists, names Hepburn as the Best Actress of all time, higher up the list than Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Audrey Hepburn (no relation), Ingrid Bergman and Elizabeth Taylor, all of whom we will see on this project. Hepburn’s career lasted from the early '30s all the way through to the '80s. She received a total of 12 nominations for Best Actress, which only Meryl Streep has managed to surpass. She holds the record for the most Best Actress wins with a total of 4, meaning we’ll be encountering Hepburn 3 more times on the course of this project. This is actually a gargantuan number- all other Best Actress winners have only ever won once or twice (including Streep), and none of the Best Actor winners have equalised this record although Jack Nicholson has won 3.
She is also my personal favourite actress from the pre-1960 age of Hollywood, a title which actresses have obviously murdered their own mother to try and achieve.
But even I must admit that Morning Glory is perhaps not a great example of Hepburn’s work. Like the last few Best Actress wins, it’s an unassuming, terribly understated piece of drama that is really geared towards showing off the leading lady’s skills in all their glory. Morning Glory starts off quite strongly showing the cattiness and ruthlessness of auditioning for Broadway, but descends into unbelievable romantic sentiment by the end. It steers too clear of portraying the male upper echelons of Broadway as the money-grabbing businessmen that they are- they’re incredulously kind and gentle towards Hepburn, her big opportunity comes far too easily, and one of them even admits to sexually molesting her in a drunken stupor which is treated as completely fine! Actresses who have suffered at the hands of predatory and manipulative movie and theatre executives and directors may wish to give this one a miss.
However, Hepburn, true to form, puts her all in. From the word go she displays Eva’s desperation (she asserts that she loves acting so much she’ll die on the stage), her naivety, as well as an underlying calculation as she seems to be reading into the advice and promises made to her by her various co-workers. I was surprised to hear how high-pitched her voice is here and I can only assume that, in her youth, this probably made her more endearing to casting directors. From the '40s onwards, her voice takes on the more gravelly, penetrating tone that she became known for.
Hepburn quickly established a reputation for strength and assertiveness in the public eye. She was brought up by progressive, left-wing parents - her mother was a notable Suffragist and co-founder Planned Parenthood; her father was a urologist who advocated research into cures for venereal diseases (a pretty shocking advocacy in the late-19th century). Hepburn encountered tragedy at a young age- at 13 she found the body of her 15-year-old brother who had hanged himself, and another relative tried to take his own life by defenestration but landed on spiked iron railings below (true story!). Hepburn famously wore trousers before they became fashionable for women, and had a dominant, outspoken and forthright personality, unafraid to present her political views. Her autobiography, aptly titled “Me”, is pretty much Hepburn sticking the middle finger up at conventional memoirs and choosing to just write whatever the hell comes into her head. In fact, some press often dismissed her as arrogant, argumentative and difficult to work with.
She attended the all-female, presitigious Bryn Mawr College, then after a brief stint in theatre, broke into movies in the early '30s and instantly made a name for herself. She notably played Jo Marsh in the '30s adaptation of Little Women. When her career started to take a downturn as the 40s approached, she survived thanks partly to her family’s wealth and also her partner Howard Hughes buying the rights to The Philadelphia Story which was a huge success in 1940 and although she didn’t hit the heights as she once did, Hepburn’s career stayed steady and eventually picked up again thanks, in part, to her partnership with one Spencer Tracy.
But, having covered her early life and career, we’ll leave Hepburn there for now. We’ll see her again twice in the 1960s, and then once more in the early '80s, so we can divide her eventful life up into several parts. Needless to say, she is a fascinating and important figure in the history of Hollywood and even mid-20th century feminism. But Morning Glory is one that hasn’t stood the test of time. From the first two decades of her career, I would recommend Bringing Up Baby, The Philadelphia Story and Adam’s Rib as better examples of her skills.
Highlight
Hepburn’s acting in the first lengthy scene is a prime example of why I admire her so much. She throws herself into the role full throttle but manages to remain natural at the same time- a tricky thing to balance.
Lowlight
The way in which the film deals with Eva being drunkenly molested by a theatre producer is shoddy and primitive.
Marks
3/10
Doug says...
You may have guessed from the above that Paul loves Katharine Hepburn.
I myself love Bette Davis more, so you can prepare yourself for a deluge when we hit 1950 and Bette is entirely robbed of her Oscar for All About Eve. And actually, had she won that, I think we’d be in a different discussion because she’d then have won three - and honestly I don’t think Katharine deserved one for this. So they’d be equal. Who’s the Greatest Actress Ever now, American Film Institute?!
That’s not to say Katharine Hepburn is bad here. She’s fine. But we know from her later performances that she is a Barnstormer. She enters and from that moment on, the stage belongs to her. Screw the other actors. Screw the fact that she opened the wrong door and wasn’t even meant to be in this play. It’s hers now.
But here, ehhh. Not so much. It’s very much a case of Meryl Streep in the early ‘80s, being not that great. The fact is that some actors take time to find their footing, and Hepburn doesn’t really suit playing a rather pathetic dreamer. In one protracted scene at a party, she has two glasses of champagne, dances around, and then performs the Juliet Balcony scene to rapturous applause. Only Hepburn’s apparently brilliant Juliet - wasn’t very good. Because these are not the roles she excels in. Hepburn, as Paul’s biography lays out above, is better at Strong Gutsy Women Who Don’t Take Shit From No Man. I love that. We need more of those roles.
Whereas here, I felt Hepburn overreaching constantly, trying to fit flickers of something else into a rather pastiche character. It didn’t work for me in the narrative. If she was at all malevolent, then why didn’t that get reflected in the plot?
Speaking of which, any plot that has a powerful character deliver a mildly regretful monologue about shagging his passed-out ward can fuck right off.
The writers also apparently left the room for lunch and just forgot to come back. The ending is not an ending. It should be the halfway point of the film, instead they crowbar in an old woman who used to be famous, have Hepburn deliver some speeches about the possibility of success fading to her, and then end it with some loud classical music. It makes zero sense and reminds me of my attempts writing a play when I was fourteen. Has anyone googled it? Was the writer actually fourteen?
It would make more sense.
Highlight
I enjoyed Mary Duncan’s turn as the spoiled starlet Rita Vernon. Interestingly Duncan was also the star of FW Murnau’s City Girl - one of three films he directed at Fox, one of the other’s being Sunrise starring…Janet Gaynor. Small world.
Lowlight
As Paul says, featuring sexual assault as ‘whoops!’ is just unforgivable.
Marks
2/10
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