Mildred's Fatburgers
  • Home
  • The Blog
  • Clips & Quotes
  • Blogathon Archive
  • Contact

Lost in Translation: Kitty Foyle the Movie

4/10/2016

3 Comments

 
Kitty Foyle with Friends
Not nearly enough of these girls.

Kitty Foyle, 1940

Good stuff from the book none of which is remotely in the movie:

  • (Mrs. Strafford) "'I don't think Philadelphia enjoys that sort of persiflage.'

    Either she or I must have been pronouncing that word wrong up to then."

  • "Summer's a grand time to scare women to death about their complexions."

  • "The girls wore shorts up to the timberline."

  • "Of course, you got to be careful how you talk about these things (birth control) to men, they're easily shocked. Everybody thinks its fine for her or him to know facts but he better protect someone else from knowing them."

Kitty Foyle ​(1940)

I finished re-reading Christopher Morley's excellent, deftly told, first-person narrative of an American "shanty" Irish girl's life story as of her 28th year in 1939 seconds before re-viewing the film Kitty Foyle (1940), for the first time since the (first?) Clinton administration. I hope I speak for every woman my darling late grandmother's age (coincidentally within one year of the heroine Kitty Foyle and her portrayer, Ginger Rogers) when I say, "What the hell with the opening montage?! Said context-setting kick in the ovaries implies that white collar girls gave up chivalry and decorous baby-making for (whaddyacallit) citizenship, which, naturally, means no more pedestal-placing by men, more rudeness on streetcars, and less pay and no recognition for the same work forever. 

You asked for it, Girlie.

And the film, thereafter, cedes the humanness and agency of the book's heroine and devolves into a kind of love triangle completely dissociated from the message of the book from which it was adapted -- by no less than Dalton Trumbo and Donald Ogden Stewart. So, yeah, it's a disappointing book-to-screen translation. Ginger Rogers won an Academy Award for her performance, but I'd like to think she'd have had a better time with the original text.

The novel is the story of Katherine "Kitty" Foyle, a young woman coming of age in Philadelphia in the late 1920s. She is the youngest child in a working class family with modest expectations of social mobility through public education and American ingenuity. Kitty's mother dies when the girl is not yet a teenager and she sent to live with her aunt and uncle in a Chicago suburb. There she makes friends and develops ambitions, but must foreswear the college she is admitted to in order to care for her father who has had a stroke back in Philly. Fundamentally, it is about how a young girl navigates a life between a city and suburb in two different states, the friendships she forms, and how she comes to make her way in the world during one of the most difficult economic and social times in our history.

Let me pause to point out that this book was written nearly 80 years ago by a man approaching 50 in the credible voice of a twenty-something woman. Christopher Morley is surprisingly adept and insightful as the narrator. Like most of his books, it crackles with wonderful dialog in the first few chapters, repeats itself somewhat tediously in the middle, then picks up again at the end. In Kitty Foyle there is much observation about the difference between Men and Women, which becomes a bit of a snooze with repetition after one marvels at how nothing much has changed in that regard since the book was written. Also, Morley never has had the heart to "kill his darlings," so redundant aphorisms tend to abound. The important thing is that our heroine falls in love with a man outside her class, has a happy sexual relationship with him, gets pregnant, then terminates that pregnancy (because she has access to a safe one, as white women in certain circles have always had) rather than upset the father's comfortable life and goes on to enjoy a healthy career, a new (if less volatile) romance, and a solid group of friends and family who love her. That's the book.

The film, however, downplays both the fundamental intelligence of its heroine and the moral weakness of  her love interest and inflates the influence of the men in her life. The movie would have you believe that Kitty was attracted to the wealthy Philadelphia set her whole life; whereas the book only mentions them as a touchstone for her paper doll fantasies. The fact that her lover turns out to be one of the Philadelphia Main Line is a point of intense difficulty for her in the novel, not one of aspiration as the film suggests. The men in the film are given all the "good" lines about the nature of life and work.

Which is excessively annoying to one who has, literally, just put down the book.

Wyn Strafford, the weakling socialite in question, is played admirably in the film, if not faithfully to the novel, by Dennis Morgan. In the book Wyn is the kind of guy who has had things so softened for him by circumstance than any risk he might possibly conceive to undertake is utterly circumscribed by the narrow confines of his privilege. And Kitty is fully aware that while fundamentally a sweet guy, Wyn is ill-equipped to meet her at the level of her own experience.

Let's take the magazine Wyn starts and which employs young Kitty Foyle. In the book they have already begun their love affair when Wyn tries his hand at publishing and she is already accustomed to correcting his spelling and editing his clumsy prose to make him come across more erudite than he is. Wyn started the mag to prove that he could make it on his own outside the family banking business, with just his own pluck, a couple of bored fraternity brothers, and the $10,000 nut his father gave him -- you know, boot straps.

The film would have you think that Kitty is learning from Wyn in this endeavor, which is quite wrong. In the book, she knows the venture will fail from the start, because it's a copy of the New Yorker and Philly isn't that kind of town and Kitty knows something about regular people and their tastes. Kitty also knows, that when the magazine folds (and it will) that she is the one who will be left struggling to find work to support herself and her dying father (another element left out of the movie).

But Kitty loves Wyn. A lot. So much, that she has a protracted and glorious love affair with him, even though it is 1930-ish, they are not married, and the class difference between them would be impossible for Wyn to overcome. "There never was anybody whose whole existence was so settled upon a whole lot of people doing a comfortable makebelieve" she says in the book. Wyn himself "knew nothing of life, all its small anxieties and makeshifts, problems of grocery bills and insurance and clean clothes..."

Nevertheless, Kitty goes all in knowing this about Wyn and knowing that she risks so very much more, because she is a woman and  "when a woman gives up her conventions she's really handing you something." Kitty knows Wyn is clueless about his privilege as both a rich person and also as a man. So when at about the same time she discovers, via the society column, that Wyn has become engaged to a more suitable someone else, she also discovers, via the calendar, that she is pregnant, she decides never to tell him. In the book, she terminates the pregnancy, because she knew "Wyn wasn't big enough to have a bastard; or the folks he had to live with wouldn't let him be. It would be making people unhappy for the sake of somebody that didn't really exist yet."

The film has them marry before she gets pregnant and divorced before she gives birth to a dead child. Because that's so much better. Wyn knows nothing of her pregnancy or the possibility that he may have to provide for it had it lived; it didn't and he won't ever have had to.

Meanwhile, Kitty has affable Dr. Mark Eisen (James Craig) in the wings; more front-and-center and WASP-y in the film, more peripheral and Jewish in the book.

Which reminds me... as much as I love Christopher Morley (see photo below) his work contains several encrusted passe tropes of his time, including liberal use of the Black "dialect" and several words we just don't use anymore, and that can be a little rough in the reading. There are even some barnacles I hadn't realized we'd already shucked. For instance, Kitty refers several times to having to overcome her race prejudice to consider Mark as a potential husband, and each time she mentioned it, it took me a moment to realize she was talking about Jews and not Black people. 

I forgot about that, even though in real life at approximately the same time my late grandfather was obliged to attend Middlesex University (now Brandeis) for medical school, because it was the only one in his neck of the woods that didn't have a Jewish quota. The girl he married was my aforementioned darling grandmother, a white collar working (Jewish) girl who may or may not have inspired Christopher Morley himself to write a poem about her, a lovely young woman on a subway in New York -- family apocryphra I prefer to think is true, if not even remotely verified, thank you very much. All of which makes me wonder, when did we Jews make the transition to white?

In sum, if you haven't seen Kitty Foyle the film, read the book instead and if you've only read the book, don't see the film: it will annoy you for not retaining the excellent dialog or telling the right story. Either way, read the book and give the picture a miss. The clothes are great and the boys are handsome, but it's got none of the friendships, family, or true feeling of the real Kitty Foyle.
Christopher Morley Books
The Christopher Morley section at my house

Beyond the Cover Blogathon
This post is my contribution to the Beyond the Cover: Books to Film Blogathon, hosted by Now Voyaging and Speakeasy.

There's a lot to cover (har-de-har), so get over to the hosts' sites and get reading!

3 Comments

Ear-Way Innay the UNNY-May

4/3/2015

7 Comments

 
Gold Diggers of 1933
It's the Depression: Let's put on a show!

Featuring

  • Ginger Rogers' Pig Latin
  • Aline MacMahon's delivery
  • Ned Sparks' enthusiasm
  • Busby Berkeley's bird's eye view
  • Warren William's drunken snob
  • Joan Blondell's big, blue, righteously angry eyes
Joan Blondell, My Forgotten Man
So. Good.

Gold Diggers of 1933

I have no such thing as "favorite old movie," so when asked what mine is, I either deflect or go on too long in too many directions.

However
. Among the handful of pictures I can see any time in (almost) any mood, Gold Diggers of 1933 is high on that list. It's got everything: snappy dialog expertly delivered; beautiful girls in great clothes; weird Dr. Seussian musical numbers; and an adorably silly self-awareness that brings me joy every time.

The gold diggers in question are a group of girls trying to make a living in the show business: ingenue Polly Parke
r (Ruby Keeler), comedienne Trixie Lorraine (Aline MacMahon), torch singer Carol King (Joan Blondell), and hoofer Fay Fortune (Ginger Rogers). The film opens on Fay in dress rehearsal for a big musical number backed by a bunch of chorines dressed in nothing but their Sheer Energies and some strategically placed cardboard coins, singing "We're in the Money." Right in the middle of the number, a bunch of goons barge in and start breaking down sets and gathering coins, claiming the creditors are closing the show due to lack of payment.

This throws producer Barney Hopkins
(Ned Sparks) into a rage and the girls out of work -- again -- this unnamed show being the latest in a series of productions they've rehearsed for but never opened in. Some weeks later, there is a rumor that Barney is casting for a new show! Great news for the girls and for Polly's crush across the way, a young composer and crooner called Brad Roberts (Dick Powell). Barney tells the girls all about this great new show. It's about the Depression, see, with men marching marching marching, can't you hear it? Brad starts playing a doleful march; Barney loves it. Polly thinks Barney should use Brad's music. Barney thinks so too, and Brad will do it if Barney gives Polly a feature role. There are parts for everyone, especially the comedienne, because it's a show about the Depression and it's going to go on for six months, easy!

That is, as soon as Barney gets the money.

Not to worry, Brad says, he can get them the $15,000 they need, no problem, as long as he doesn't have to appear on stage. The girls, presuming him to be just as poor as they are, think he's making a cruel joke. Everybody is annoyed and saddened, but when Brad shows up at Barney's office the next day with stacks of cash, all is forgiven. But the girls (especially Polly) fear that Brad is in trouble with the law or the mob or something: where else would anyone get that kind of money, and in such neat little piles, and why won't he appear in public?

Because Brad Roberts is in reality, Robert Bradford, the youngest son in a wealthy family whose fortune is held in trust by Brad's elder brother, Lawrence (
Warren William), that's why. Brad/Robert wants to make it in the musical theater, a profession disdained by his class, and is living incognito on the poor side of town. So the show goes on, with Brad at the piano, Polly in the lead, and Busby Berkeley at the drawing board. On opening night, however, the "juvenile" lead gets an attack of lumbago (he's been a juvenile for 18 years) and Brad MUST go on in his stead, which he does. The show is a SENSATION but Brad is immediately recognized by a society reporter (Charles Lane), who rats him out in the newspaper the next day. Enter angry brother Lawrence and family lawyer, Faneul Peabody (Guy Kibbee), who insert themselves into Brad's happy life.

Now that we've met all the principal girls and boys, the rest of the film is about how each of them wind up with each other. Lawrence mistakes Carol for Polly, falls in love with her (Carol, not Polly); Trixie latches onto Faneul (who's an established big, fat sucker for showgirls) beating off Fay once or twice in the process; and the real Polly and Brad, already in love anyway, wait for all the dust to settle.

Along the way there are three more spectacular, bizarre musical numbers: "Petting in the Park," an irritating if catchy tune about furtive groping through all four seasons; "Waltz of the Shadows," an unmemorable love song accompanied by girls in white dresses making jaw-dropping, kaleidoscopic formations while playing neon violins; and the closer of all closers, "Remember My Forgotten Man," a ginormous blues extravaganza that explicates the plight of the Bonus Army in just under eight minutes.

If ever I taught a course on the Depression, I'd anchor it with this picture. It pulls you in with such affable, toe-tapping irony and shows you the door with another: the rousing dirge, a call to action that gives you hope and purpose. So entertaining, so silly, and so much to think about.


In God We Trust


Picture
This post is another contribution to The Pre-Code Blogathon, hosted by Shadows and Satin and Pre-Code.com. Read 'em all, why doncha?

7 Comments

    About Mildred

    I'll do just about anything a movie tells me to do. Unless it tells me wrong...

    Then I get cranky.

    But go ahead, like me on Facebook.

    RSS Feed

    Visit Mildred's profile on Pinterest.

    Proud Member Of

    Picture
    Classic Movie Blog Hub Member

    Archives

    May 2019
    December 2017
    October 2017
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013

    Categories

    All
    Agnes Moorehead
    Akira Kurosawa
    Alan Mowbray
    Albert Salmi
    Alice Terry
    Aline MacMahon
    Allen Jenkins
    Alloy Orchestra
    Anna Massey
    Ann Dvorak
    Anne Bancroft
    Anne Baxter
    Anne Revere
    Anne Shirley
    Ann Miller
    Ann Sothern
    Anthony Quinn
    Anton Walbrook
    Arthur Penn
    Art Linkletter
    Arturo De Cordova
    Audrey Hepburn
    Baby Peggy
    Barbara Bel Geddes
    Barbara Stanwyck
    Barton MacLane
    Basil Rathbone
    Bea Benadaret
    Beatrice Straight
    Bette Davis
    Beulah Bondi
    Billie Burke
    Bill Scott
    Billy Wilder
    Birthday Of The Week
    Bob Newhart
    Bonita Granville
    Boris Karloff
    Brian Aherne
    Bugs Bunny
    Burt Lancaster
    Busby Berkeley
    Butterfly Mcqueen
    Carl Boehm
    Carl Theodor Dreyer
    Carol Haney
    Cary Grant
    Charles Boyer
    Charlton Heston
    Chester Morris
    Christopher Morley
    Claire Bloom
    Claire Trevor
    Clark Gable
    Claude Rains
    Claudette Colbert
    Cliff Robertson
    Cloris Leachman
    Connie Gilchrist
    Conrad Veidt
    Constance Bennett
    Cybill Shepherd
    Dana Andrews
    Dana Delany
    Dan Duryea
    David Niven
    Dean Stockwell
    Deborah Kerr
    Dennis Morgan
    Diana Lynn
    Diana Wynyard
    Dick Moore
    Dick Powell
    Donald Sutherland
    Donna Reed
    Doris Day
    Dustin Hoffman
    D.W. Griffith
    Eddie Albert
    Edie Adams
    Edith Fellows
    Edward Arnold
    Edward Everett Horton
    Elaine May
    Elissa Landi
    Elizabeth Taylor
    Ella Raines
    Ellen Burstyn
    Elvis Presley
    Emilio Fernandez
    Ernest Borgnine
    Ernst Lubitsch
    Errol-flynn
    Ethel Barrymore
    Eugene-pallette
    Eve-arden
    Evelyn Varden
    Fay-bainter
    Fay-bainter
    Firesign-theater
    Frank Hurley
    Frank McHugh
    Frank Morgan
    Frank Sinatra
    Freddie Bartholomew
    Frederic March
    Fredi Washington
    Fred MacMurray
    Fritz Lang
    Friz Freleng
    Gabriel Figueroa
    Gary Cooper
    Gary Merrill
    George Brent
    George Murphy
    Geraldine-fitzgerald
    Ginger Rogers
    Gladys Cooper
    Glenda Farrell
    Gloria Jean
    Government Cheese
    G.W. Billy Bitzer
    Hal E. Chester
    Hal Roach
    Harold Lloyd
    Hedda Hopper
    Henry Fonda
    Herbert Marshall
    Howard DaSilva
    Howard Hawks
    Howard Hughes
    Howard Keel
    Hume Cronyn
    Humphrey Bogart
    Inga Swenson
    Ingrid Bergman
    Irene Dunne
    Jackie Butch Jenkins
    Jackie-coogan
    Jackie Cooper
    Jack Lemmon
    Jacques Tourneur
    James Craig
    James-garner
    James Gleason
    James Mason
    James-stewart
    James Whitmore
    Jane Darwell
    Jane-powell
    Jane-withers
    Jane-wyman
    Jay Ward
    Jean Dixon
    Jeanette-macdonald
    Jean Harlow
    Jean Simmons
    Joan Blondell
    Joan Crawford
    Joan-fontaine
    John Carradine
    John Ford
    John Hurt
    Joseph Cotten
    Juano Hernandez
    June Foray
    Karin-swanstrom
    Karl-malden
    Katharine Hepburn
    Kathleen Byron
    Kathryn Grayson
    Keenan Wynn
    Kevin Mccarthy
    Kirk Douglas
    Lauren Bacall
    Lee J. Cobb
    Leif Erickson
    Leila Hyams
    Leonard Nimoy
    Letitia-palma
    Lew Ayres
    Lewis Stone
    Lillian Gish
    Lillian-roth
    Lizabeth-scott
    Loretta Young
    Louise-beavers
    Lucille Ball
    Lurene-tuttle
    Lyle Talbot
    Maggie-smith
    Marcia Mae Jones
    Margaret Sullavan
    Maria Schell
    Marie-dressler
    Marjorie-main
    Marni-nixon
    Marsha Hunt
    Marx-brothers
    Mary-boland
    Maxine-audley
    Max-linder
    Max Ophuls
    Mel Blanc
    Mercedes McCambridge
    Mia Farrow
    Michael Powell
    Mickey Rooney
    Mike-mazurki
    Mike Nichols
    Miles-mander
    Miriam Hopkins
    Moira Shearer
    Montgomery Clift
    Movie-theatres
    Ned Sparks
    Niall Macginnis
    Nicholas Ray
    Nigel Hawthoren
    Ninon Sevilla
    Norma-shearer
    Orson Welles
    Pamela Franklin
    Patsy Kelly
    Patty Duke
    Patty McCormack
    Paulette Goddard
    Paul Henreid
    Paul Lynde
    Peggy Cummins
    Percy Kilbride
    Peter Bogdanovich
    Peter Breck
    Peter Falk
    Peter Lorre
    Peter Ustinov
    Preston Foster
    Ralph Bellamy
    Ramon Novarro
    Renee Falconetti
    Rex Ingram
    Ricardo Montalban
    Richard Barthelmess
    Richard Basehart
    Richard Briers
    Richard Mulligan
    Rita Hayworth
    Robert Benchley
    Robert Ryan
    Robert Wagner
    Rock Hudson
    Rodolfo Acosta
    Roger Livesey
    Roland Young
    Rosalind Russell
    Royal Dano
    Rudolf Valentino
    Sabu
    Sam Fuller
    Sandra Dee
    Shelley Winters
    Shirley MacLaine
    Shirley Temple
    Skippy/Asta
    Soyuzmultfilm
    Spencer Tracy
    Spring Byington
    Sterling Hayden
    Susan Hayward
    Sydney Greenstreet
    Takashi Shimura
    Teri Garr
    Tim Holt
    Tod Browning
    Tommy Kirk
    Tony Randall
    Toshiro Mifune
    Una Merkel
    Van Johnson
    Veronica Cartwright
    Victor Buono
    Victor McLaglen
    Virginia Weidler
    Walter Huston
    Walter Matthau
    Walter Tetley
    Warren William
    Wednesdays Child
    Wendy Hiller
    William Demarest
    William Powell
    William Shatner
    William Wyler
    W.S. Van Dyke
    Yasujiro Ozu
    Zero Mostel

    More

    Upcoming Blogathons

    Picture
    Rhoda Penmark flaunts some norms in THE BAD SEED (1956)

    Blogathons Gone By

    Great Breening Blogathon
    NIGHT NURSE (1931)
    Picture
    THE LAST PICTURE SHOW
    Nature's Fury Blogathon
    THE GRAPES OF WRATH
    Reel Infatuation Blogathon
    Sugarpuss O'Shea changes my life in BALL OF FIRE (1941)
    Great Villain Blogathon 2016
    Charlotte Vale's Mean Mom in NOW VOYAGER (1942)
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.