A Star Is Born-Katharine Hepburn’s Morning Glory
DVD Review
By Sam Lowell
Morning Glory, starring Katharine Hepburn, Adolph Menjou,
Douglas Fairbanks, Junior, 1933
Funny how some film cycles run for guys like me who like to
watch old-time black and white films and review them in a space like this.
Quite by accident the film under review, Katharine Hepburn’s Academy
Award-winning performance in Morning
Glory, and the previous three films I have reviewed are all set in New Jack
City (alright I know New York City but black and white times or now you had
better have jack if you want to live there, or dream about making yourself a
name there). They are all slightly different takes from hobo Meet John Doe down
and out to bright guy goes to town Mr. Deeds Goes To Town to melodramatic East
Side, West Side about life on the upper crust to this film about a naïve
wannabe actress Eva Lovelace who wants to take the town by a storm.
The Broadway part of town anyway, the stage, the legitimate
stage they called it then to compare it with crass Hollywood. Eva from nowhere
Vermont decided like a million guys and gals before her to flee the confines of
small-town anywhere and see the bright lights of the city, of the great white
way. She though is strictly from amateur night, strictly from hunger too as she
tries to get that first little break that will set her on the road to stardom.
A road that is filled with corpses of those who failed.
But not our gal because she had spunk, had a little talent
too, but mostly she had an overweening desire to do what it took to get a shot
at the stars-including in pre-Code Hollywood off-stage bedding the big Broadway
producer (Adolph Menjou) and putting a spell on her acting coach and an up and
coming young writer and director. Eva will as fate would have it get her big
chance when an older established star got on her high horse and made one too
many non-negotiable demands and left in a huff-leaving the show without a lead.
No problem. Quick study Eva slated for a small role from the smitten director
(Douglas Fairbanks, Junior) and the rest was history. Well not quite history because
in the end, end of the film anyway, fame and fortune don’t give him all she wants.
What did she expect. Like I said that road is filled with corpses and the ghosts
of the faded past. I don’t know whether her performance was 1933 Oscar-worthy
but the cautionary tale was still worth telling.
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