Kitty Foyle

Released Dec 27, 1940

1h 48m

Drama

List

73%

Tomatometer

11 Reviews

72%

Audience Score

500+ Ratings

Working-class Philadelphia teen Kitty Foyle (Ginger Rogers) dreams of life in the city's fashionable society circles, but when she impulsively weds her former boss, wealthy Wyn Strafford (Dennis Morgan), his family disapproval is too severe for the young couple to overcome. Working in New York as a salesgirl in a fancy department store, Kitty meets and falls for kindhearted doctor Mark Eisen (James Craig), but when the remarried Wyn asks her to run away with him, she faces a difficult choice.

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Bosley Crowther

New York Times

he sharpness and contemporary significance of Mr. Morley's commentary are missing. His Kitty was of real flesh and blood; this one is persuasive but fictitious.

Rated: 2.5/5

Jan 31, 2012

Full Review

Pat Graham

Chicago Reader

Sam Wood, the El Supremo of Hollywood hackdom, squired this one to glory.

Jan 31, 2012

Full Review

Variety Staff

Variety

Despite its episodic, and at times, vaguely-defined motivation, picture on whole is a poignant and dramatic portraiture of a typical Cinderella girl's love story.

Jan 31, 2012

Full Review

George Orwell

Time and Tide

Quite a lively film, but Miss Rogers deserves something better.

Oct 2, 2023

Full Review

Elena de la Torre

Cine-Mundial

The story is magnificent. And the performance of Ginger Rogers is incomparable. [Full review in Spanish]

Sep 17, 2019

Full Review

Matt Brunson

Creative Loafing

Rogers delivers an excellent performance -- sexy, sassy and smart -- but the film's pre-feminism aspirations date badly.

Rated: 2.5/4

Jun 25, 2018

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david l

Kitty Foyle is a drama that has a rather predictable and standard Cinderella-type storyline. The script is definitely uninspired and the male actors were forgettable. What elevated this film was the memorable flashback structure, great ending and a terrific, Oscar-winning performance from Ginger Rogers. She is very charming and likable here.

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

03/31/23

Full Review

Audience Member

Ginger Rogers in her Academy Award winning performance. Very good. Dating for it’s time.

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

03/28/21

Full Review

Audience Member

Its a romance tale and while good for the time I'm sure, its rather outdated today. Backgrounds are less important nowadays and much of the acting seemed restrained/story quite hammy. The love story itself felt underdeveloped and was hard to believe at times (why doesn't he go after her when she runs away when theyre married)? It wasn't awful, but for sure doesn't hold up to many romance films of today. Nice to see a strong female lead back then tho. I do think the ending was realistic, altho sad and the part with the little boy broke my heart for her.

Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars

01/15/23

Full Review

steve d

Rodgers is great and finally gets her due as the fantastic actress she was.

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

03/30/23

Full Review

Audience Member

One could be forgiven for forgetting that Ginger Rogers triumphed over Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story (1940) and Bette Davis in The Letter (1940) at the 1941 Academy Awards. She is best known for her work with Fred Astaire in classics like Top Hat (1935) but for a brief period of time she attempted to get serious with films like Stage Door (1937) and this film was considered weighty enough to earn her awards attention. I can't say that she is my favorite actress of this era but I can see why she appeals to some and she does get some nice moments to showcase her skills in this film. It is typical woman's picture fare that fails to interact with the supposed commentary it makes on class but it will entertain most female audiences. Working class woman Kitty Foyle, Ginger Rogers, has been raised in the poorer area of Philadelphia but has a fascination with the wealthy ‘Main Liners' that concerns her cynical but caring father, Ernest Cossart. Her life changes when the main liner Wyn Strafford, Dennis Morgan, comes to her house and agrees to employ her at his new newspaper where they slowly fall in love working side by side. The newspaper fails and the two break up over class differences but while working as a perfume saleswoman in New York City she meets Doctor Mark Eisen, James Craig, after a mishap at work. When Strafford returns to her they impulsively marry but after first meeting his snooty family she realizes she will never fit in with them and abandons him with them later divorcing one another. She is left pregnant when she returns to New York City and while Strafford attempts to reconcile with her and offers to run away from his new wife and child with her she chooses to marry the more reliable Eisen. Where the film lost me is in the fact that it is supposedly about the struggle of being a lower class person attempting to move beyond your station of birth in life it is so clearly uninterested in presenting it's characters as anything other than glamorous. We get a lot of Foyle talking about how hard it is to be poor but we never really see her miserable circumstances as she is always dressed immaculately and the apartment that she shares with a large amount of other girls looks fun instead of being overcrowded and uncomfortable. As soon as she meets Strafford we only ever see her in glamorous night clubs or the fancy estate that his family lives at and all of her concerns are left behind. Furthermore her other option in the film is a relatively wealthy man and it is not as though she is choosing between living in squalor and the wealthiest man in the world. Were the film to give us something of Rogers looking bedraggled, as a working class woman of the 1940s would have looked, or dealing with the consequences of not having money her talk of being lower class would have hit with more impact. The two romances in the film are also lacking in passion as the dialogue the actors are provided with seems so overwritten and lifeless that it is hard to care for the characters. Foyle and Strafford have one of those movie romances when they are constantly mushy and even their arguments feature them happily glimmering at one another before eventually agreeing that they were both wronging and laughing it all away. It was sad to watch a plucky, strong heroine fall in love with such a spineless sap as the primary attraction of Strafford seemed to be that he was wealthy and could take her to exciting locations. Foyle herself becomes boring when she is around him as she is all dopey smiles and excited whisperings. Eisen would seem to offer slightly more in the way of interest as he is involved in a classic meet cute set up that sounds positively delightful on paper. In execution it is less than thrilling with him seeming more like a father figure than a boyfriend to our heroine and her eventual settling for him lacking the melancholy that it should have. This is not to say that Rogers is not good at certain points because she did hit me emotionally during one scene in which she interacts with Strafford's child and Rogers is able to convey all of the hurt and unresolved feelings in her character's eyes. Other times the film relies a little too much on her quick wit and rather creepy little smile that is presumably meant to make her look cute.

Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars

02/01/23

Full Review

Audience Member

It’s not just that the story is so badly dated. Or that I’ve never found Ginger an especially appealing screen presence. The story is just really interesting. It’s told in disjointed and cutesy segments. From the useless opening scenes about early 20th century women, its on the wrong and uninteresting track. We get a lot of pretty closeups of Ginger instead of anything really engaging. Trendy for the early 40’s. Oscar to Ginger? Seriously? When classics that stand up to time with relatable performances like Rebecca, The Philadelphia Story and The Letter were there?

Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars

07/28/19

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Sam Wood

Director

Ginger Rogers

Kitty Foyle

Dennis Morgan

Wynnewood `'Wyn'` Strafford VI

James Craig

Dr. Mark Eisen

Eduardo Ciannelli

Giono

Ernest Cossart

Pop Foyle

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Synopsis

Working-class Philadelphia teen Kitty Foyle (Ginger Rogers) dreams of life in the city's fashionable society circles, but when she impulsively weds her former boss, wealthy Wyn Strafford (Dennis Morgan), his family disapproval is too severe for the young couple to overcome. Working in New York as a salesgirl in a fancy department store, Kitty meets and falls for kindhearted doctor Mark Eisen (James Craig), but when the remarried Wyn asks her to run away with him, she faces a difficult choice.

Director: Sam Wood
Screenwriter: Dalton Trumbo
Distributor: RKO Radio Pictures
Production Co: RKO Radio Pictures Inc.
Genre: Drama
Original Language: English
Release Date (Theaters): Dec 27, 1940, Original
Release Date (Streaming): Apr 19, 2016
Runtime: 1h 48m

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