Katharine Hepburn was the Star in TCM's Summer Under the Stars this past Saturday. One of the movies not on the schedule was Morning Glory, the movie that won Hepburn her first Oscar. I had seen it many years ago but never did a blog post on it. Since it was on the schedule not too long ago, I recorded it then, and recently watched it to finally get around to doing that blog post.
The thing I didn't remember from my first time watching the movie is how little there really is going on. Hepburn plays Ada Love, a naïve young woman from Vermont who's come down to New York at the height of the Depression thinking she's going to make it big on the Broadway stage, because she did community theater back in Vermont, don't you know. She shows up unannounced at the office of prominent producer Louis Easton (Adolphe Menjou), but can't get in because like a lot of offices in 1930s movies, there's one of those swinging gates that keep the visitors on one side and the doors leading to the actual private offices on the other side.
Easton is talking to his favorite playwright, Joseph Sheridan (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) about what to do as their next collaboration together. Meanwhile, waiting outside is an older actor Easton has cast a lot, Hedges (C. Aubrey Smith), who takes a liking to Eva and even offers her acting lessons. Needless to say, Eva is not able to impress Easton, but then a lot of aspiring actresses would have shown up over the years the way Eva did.
Some time later, Eva is in one of those 1930s diners where the hard-luck characters of Hollywood movies go to eat cheaply, or at least just get a cup of coffee if they can't even afford to eat. Who should show up at that diner but Hedges? Hedges has pity on Eva and offers to take her home, but decides to take her to a party that Easton is holding. Perhaps at least she can get some hors d'œuvres in her stomach. Of course, Eva is stupid enough not to eat, but to drink a bunch of champagne instead, get rip-roaringly drunk, and do an impromptu Shakespeare recital before passing out.
Easton, seeing Eva passed out in his lap just wants to pay her off to get rid of her and at least survive for however long it's going to take to find a part in a play somewhere. Eva somehow has the silly idea that perhaps she's actually got a part, and just walks out of the apartment, probably expecting a call or something that isn't going to come, forcing Eva to do vaudeville, the horror.
Sheridan is apparently able to find her, because he gets her as an understudy for the new play that he and Easton are doing, one that has Rita Vernon (Mary Duncan) in the leading role. But Rita is a diva, and decides on opening night that she's going to hold Easton hostage by demanding a much better contract than whatever she signed. Sheridan holds the trump card in Eva, however, and somehow she's actually able to pull the role off, at which point the movie abruptly ends.
Hepburn gives a good performance, although at times she's showing the same self-absorbed blankety blank that she is in a bunch of her other movies, notably Bringing Up Baby and The Philadelphia Story. Perhaps Hedges should have shaken some sense into Eva like at the end of Old Acquaintance instead of offering to take on Eva as a student; it probably would have helped Eva in the long run. Unsurprisingly, all of the men are just fine in their supporting roles although it's Hepburn's picture all the way. The one irritating thing, however, is the ending, as it really feels like the writers didn't know what to do after making Eva a star. The didn't have a boyfriend to reunite her with, or a big musical production as in 42nd Street. It just ends.
If you want to see Katharine Hepburn before she became "box office poison" in the late 1930s, Morning Glory isn't a bad place to start.
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