wes-connors On her summer vacation, restless college beauty Natalie Wood (as Marjorie Morgenstern) gets a job at a New York camp and resort area; there, she falls in love with attractive older man Gene Kelly (as Noel Airman). Her parents do not approve of the theatrical Mr. Kelly, preferring that Ms. Wood marry a more respectable doctor or lawyer. Kelly's younger assistant, playwright Martin Milner (as Wally) pines for Wood, but she only has eyes for Kelly. Wood and Kelly are all too obviously unsuccessful, in the lead roles. Others in the cast, like supportive Carolyn Jones (as Marsha) help keep it from being a total loss. And, the bit players are fun to spot. The story's moral seems to waver uncomfortably between "Don't reach for the stars" and "There's no place like home." **** Marjorie Morningstar (4/24/58) Irving Rapper ~ Natalie Wood, Gene Kelly, Carolyn Jones

jotix100 Herman Wouk's "Marjorie Morningstar", a book published in 1955, became an immediate bestseller. The book about a newly rich Jewish family from the Bronx, now living comfortably on Central Park West, was the kind of novel that was popular at the time. Its appeal was chiefly about the sexual awakening of a young woman who at first rebels against the choices made for her by her ambitious mother, but ultimately ends up married to a prosperous man from Westchester, leaving her dreams and ambitions behind. The movie version changes the ending, as Marjorie had finally come to her senses about her infatuation with Noel Airman and she is seen boarding the bus where a patient Wally Wronkin, the man who really loved her is also riding.The film version by Everett Freeman took some liberties, perhaps to make it more appealing to a younger movie going public. The end result seems to this humble commentator a cop out when all is said and done. What comes out on the big screen seems false from beginning to end. Perhaps reading the novel would be more satisfying because the original story is left to one's imagination.Part of the problem with the film was the casting of Gene Kelly, who was 46 at the time, against a radiant and youthful Natalie Wood. Miss Wood, who was starting to appear in films as a young woman. Ms Wood had grown up in the eyes of viewers of films of the late 40s and early fifties where she was seen playing small girls' roles. She appears not as confident for a role that perhaps demanded a more convincing actress. It didn't help either that she and Mr. Kelly show almost no chemistry in their scenes together.Of course, "Marjorie Morningstar" had its following at the time it came out. Unfortunately, this film hasn't aged well. It feels false at times and at its most dramatic, it feels empty. The supporting cast was good, especially Claire Trevor, Everett Sloane and Ed Wynn, who are seen as the parents and uncle of the young heroine. Martin Milner, Martin Balsam and especially Carolyn Jones make a good impression.Irving Rapper, who had done better in previous movies, directed without breaking new ground. Perhaps the ultimate culprit lays in the screen treatment the film received.

dencar_1 This is one of those movies to see over and over for certain memorable scenes, the hauntingly beautiful piece, A VERY SPECIAL LOVE, and for the novelty of watching Gene Kelly in a strictly dramatic role. But as for the treatment the film gives to the Herman Wouk novel, MARJORIE MORNINGSTAR experiences the usual celluloid plastic surgery and comes out an approximation of the 1950's best seller. For central to Wouk's fiction is the New York Jewish community and its effect on a young woman struggling with her own sexual identity. In short, what we get in the film is Natalie Wood, nascent and alluring, but resembling more a Beverly Hills rich girl than a Jewish American Princess. MORNINGSTAR is undoubtedly Natalie Wood's maiden flight as a leading lady. REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE may have brought her to the public's attention, but MORNINGSTAR was the movie that launched her as a star and sent her career skyrocketing. The obvious parallel between the coming of age of Marjorie in the film and Natalie Wood as a leading lady cannot be ignored. Noel Airman (Gene Kelly) is a shiftless romantic forever working on his musical PRINCESS JONES. He's more or less a drifter and supports himself in summertime by working as a dramatic director at a Jewish summertime resort in the Adirondacks where young girls are drawn to him like moths. It is there that he meets a very young and impressionable Marjorie. Her obsession with him begins immediately and the more irresponsible Airman behaves, the more deeply she is drawn into him. The Marjorie--Noel relationship is the movie's centerpiece as Marjorie simply refuses to see Airman as a deadbeat and supports his pipe dreams about a Broadway production. She even influences her best friend (Carolyn Jones) to get her boyfriend, well-connected Jesse White, to put financial backing together to produce Airman's play. The production flops, of course, because it's so romantically saccharine and Kelly finally realizes he's going nowhere. Taking to drink, he escapes to Europe and heartbroken Marjorie goes off after him. Natalie Wood's performance as Marjorie Morningstar is superior and is performed with the same passion characteristic of almost every role she ever tackled. However, Kelly's performance as Noel Airman is, for the most part, superficial. It wasn't his first dramatic role by a long shot, for Kelly was always a fine actor in his own right and showed his talents in many of his musicals such as COVER GIRL and AN American IN Paris, but MARJORIE MORNINGSTAR was his first non-dancing dramatic effort. Most of the others in the cast, with the exception of Carolyn Jones, Marjorie's common-sense best friend, come off as stereotypes. Ed Wynn hovers around Wood as the wise Uncle Sampson sprinkling common sense over Marjorie's romantic dizziness. Claire Trevor and Everette Sloan are Marjorie's uppity, bigoted Jewish parents who will tolerate nothing less than a wealthy husband for their daughter. Marty Balsam is a complete figurine playing Marjorie's wimpy suitor. But the most obtuse character in the film is Wally (Mary Milner), the struggling playwright who's been in love with Marjorie forever. Milner is portrayed as a Marjorie's shoulder to lean on lurking behind the scenes for years. Then in the bat of an eye, he's suddenly transformed into a successful Broadway playwright! The transition is laughable.In the end, Marjorie matures and finally seees Noel as a self-destructive dreamer. She visits the old summer camp on the Adirondacks for one last time and looks on as Noel draws impressionable young girls into his web all over again. The sequence itself is very effective; however, the movie's very last scene in which Marjorie boards a bus and discovers a smiling Wally behind her in the rear view mirror now ready to step into her life big time is a bit much.MORNINGSTAR works if you don't want to hold the script up to the light and just enjoy Wood and Kelly in a film. The theme song, A VERY SPECIAL LOVE, casts the appropriate mood over the summer camp atmosphere and, if nothing else, strikes a cord in all of us who ever had a nostalgic vacation romance.Dennis Caracciolo

vsdennis Marjorie Morningstar was one of the most beautiful, poignant, heart-wrenching novels I've ever read. Beautiful Marjorie, coming of age in New York City, surrounded by her old-fashioned, traditional Jewish family but enamored of glamor and Broadway. The novel explores her vulnerability and sweetness, as well as her thoughtlessness and selfishness as her family's spoiled, favorite child.Noel Airman is the guy we all fell in love with when we were 20 -- a dreamer, without the ability (as he acknowledges himself in a rare moment of honesty) to finish anything he starts, unless it involves alcohol or seduction.Spoiler alert -- if you haven't read the novel, it ends entirely differently from the movie, and it is the ending that makes it all strike home -- Marjorie has indeed become a "Shirley," a middle-class wife and mother, living a tedious, mundane life in New Rochelle, just as Noel had predicted. The horrible ending of the movie, with Wally Wronken "rescuing" Marjorie and being a total doormat, completely destroys the message and meaning of the novel -- that we all have dreams, and we all (as Marsha said), settle for what we can get and try to figure out how to be happy with it, rather than living with bitterness and regret for "what might have been."And the casting....Yuck! I absolutely adore Gene Kelly, but was a terrible choice for Noel Airman. Natalie Wood is gorgeous, and was okay as Marjorie - she communicated the love-bordering-on-obsession that we feel at that age. The tragedies of the other characters - Wally, Uncle Samson, Marjorie's parents -- all go comparatively unaddressed in the movie.It wasn't intended to be a happily-ever-after story, the way the movie ended. It was intended to be a heart-breaking coming of age story. I'll stick with the book -- and if you love Herman Wouk as I do, try "The Caine Mutiny" if you want to see one of his books translated to the screen as it should have been.