Flyerplesys Perfectly adorable

Beystiman It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Whitech It is not only a funny movie, but it allows a great amount of joy for anyone who watches it.

Aspen Orson There is definitely an excellent idea hidden in the background of the film. Unfortunately, it's difficult to find it.

gkeith_1 Spoilers. Observations. Opinions. Pleasant. Eva Lovelace wants to make it big in NYC. She admires pictures of stage stars of an earlier era, and wants to be one of them. She is small-town, broke and possesses none of the furry finery of some other female thespians. Their animal hides reflect trashy kept-women, and their haughty personalities engage in you're-too-fat insults. Today, we know little if anything about the actresses who portrayed those fur-adorned creatures, and they are not the star of this show. Hepburn is, she of the famous four Oscars. This Pre-Code outing shows Hepburn portraying Eva as ambitious, aspiring actress, knowing somehow in the back of her naive mind that she would have to endure the casting couch if she ever wanted to get anywhere. It was the Great Depression. Actors could get little work. Well-knowns were fortunate to get any kind of small character part. Witness the character of Hedges (C. Aubrey Smith), formerly a big star who is now forced to take anything that the producer can arrange. This was a reflection of real life during the early 1930s, where a large number of people in all types of professions were unemployed or sometimes-employed. The Great Depression must have killed a lot of stage actors' careers. A few went to Hollywood and were successful, perhaps a few stars and many bit-part character actors. The 1929 stock market crash killed many producers' careers, including a well-known FZ showman who passed away in 1932, broke and owing a ton of unpaid bills. I am a university degreed historian, actress, singer, dancer, stage makeup artist, film critic and movie reviewer.

MARIO GAUCI When Katharine Hepburn first appeared on cinema screens, she was deemed a great new star, even winning an Oscar – for the film under review – almost instantly; however, before long, audiences had grown tired of her particular brand of histrionics and the actress was quickly declared "box-office poison"! She then wisely changed pace to screwball comedy with Howard Hawks' BRINGING UP BABY (1938), was subsequently handed a once-in-a-lifetime part on a silver platter (by playwright and personal friend Philip Barry, no less!) with "The Philadelphia Story" (superbly filmed by George Cukor in 1940), eventually became an institution when she teamed up (for 9 films and in real life) with Spencer Tracy, and ultimately grew into the "First Lady of Acting" – going on to win 3 more golden statuettes, a record, several years after her first! But, for what it is worth, it all started here...Truth be told, I have never been much of a fan of Hepburn's – though I concede that she has appeared in many a fine film throughout her lengthy career. Anyway, the role she plays here fits her like a glove i.e. that of an ambitious young actress rising to the top out of pure chance and sacrificing stardom for love (indeed, the title is a trade phrase for such meteoric members of the profession). Actually, the narrative is not quite as maudlin as it appears from this plot line – and, yet, the brief 74-minute running-time does not give it much of a chance either: we are told that Hepburn seeks acting lessons from aged luminary C. Aubrey Smith (but we never see them at it) and, crucially, her crowning achievement on the stage is only represented by the enthusiastic applause of the audience and the bows she takes at the curtain call!! That said, her thespian skills are displayed in a drunken party sequence at the home of her producer (Adolphe Menjou, with whom Hepburn would be reunited for another classic about the artistic vocation i.e. STAGE DOOR {1937}), where she dutifully quotes a couple of Shakespearean perennials ("Hamlet", "Romeo And Juliet")! For the record, director Sherman had himself been a prominent actor (his most notable appearance perhaps being that of the washed-up film director in Cukor's WHAT PRICE Hollywood? {1932}) who briefly made the switch behind the camera before his untimely death in 1934.The afore-mentioned STAGE DOOR was characterized by the bitchiness among the myriad female performers, here represented by the original temperamental (and blackmailing!) star of the production which ultimately gives understudy Hepburn her one shot at glory. The heroine (which, at a low ebb in her striving to make it on her own, is reduced to appearing in vaudeville!) is infatuated with the much older Menjou (who quashes her romantic illusions by stating that she now belongs to no man but to Broadway alone, a line which has since become a cliché in this type of film!); consequently, she overlooks the attentions of love-struck young author Douglas Fairbanks Jr. (playing a character named Joseph Sheridan!). In the film's closing moments, after finally confessing his feelings to her but ready to back down so as not to be in the way of her success, she is persuaded to make the right choice for herself (obviously, happiness) by the company's elderly personal assistant – herself a former leading light of the so-called "Great White Way" but whose single-minded pursuit of fame had rendered lonely and bitter! It must be pointed out that MORNING GLORY would be remade 25 years later by Sidney Lumet: renamed STAGE STRUCK, it was still good but inferior overall, and starred Susan Strasberg, Henry Fonda, Christopher Plummer and Herbert Marshall.

zetes Katharine Hepburn was nominated for and won her first Oscar for this comedy/melodrama set in the New York theater world. It's kind of similar to Hepburn's later Stage Door. Hepburn here plays a young actress newly come to New York. She's kind of pretentious and obnoxious, but she makes an impression on those she meets with her odd attitudes and ambitions. Chief among them are C. Aubrey Smith, an old character actor whom she pretty much forces to be her acting teacher, Adolphe Menjou, pretty much playing the same part that he would again in Stage Door, the womanizing play producer, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr., a playwright. I love the first part of the film, where Hepburn is unsuccessful in her pursuits. The final act has a 42nd Street-esque twist where she is chosen to replace a diva-ing lead actress (Mary Duncan) in a lead role. The film would probably be better, and better remembered, if it hadn't headed for such a predictable conclusion. All in all, though, I really liked it. Hepburn is fantastic (if you've ever seen the Warner Brothers' cartoons where she's parodied, frequently using the word "really", this is the film which they seem to be mocking, mostly).

Roger Burke This is a fascinating film with a very mixed message – at least, for the times when it was released. Today, of course, few would be confused or worried about the apparent contradiction of giving up everything – including true love for another – for the sake of success in the theater and cinema.What makes this memorable for me is that it is the earliest film I know of that dissects the nature of the acting profession from an insider's perspective. I know that A Star is Born (and spin-offs) has been made five or six times since 1937; and, there's been All About Eve (1950), my all-time favorite self-referential psychodrama about acting, Dangerous (1935) another Bette Davis shriller, The Star (1952) ditto, and others like The Day of the Locust (1975), a true horror about Hollywood, and The Player (1992) which took a more holistic view of Tinsel Town.Morning Glory is special, not only because it preceded all the others, but also because it gave Katharine Hepburn her first Oscar.The story is simple: young Eva Lovelace (Hepburn) keeps knocking on the door to glory until a professional breakup - between a big producer, Lewis Easton (Adolphe Menjou) and his leading lady, Rita Vernon (Mary Duncan) - gives her the chance to show her stuff on the stage in a leading role. That comes about, however, because the playwright, Joseph Sheridan (Douglas Fairbanks Jnr), uses her as an understudy for the part. Why? Because he's grown to love her… The story revolves around those three great actors; Mary Duncan and C. Aubrey Smith provide excellent support in fine character roles, the latter, however, again typecast as Bob Hedges, the avuncular and helpful rich white knight who provides continuous assistance to Lovelace.Sheridan's play, with Lovelace as lead, is a winner of course; in winning, however, he loses the woman he loves to the art of acting.So the message of this film is clear: better to be a morning glory for a brief time perhaps than mourning glory missed. One can only wonder what the actors, acting as actors, think about such stories so close to their psyches – and their fears. For more on that, see Inland Empire (2007), another tortuous masterpiece on that very topic, and from horror meister David Lynch.But, if you can, see this one as a fine piece of Hollywood history, if not for Hepburn and a dashing Fairbanks Jr. Recommended for all.