Plot Intro
Saleswoman Kitty Foyle (Ginger Rogers) finds herself struggling to decide between two men. Does she marry steady-going, kind-hearted doctor Mark Eisen (James Craig), or does she remarry her ex-husband, lovable, dashing, love-of-her-life socialite, Wyn Strafford (Dennis Morgan)? As she ponders on the decision, her life and relationships with both men are shown through flashback…
Now here’s a name you must know! Ginger Rogers was and still is Hollywood royalty, exuding huge influence in filmmaking thanks to her nine-movie partnership with Fred Astaire. Though this was her only Best Actress Oscar, her career remained strong and steady and in the '30s and '40s and she was a name that could make a very tidy profit for a movie. She’s listed by the American Film Institute as number 14 in their top actresses, higher than other Best Actress winners Vivien Leigh, Sophia Loren and Mary Pickford.
Rogers was born in 1911 as Virginia Katherine McMath (I see why she used a stage name) in Missouri. She had a turbulent start to her childhood as her parents separated and her father apparently kidnapped her twice before leaving her life forever. Despite this she was very close to her mother and grandparents- she bought a house in California for the latter so that they could be close to her when she was filming.
Rogers started in Vaudeville and Broadway, and her performance at 19 in the Gershwins’ musical Girl Crazy was so well received that she quickly headed down the path to Hollywood. After several well received movies, she met and teamed up with actor-singer-dancer Fred Astaire for nine movies between 1933 and 1939, the two most well-known being Top Hat and Swing Time. The two revolutionised movie musicals by incorporating seemingly-improvised and immensely elaborate dance routines into the songs and narrative. Even today, these scenes have the same awe-inspiring impact that Riverdance did when that first came on the scene. Astaire later commented on Rogers’ immense professionalism and resilience in movies that would usually drive exhausted and stressed performers to tears.
The partnership ended for various reasons. Their last two movies lost money, mostly because musicals are expensive to make and audiences under the heavy hands of the Depression and oncoming war were too scarce to make profit. On top of that, Rogers was constantly paid much less than Astaire despite putting in the same or similar amounts of work, which remained a sore point for her (and justly so).
Thankfully, Rogers had kept her hand in non-musical movies, which led her straight to Kitty Foyle. She defeated Hollywood heavyweights Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn and next week’s winner, Joan Fontaine, to the prize, and the movie was nominated for Best Picture and Best Screenplay too.
I didn’t find it the most exciting of stories. A woman struggling to choose between two very similar-looking men doesn’t make for much drama unless one of them is an alien. The only real difference between them is that one is a bit of a cad and one is a bit dull but they’re both solid 9s, both genuinely love her and both have very sustainable incomes. It’s very first-world problems. Plus, some of the romantic dialogue scenes go on forever and ever and ever without really developing anything.
I think I was also looking for some degree of fault in Kitty but there isn’t any. She’s steady-minded, sweet-natured and strong-willed. She would save a kitten from drowning but easily confront the person who threw it in the river (this is not a scene in the movie but it might as well have been).
Thankfully, however, the movie steers clear of Frank Capra-style sentimentality, so it doesn’t have the tweeness of It’s A Wonderful Life. There is a genuine sense that despite Kitty’s good humour, she and her father need to use whatever resources they have to keep their heads above water. She’s not destitute, but she has to stay hardworking because the decimation of the Great Depression (which is mentioned a lot throughout) means everyone’s situation is precarious.
Rogers is perfect for the role too. In the hands of the wrong actress it could have been a disaster. Garbo would have made her too self-pitying and Davis would have made her a stone-cold bitch. Rogers may not be playing a particularly interesting character, but she conveys what I presume is the “perfect post-Depression American woman” with admirable realism, displaying humour and kindness along with assertiveness and survival instincts. Without her, I think Kitty Foyle would be long forgotten as a product of early-'40s American optimism and survivalism.
By the late '40s and '50s, Rogers’ career was moving more into Broadway again due to the horrendous scarcity of older female characters in Hollywood. But her performances were consistently well received, particularly in Hello Dolly! and Mame. Rogers was a lifelong Republican (which nowadays is enough to tarnish anyone’s name) and openly opposed FDR in the mid-'40s. She married (and subsequently divorced) five different men but never had children. She died in 1995 at the age of 83.
Highlight
After Kitty elopes with and marries Wyn, she goes to meet his very wealthy family, only to find that they are uncomfortable with the marriage due to conditions on his trust fund. She furiously confronts them about in a scene where we were genuinely cheering her on. Post-Depression America must have loved seeing the perturbed expressions on the rich people’s faces.
Lowlight
There are several lengthy romantic scenes between Kitty and either Mark or Wyn which could have been cut down significantly.
Mark
5/10
Doug says...
I did not hold out fast hopes for Kitty Foyle seeming - as it did from its cover - to be another sentimental story representing women in ways that feel antiquated today (see The Divorcee for example).
However I was pleasantly surprised. Ginger Rogers turns in a naturalistic, thought-through performance as Kitty, a woman on the cusp of a vital decision, stopping in a hotel room to think through her past. The two paths before her are to become the mistress of the man she has loved for many years, or to marry the good-natured doctor who is besotted with her.
Rogers handles it sublimely, showing the iron will of the woman beneath the surface, and drawing the viewers’ affection from the off. She is - on purpose - a normal working woman, trying to get by despite the 1930s Great Depression. It’s the first time I think we’ve really seen this period explored (save It Happened One Night), and scenes such as the three women sharing a two room apartment, and Kitty as a shopgirl are terrific. There is no high faluting grandiosity along the lines of Jezebel here, and the plot even deals with things like pregnancy out of wedlock, and extra-marital affairs. It’s cutting close to the bone for the prim and proper nature of plots from the era.
Where this film excels for me though is in its innovation in film-making. In one scene Kitty speaks to her reflection who reacts a la Mary Poppins, and the editing is seamless. Constant time-shifts are shown by a snowglobe close up with eerie voice overs (hello Citizen Kaine). The film opens with a very funny montage discussing the role of women in society over the past fifty years, which also lays out a key theme in how Foyle is a new, modern type of woman.
I was drawn in a little by the romances and Kitty’s loving relationship with her father, but really the long romantic scenes do start to harken back to the overwritten indulgent scenes from a few years before. Where this film stands out is in how fresh some moments are - whether it’s Kitty fake-fainting to pretend she didn’t pull the burglar alarm in the department store where she works, or Doctor Mark forcing her to play cards all night instead of going out to dinner because he doesn’t have a dime.
One other scene worth mentioning is when Kitty meets Wyn’s family as they are planning to get married. There is no particular villain, but his mother revealing Kitty will need to go to finishing school is handled superbly with Kitty’s anger feeling genuine and legitimate. It’s well done by every actor in the scene.
Ultimately, although it pulls a few punches (a ‘fortunate’ miscarriage? In the original novel it was an abortion), this feels a great deal fresher than a lot of the films we’ve been seeing so far.
Highlight
The scene where Kitty and her two flatmates knowingly stage-manage the date with Dr Mark. It stands out as a real examination of how unmarried working women navigated the unchartered ground of living during the Depression. It’s fascinating.
Lowlight
Pulling its punches may have been the only way it got made in the ‘40s, but it would have been remarkable with a bit more grit.
Marks
7/10
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