Kitty Foyle

The movie opens with a young woman, Kitty Foyle, assisting her doctor-sweetheart in delivering a child in a ramshackle tenement. They are a very compassionate pair. Afterwards he proposes marriage, she accepts and agrees meet him at midnight to be immediately married by an all-night Justice of the Peace. But while packing back at her hotel room, in pops an old flame, a wealthy married man who Kitty still desperately loves. He announces he has left his family and is leaving that night at midnight for South America. He still loves her, and wants her to join him. Oh, Kitty, what to do?

The remainder of the film is a series of flashbacks prompted by Kitty's image of herself in the mirror (i.e., her conscience) as it attempts to direct Kitty to the proper decision. Starting with her teenage years growing up working-class Irish in 1920s Philadelphia we learn how poor Kitty met and fell in love with a rich Mainline aristocat, and got herself in such a predicament.

Ms. Rogers won best actress for her role as Kitty, but the rest of the cast is no less deserving. A real movie treat.

A wonderful story of a young woman caught between two worlds, what she wants and what she needs. This has got to be one of the best stories of all time. Ginger Rogers gives an outstanding performance of a young woman from the wrong side of the tracks that stands up to society and makes her way on her own.

It is incredibly forward thinking for the time period and yet it deals with struggles that seem to be timeless.

I give it as many stars as can be given.

Ariana Eirlys

Enjoyed this film starring Ginger Rogers, (Katherine "Kitty" Foyle) playing the role of a young girl who works for a magazine in Philadelphia and was hired by a man during the great depression. This man was Wyn Strafford, (Dennis Morgan) who is very good looking and started to fall in love with her. Kitty loses her job and finds other work selling cosmetics and perfumes and this couple do not see each other for over a year until Kitty meets up with Wyn Strafford who comes from a very wealthy family and they get married. Things quickly change in their lives and because Kitty was a girl who came from a rather poor Irish family this created a problem for the stiff shirts of Philadelphia. There are many flashbacks in this story and there is a great deal to this film which will hold your interest right to the very end. Excellent film and a wonderful old film to enjoy with old songs from the past.

A vastly underrated actress outside the realm of song & dance, Ginger Rogers finally scored w/a best actress Oscar for her performance here. Rogers plays a working class perfume hawker torn between the blue blooded beau from back home in Philly & a struggling doctor she meets in New York. A good role in a flawed film, I chuck this one to the director since the script is on point from Dalton Trumbo (Spartacus/The Brave One) but the strength of Rogers turn is let down on an over reliance on flashbacks.

This must have been the year for the City of Brotherly Love. James Stewart wins his Academy Award for The Philadelphia Story and Ginger Rogers who he was going out with at some point, wins Best Actress for Kitty Foyle, a film also set in Philadelphia. Too bad neither the Athletics or the Phillies won the World Series that year, but neither of them came close.

Although Stage Door more than amply demonstrated Ginger Rogers's abilities at serious drama, this particular film cemented her as dramatic actress. Most of Ginger's films up to this point had been musicals, mostly with Fred Astaire. After Kitty Foyle she rarely did any musicals.

The story is told in flashback after Ginger engages in some dialog with her alter ego in the mirror. That one in the mirror is usually the one person you cannot fool. So the ego narrates the ups and downs of the life of Kitty Foyle.

Ginger's a working class Irish lass whose got two men going for her big time, young earnest doctor James Craig, and mainline millionaire heir Dennis Morgan. Morgan's family name is Stratton and no doubt the Strattons socialized with the Lords of The Philadelphia Story. But they're definitely not as fun a group.

Ginger's alter ego narration and her scene upon being told she suffered a miscarriage probably are what won her the Academy Award. She's very effective in those scenes and in her scene where her father, Ernest Cossart dies.

Kitty Foyle is good soap opera material, I'm surprised it's characters weren't used in one. It still holds up well after over 60 years.

As well as that other Philadelphia Story.