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In honour of Ginger Rogers' 105th birthday, which is tomorrow, this week on «Film Friday» I thought I would bring you one of my favourite films of hers. This is also the picture that gave her the only Academy Award for Best Actress of her career. Directed by Sam Wood, Kitty Foyle (1940) opens with Kitty Foyle (Ginger Rogers), a cosmetic saleswoman in a New York boutique owned by Delphine Detaille (Odette Myrtil), trying to decide whether she should marry Dr. Mark Eisen (James Craig) and be respectable, or sail away with the already-married Wyn Strafford (Dennis Morgan), whom she has loved for many years and has just re-entered her life. As she wrestles with her conscience, Kitty thinks back to her youth in Philadelphia, where she lived with her Irish father, Tom (Ernest Cossart). Teenage Kitty is obsessed with the city's elite «Main Liners» and dreams of marrying a rich man, despite her father's warnings against getting carried away with her fantasies.   Ginger Rogers, Ja...

Directed by Michael Curtiz, Captains of the Clouds (1942) follows a group of established bush pilots — Johnny Dutton (Dennis Morgan), «Tiny» Murphy (Alan Hale), «Blimp» Lebec (George Tobias) and «Scrounger» Harris (Reginald Gardiner) — who find that a new pilot, Brian MacLean (James Cagney), has been stealing their jobs. While getting out of his plane one day, Brian slips and injures his head. Realizing how serious the injury is, Johnny flies to nearest town under risky conditions to fetch a doctor for Brian. Grateful for Johnny's heroic actions, Brian helps him earn enough money to fund his own airline. Brian warns Johnny that if he marries his gold-digging girlfriend, Emily (Brenda Marshall), he will not have the money for long, but Johnny angrily strikes out at him. Determined to save Johnny from a life of misery, Brian decides to marry Emily himself. Learning that Emily has married Brian, Johnny runs off to join the Royal Canadian Air Force, while Brian, Tiny, Blimp and Scro...

Directed by Peter Godfrey, Christmas in Connecticut (1945) centers on Elizabeth Lane (Barbara Stanwyck), a magazine writer whose articles about her daily life as a wife and mother living in a Connecticut farm are admired by housewives across the country. As a publicity stunt for the magazine, her boss, Alexander Yardley (Syndey Greenstreet), arranges for returning war hero Jefferson Jones (Dennis Morgan) to spend Christmas at the Lanes' farm, and invites himself along for the festivities. There is just one problem: unknown to Yardley, Elizabeth is a single woman living in New York, the recipes she uses for her column are given to her by local chef Felix Bassenak (S. Z. Sakall), and the farm she writes about belongs to her boyfriend, John Sloane (Reginald Gardiner). To save her job, Elizabeth accepts John's marriage proposal, even though she does not love him. Learning that John owns a Connecticut farm, Elizabeth's editor, Dudley Beecham (Robert Shayne) suggests that they...