Best Actress: Katharine Hepburn I

We've all gotta start somewhere, right? 

via ritahayworrth

When you compare Morning Glory against, say, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, The Lion in Winter or On Golden Pond (the other films that garnered Katharine Hepburn Oscars), it may not be the strongest of the bunch, but it's pretty foundational to who Katharine Hepburn was as an actress.

In Morning Glory, Katharine plays Eva Lovelace, a starving young actress, hungry for her shot at stardom, who doesn't know how to quit. When she's brought in to replace an aging, alcoholic actress who quits a Broadway play on opening night, everyone who doubted her suddenly sees her for the star she's about to become. 

There's also a romantic subplot where Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. plays the playwright secretly in love with Eva and Adolphe Menjou plays the producer reluctant to cast her; after a party at his house, Eva gets drunk and assumes she's in a relationship with her, even though he then spends months ignoring her. This part doesn't really go anywhere, but it's interesting to see how Katharine plays it as both totally disinterested and totally consumed by a chance at stardom.

Morning Glory may be short on plot and runtime (clocking in at a robust 70ish minutes) but Katharine eats up every second she's on screen. This was her third film, after A Bill of Divorcement (1932) and Christopher Strong (1933), but she's already got a commanding screen presence. You actively seek her out in scenes, watching as she switches between fast-talking ingenue and drunken Shakespearean enthusiast. 

Katharine doesn't really devote a lot of time to Morning Glory in her memoir Me, mostly just sharing jotted thoughts about the speedy production schedule (it was filmed in something like 17 days) and how there was a whole costumed Shakespeare scene between her and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. that got canned. 

When you consider how her career evolved after this—some big hits followed this followed by some big swings and misses, leading her to be called box office poison and disappearing back to the theatre before a comeback in the '40s—you can see the seeds of that feisty, fast-talking screen legend being planted in Morning Glory. 

Katharine was nominated against May Robson (Lady for a Day) and Diana Wynyard, who starred in that year's Best Picture, Cavalcade. I've only seen Cavalcade out of these two movies and honestly, what a snore. [Ed note: I've since seen Lady for a Day and I still think I would've voted for Katharine. — February 17, 2025]

Perhaps the biggest thing to consider about Katharine and her relationship with the Oscars is that she's the only woman to have won four times and that she never once showed up in person to collect her prize. She decided against attending for Morning Glory and then vowed that she would never attend the Oscars; I think I've read how she regretted this decision later on but was stubborn enough to not go back on her word. You gotta respect it, I guess! 

DID I LIKE MORNING GLORY? Yes, Katharine's performance is quite strong in this and it's a great showcase for her work, especially when you consider how new she was to Hollywood at the time. The seeds were planted, though they'd take another three decades to bloom again! 
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Did you like Morning Glory? What are your thoughts on Katharine Hepburn's first Oscar win?

Keep up with all my Rewatching the Best Actresses posts here!