ALL THE FOLLOWING IS A SPOILER. True, Kitty Foyle is adapted from a novel, so much must be eliminated or compressed, and, also true, the Production Code of the time clamped down tight on any suggestion of immorality or even natural functions. Even so, this movie deserves some kind of a record for the longest gestation, shortest courtship, and quickest (non-Reno) divorce in movie history--and all in one scene! Ginger Rogers marries Dennis Morgan, but a few days later realises she has made a mistake when his snobbish family won't accept her as she is. Some unspecified time later, she gets her final decree but simultaneously finds out she is pregnant (a word that could not be used in the movies). So she would have had to file for the divorce, go through all the procedures, and receive her decree in less than the few weeks it usually takes to suspect and confirm pregnancy--unless we are meant to think that Ginger Rogers, a smart cookie here as in all her roles, doesn't know where babies come from. Rogers goes to tell her ex about the blessed event, but keeps mum when he tells her that he is going to get married. It's possible that he was going with this other woman and impulsively threw her over to marry Rogers, but we are told nothing and are left to assume he met, courted, and was accepted by this other woman in the past few weeks.
At the end of the scene, therefore, you are left thinking, What? Hello? Did I miss something? No, it's just very bad continuity.
Earlier, we see Rogers and her boyfriend on a sofa before a blazing fire "in the Poconos." Kiss and fadeout. Now, the Poconos, as most viewers will not realise, is a mountain resort in Pennsylvania, famous for honeymoons. But we are not told how they come to be there and what is going on. The k and f are the usual code for illicit sex, but this seems contrary to the insistence that Rogers and Morgan are, if briefly, married when she becomes pregnant. Once again, it feels as if the novel has been adapted by just filming a few pages here and there and ignoring the rest.
And what, anyway, is so terrible about Morgan's family wanting to mold Rogers so she doesn't embarrass them? What does she have to get on her high horse about, announcing no one will re-make Kitty Foyle? She's an ignorant shopgirl, for heaven's sake, and marriage to a wealthy man would give her the freedom to do what she wants, and discover who she is, a lot more than sharing a room with two other penny-pinching spinsters. Instead of flaring up and stalking out, anyone with an ounce of sense would have smiled, put up with the lessons in table manners or whatever, and then done whatever she liked. The whole thing is a patronising lie that tells its Depression audience being true to yourself, in even the most minor and superficial ways, is more important than money and a cute husband like Dennis Morgan. Hard to believe too many half-starved working girls would have agreed.
At the end of the scene, therefore, you are left thinking, What? Hello? Did I miss something? No, it's just very bad continuity.
Earlier, we see Rogers and her boyfriend on a sofa before a blazing fire "in the Poconos." Kiss and fadeout. Now, the Poconos, as most viewers will not realise, is a mountain resort in Pennsylvania, famous for honeymoons. But we are not told how they come to be there and what is going on. The k and f are the usual code for illicit sex, but this seems contrary to the insistence that Rogers and Morgan are, if briefly, married when she becomes pregnant. Once again, it feels as if the novel has been adapted by just filming a few pages here and there and ignoring the rest.
And what, anyway, is so terrible about Morgan's family wanting to mold Rogers so she doesn't embarrass them? What does she have to get on her high horse about, announcing no one will re-make Kitty Foyle? She's an ignorant shopgirl, for heaven's sake, and marriage to a wealthy man would give her the freedom to do what she wants, and discover who she is, a lot more than sharing a room with two other penny-pinching spinsters. Instead of flaring up and stalking out, anyone with an ounce of sense would have smiled, put up with the lessons in table manners or whatever, and then done whatever she liked. The whole thing is a patronising lie that tells its Depression audience being true to yourself, in even the most minor and superficial ways, is more important than money and a cute husband like Dennis Morgan. Hard to believe too many half-starved working girls would have agreed.