Kitty Foyle (1940)
Directed by Sam Wood

Film Review

A year after she ended her successful nine-year long partnership with Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers proved that she could go it alone in this phenomenally successful melodrama, based on a popular novel by Christopher Morley.  Kitty Foyle was the film in which Rogers proved she was as formidable a talent as any actress working in Hollywood at the time, in a role which earned her her one and only Oscar, triumphing over stiff competition from Bette Davis (The Letter), Joan Fontaine (Rebecca) and Katharine Hepburn (The Philadelphia Story).  A fair example of the so-called 'women's picture' that was so popular in the 1940s, the film was directed by Sam Wood, who brings to it something of the narrative elegance and directorial flair of his earlier Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939) and Raffles (1939).

It's incredible to think that Katharine Hepburn was offered the lead role.  She would have been entirely wrong for the part and was right to turn it down.  Ginger Rogers (Hepburn's sparring partner in the excellent 1937 comedy Stage Door) is far better suited to play the girl from the 'wrong side of the tracks', and brings a nobility and toughness to her portrayal of an ordinary working class girl, albeit one with a foolish romantic streak.  Rogers shines in Kitty Foyle more than she has perhaps ever shone in any film without the immortal Fred, eclipsing her likeable but far less charismatic co-stars Dennis Morgan and James Craig with effortless grace.  Today, the film is somewhat dated by the melodramatic conventions of its day, but it does have some moments of exquisite poignancy.  The scene in which Kitty takes her stand against her prim society in-laws feels like a moment of personal triumph for Rogers, to be savoured by all who admire her.

Film Synopsis

On the day she is to get married, Kitty Foyle receives an unexpected visit from a former lover Wyn Strafford, whom she hasn't seen for years.  Wyn insists that he has finally turned his back on his society family and plans to whisk Kitty off to South America, to start a new life.  As she hesitates over whether she should go off with Wyn, Kitty casts her mind back to the time they first met in her hometown of Philadelphia, when she was barely out of school.  She recalls working for Wyn as a secretary on his magazine and how they fell in love.  When the magazine went out of business during the Great Depression, Kitty moved to New York and found work as an assistant in a fashion store.  Wyn followed her, with a proposal of marriage which Kitty could not refuse, although she changed her mind when Wyn's family insisted that she be sent to finishing school to improve her manners.  Back in New York, Kitty began a relationship with another man, a poor but good-hearted young doctor named Mark.  Just when Kitty has made up her mind to marry Mark, Wyn re-enters her life and offers her everything she ever dreamed of...