Morning Glory ***½ (1933, Katharine Hepburn, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Adolphe Menjou) – Classic Movie Review 3420

Director Lowell Sherman’s 1933 romantic drama stars the 26-year-old Katharine Hepburn, who won her first Oscar as Eva Lovelace, a starry-eyed, naively innocent, aspiring actress who arrives in Manhattan as a Broadway babe trying to be a hit on the New York stage.

Luckily or otherwise, she is taken under the wing of several theatre veterans – a paternal actor, a philandering producer and an earnest playwright – who offer her either the casting couch or possible ultimate success.

The film’s glory may perhaps have faded somewhat, but it is still a charming movie and Hepburn is magic, virtually playing herself as a mannered, talkative girl from New England. Admittedly, the love triangle between Eva, Joseph Sheridan (Douglas Fairbanks Jr) and Louis Easton (Adolphe Menjou) has worn less well and it is considerably less diverting than other aspects of the movie, but both stars are charismatic and very welcome.

Also in the cast are Mary Duncan, C Aubrey Smith, Don Alvarado, Fred Santley, Richard Carle, Tyler Brooke and Helen Ware.

The screenplay by Howard J Green is based on Zoë Atkins’s play, which was remade in 1958 as Stage Struck with Susan Strasberg.

Hepburn went on to be the only movie star to win four Academy Awards for Best Actress: for Morning Glory, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967), The Lion in Winter (1968) and On Golden Pond (1981).

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3420

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