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Marjorie Morningstar by Irving Rapper
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Product detailsActor: Claire Trevor, Everett Sloane, Gene Kelly, Martin Milner, Natalie Wood Director: Irving Rapper Edition: VHS Tape Audio: English (Original Language), Analog Format: Color, NTSC, Original recording reissued Running Time: 123 minutes Release Date: 1998-08-18 Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated) Publisher: Republic Pictures Studio: Republic Pictures
VHS Movie Reviews of Marjorie MorningstarMovie Review: Marjorie Morningstar Summary: 5 StarsIn my opinion one of the better movies of the period (1957). For anyone who remembers that period and in particular, the Catskill mountains of NY state during that period, this movie is a must have.
Gene Kelly was a fantastic dancer and actor and his leading lady, Natalie Wood played a very convincing part. Nostalgia at it's best.
My purchase was delivered on time as promised, in fact it arrived a couple of days early. I am very pleased with the service I received....as usual
Walter D. Pereira
Movie Review: Love it Summary: 5 StarsSearch high and low to find Majorie Morningstar.
Happy to have found it for a great price
Movie Review: Seriously Dated Summary: 2 StarsAlthough the performers are competent and pleasing, this film is seriously dated. Wouk's novel was powerful for its honest portrayal of its Jewish milieu, something the film does not understand or appreciate. The ending is particularly dated and trivial. Wouk's narrative should have been followed.
Movie Review: Natalie Wood at nineteen Summary: 3 StarsPretty Marjorie Morganstern, a good Jewish girl, gets her chance to work with a summer-stock company at the summer camp where she is a counselor on her first job. She meets older, charismatic Noel Airman, the summer-stock director that is nearing the end of an always promising career. Marjorie encourages Noel to pursue his theatrical dreams and when he fails, he leaves Marjorie with a broken heart. Noel does the only thing that makes him feel success and adoration and Marjorie comes to terms that her love affair with Noel was the greatest love of her life. I don't want to give away the ending, but get your tissues ready.
Movie Review: "I'm saddled, bridled, bitted, and tamed. Children ride me in Central Park for a dime." Unintended Hilarity! Summary: 5 Stars"Sometimes I think I can act," Natalie Wood tells pal Carolyn Jones, "and other times I feel I don't have any talent at all." We can commiserate since, watching Wood struggling to play a Jewish teen who dreams of being a great theater actress, we feel the same way as her.
The two have summer resort jobs at South Wind -- named, no doubt, after all the hot air expelled by forty-six-year-old Gene Kelly as he tries to pass himself off as a thirty-three-year-old "genius." Watching him direct dancers ("Be a cat!" Kelly suggests), Jones warns Wood, "Careful, he affects young girls the way whiskey hits an Indian."
When Wood's mother Claire Trevor sends uncle Ed Wynn to keep an eye on her, Wood cracks, "You'd think mother was guarding Fort Knox." Jones says that losing one's virginity is "not a fate worse than death. Take a poll of your graduating class ten years from now, and see how many of them clinched the deal without giving away a few free samples."
Kelly would prefer not to bother, but he's happy to talk (and talk) about why. "I've no time for `Shirley,' " he tells Wood. " `Shirley' is a trade name for the respectable middle-class girl who likes to play at being worldly. It's monogrammed all over you the way parents sew camp initials on a child: `Hands Off, Decent Girl, Object: Matrimony.' " Wood eventually gets a word in -- "You think I'm just a stupid kid with a crush on you?" -- sending Kelly off again. " `Shirley' only hugs and paws on a rigidly graduated scale. We're an error in matchmaking. You're on a course charted by 5,000 years of Moses and his Ten Commandments. I'm a renegade."
We have only to hear Kelly croon the swoony song he's supposedly written, "A Very Special Love," or watch the unintentionally hilarious routine he choreographs for Wood to perform, a be-boppin' "Fiesta Rock," to see that Kelly's about as renegade as this expensive by-the-numbers soap straight off the studio assembly line. After that dance, Trevor opines, "Cigarettes, beer, all grown up!" but Wood gets it right when she says, "We may as well face it, I've gone to the dogs."
Though Kelly utters those words that every girl dreams of hearing -- "Marjorie, you are your mother" -- he can't help changing for her true love. "You've broken me," he claims, "I'm saddled, bridled, bitted, and tamed. Children ride me in Central Park for a dime." But when Kelly, "the Shakespeare of advertising," goes on a week-long bender with goodtime gal Ruta Lee, we know Wood's romance is doomed. Not, however, till Kelly's written a flop Broadway musical till Wood's chased him through Europe, till they both again return to South Wind where it all began. Sadder, wiser, at fadeout. Wood looks determined to find better scripts.
Summary of Marjorie MorningstarNatalie Wood and Gene Kelly make a cute (if not exactly convincing) couple in this Hollywood soap-opera version of Herman Wouk's coming-of-age romance. French/Russian Natalie Wood is decidedly non-ethnic as Marjorie Morgenstern, the starry-eyed Jewish college girl who falls in love with summer resort small-timer Gene Kelly (who never quite sells himself as a show-biz dreamer with limited talent). A stolid mix of modern, clear-eyed romance and old-fashioned melodrama, it nonetheless manages to slip in some frank (for 1958) discussions of sex and the single girl and sketch out an intriguing portrait of Jewish life in New York's upper crust between the romantic complications. Everett Sloane and Claire Trevor are excellent as Marjorie's success-obsessed parents, pre-Adam 12 Martin (Marty) Milner offers his boy-next-door charm as the former flunky turned Broadway success, and Ed Wynn is delightful as her eccentric uncle. --Sean Axmaker
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