Now Over 5500 Reviews and (near) Daily Updates!

WELCOME! Use the search engines on this site (or your own off-site engine of choice) to gain easy access to the complete MAKSQUIBS Archive; more than 5500 posts and counting. (New posts added every day or so.)

You can check on all our titles by typing the Title, Director, Actor or 'Keyword' you're looking for in the Search Engine of your choice (include the phrase MAKSQUIBS) or just use the BLOGSPOT.com Search Box at the top left corner of the page.

Feel free to place comments directly on any of the film posts and to test your film knowledge with the CONTESTS scattered here & there. (Hey! No Googling allowed. They're pretty easy.)

Send E-mails to MAKSQUIBS@yahoo.com . (Let us know if the TRANSLATE WIDGET works!) Or use the Profile Page or Comments link for contact.

Thanks for stopping by.

Thursday, June 6, 2024

MORNING GLORY (1933)

Katharine Hepburn’s Hollywood honeymoon peaked on this backstager, her third film (and first Oscar®), with LITTLE WOMEN as chaser.*  The two hits neatly defining her range at the time, yet leading to seven miscast flops (only ALICE ADAMS/’35 broke this disastrous run) and a new rep as box-office poison.  Hard to imagine now, but not even three consecutive classics (STAGE DOOR/'37; BRINGING UP BABY/'38; HOLIDAY/'38) could undo the damage.  Instead, two years off-screen and a huge B’way hit (THE PHILADELPHIA STORY) needed to reboot the career.  All of which seems to have left this charmingly naive piece (from an unproduced Zoe Akins play) more spoken of than seen.  A shame, as she’s not only very good in a part that’s tough to pull off (the naïf waif whose uncompromising dreams of stage success and chatterbox mouth set your teeth on edge yet equally make her believably endearing, especially to aged stage pro C. Aubrey Smith, philandering producer Adolphe Menjou, and sophisticated, but remarkably nice, playwright Douglas Fairbanks Jr.), but touch closely on her own hardheadedness, nervy determination,  enchanting looks and willingness to be as embarrassing as her character is.  (She’s also superbly lit by cinematographer Bert Glennon.)  Well directed by dipsomaniac actor Lowell Sherman (who’d beat brother-in-law John Barrymore by drinking himself to death in a year), it feels all of a piece, far better than the 1958 remake STAGE STRUCK/’58 which looks great on paper (Sidney Lumet directing Henry Fonda, Christopher Plummer, Joan Greenwood, Herbert Marshal and, oh dear, Susan Strasberg.), but dies on screen.

DOUBLE-BILL:  *The excellence of recent adaptations of LITTLE WOMEN (1994; 2019) has left the awkward beauty of George Cukor’s 1933 film, with Hepburn at her finest, somewhat in the shade.  Just avoid the high gloss TechniColored M-G-M version of 1949.

No comments: