page_title: Kitty Foyle (film)
section_title: Reception
hierarchical_section_title: Kitty Foyle (film) / Reception
caption_attribution_description: English: Ginger Rogers in Kitty Foyle - trailer (cropped screenshot)
context_page_description: Kitty Foyle, subtitled The Natural History of a Woman, is a 1940 film starring Ginger Rogers, Dennis Morgan, and James Craig, which is based on Christopher Morley's 1939 bestseller also titled Kitty Foyle. Ginger Rogers won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of Kitty Foyle, and the dress she wore in the film became a new dress style, known as a Kitty Foyle dress.
context_section_description: Kitty Foyle was RKO's top film for 1940, earning a profit of $869,000.
  Reviews from critics were generally positive. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times expressed disappointment that the story had been softened from the novel due to Production Code restrictions, but wrote of the protagonist that "Ginger Rogers plays her with as much forthright and appealing integrity as one can possibly expect."  Variety wrote "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. Several good comedy sequences interline the footage, deftly written and directed. Ginger Rogers provides strong dramatic portrayal in the title role." Film Daily called it "one of the most human pictures that has been produced in Hollywood in many, many moons ... a triumph for Ginger Rogers." Harrison's Reports wrote "Very good!...The story is simple but realistic; it has deep human appeal, a stirring romance, and delightful comedy bits; moreover, the performances are excellent."
  "I am inclined to think that it's Miss Ginger alone who makes 'Kitty Foyle' a better-than-average film and Kitty herself a proper model for those hundreds of thousands of young things who will now be adding a touch of white to their neckline," John Mosher wrote prophetically in The New Yorker. "Without Miss Ginger, it would be very easy to remember how often many of the scenes shown in this film have been seen before on the screen."
  Kitty Foyle was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role, and the Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay. Ginger Rogers won for Best Actress. It was also nominated for Best Director (Sam Wood), Best Sound (John Aalberg).
  In 1951, in a series of articles examining film adaptation, Lester Asheim notes that some films "reproduce the costume, housing, and appearance of the novel's prototypes without softening or heightening," but that Kitty Foyle shows the more typical "glamorizing" process of film adaptation:
  Kitty Foyle is typical, in every aspect of the adaptation, of the daydream character of film characterization. The glamorizing process carries through from the casting of Ginger Rogers and the Hollywood wardrobe provided her, to such added incidents as Wyn renting an entire nightclub for a night...While the film retains a scene or two of Kitty's crowded apartment shared with two other girls, such scenes are played for comedy and no attempt is made to convey the day-to-day monotony and routine of the working girl.
  Rogers' dress became a popular style, taking the name of the film.
caption: Ginger Rogers in Kitty Foyle trailer
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