KITTY FOYLE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 97, 2 May 1941, Page 16

KITTY FOYLE

(RKO Radio)

ANY actresses have been called versatile. Few have deserved the description better than Ginger Rogers. She excelled in song-and-dance shows

with Fred Astaire; she achieved a big reputation in slick comedies of the Bachelor Husband type; and she has not been backward in drama. In almost all her work one quality has been manifest; she is (or she seems to be) the perfect embodiment of the modern American working-girl--self-assured, sophisticated, independent, courageous, and honest with herself. Neither her versatility nor her honest-to-goodness charm has ever been more apparent than in Kitty Foyle. When RKO bought the screen rights of Christopher Morley’s novel there were no reports of nation-wide quests for a star, for this story of a typical American working-girl might have been written especially for the typical Miss Rogers. For this reason, perhaps, her winning of the Academy Award for the best performance of 1940 may not appear on the surface to be a very sensational victory. But it was no walk-over, for although Kitty Foyle may. be typical, she is also complex, and in. portraying the character, Ginger Rogers has to use all: sides of her talent except one. She must be humorous, sentimental, hard-boiled, starkly tragic. Only her great skill as a dancer is left untested. Kitty Foyle is a film of character rather than of plot. Its basis is a familiar three-sided affair of two men and a girl, and her difficulty in choosing between them. One man is the reliable, faithful Dr: Mark Eisen (James Craig) whose proposal of marriage Kitty accepts as the story opens. No sooner has she thus made up her mind than the other man, the wealthy, blue-blooded Wyn Strafford, VI., turns up again to cast her back on the horns of a dilemma which has existed for nearly 10 years. According to the film (but not the book) Mr. Strafford is Kitty’s. ex-husband, who wants her back-but with unofficial status because he has an existing wife, In order to present the full facts of the dilemma to the audience, Kitty’s conscience appears as her image in a mirror and argues the point with her about following her head (by marrying the doctor) or her heart (by going away with the socialite, whom she still loves and always will). And so, by a series of flashbacks, the sad but not inglorious tale of Kitty Foyle is told, from the time when she is 15 years old, living with her Irish father on the wrong side of the railway tracks in Philadelphia. On the other side, among the blue bloods

of one of America’s most snobbish cities, lives Wyn Strafford VI. The difference in their social status is the tragedy of their young lives-but Kitty’s ultimate solution of her problem will be a relief to most members of the audience. Though I found several aspects of Kitty Foyle to be mildly critical about, (such as the fact that dresses and hairstyles were not always true to period ‘and that neither Kitty nor her father was sufficiently Irish) only one thing about the picture aroused my annoyance. That was the too obvious attempt to make both the story and the characters more respectable than their author created them. Would it have been so bad for our morals if Kitty’s child had been born out of wedlock-or even if it had been suggested that it wasn’t born at all? And the favourite cuss-word of the Foyles certainly wasn’t such a puerile expression as "Judaspriest." I also thought the square-cut profile of Dennis Morgan as Wyn was just a trifle overworked. However, an occasional twinge of annoyance didn’t spoil my enjoyment of the whole show, nor detract from my admiration of the star’s performance. Though it didn’t even dampen my eyelids, I shouldn’t be surprised if this is rated as a three-handkerchief picture for women.