Ginger in the Morning

I was hoping to watch a love story (as the tagline of the movie suggests), but....most of the screen time is spent in the silly interactions between the Markham character and his drunken friend. Although the latter is quite funny in the first scene where he appears, then his presence becomes tiresome and annoying, as well as the character of his wife. However, the movie is not too terrible thanks to Spacek's performance, and the ending scene was great and moving.

This is yet another obscure movie that I stumbled into on Prime Video. It's one of Sissy Spacek's earliest roles (I'm guessing she made this before her breakthrough role in Badlands) playing an aspiring poet and singer who hitchhikes through the southwest. She's picked up by a divorced businessman and after they spend the night at his place, his old army pal unexpectedly shows up. There's more but I'll just say that while the tone is uneven (while I recognized what scenes and lines were supposed to get laughs, I didn't find myself laughing), it's still pretty interesting as a time capsule of the early '70s and Ms. Spacek does write and sing some pretty good songs for the soundtrack. So on that note, give Ginger in the Morning a look.

Joe Maroney (Monte Markham), divorced for three months, is driving in New Mexico from Albuquerque to his home in Santa Fe when he picks up a hitchhiking free spirit, Ginger Brown, played by Sissy Spacek, and the two subsequently become romantically absorbed with each other as New Year's Eve nears, whereupon Joe's former Army comrade Charley (Mark Miller) and, coincidentally, Charley's former wife Sugar (Susan Oliver) join them with many complications as the product. Hoydenish Spacek is appealing and brings life to scriptor/producer Miller's lines, but bland Markham's metabolic rate seems to be constant throughout and Oliver, a talented actress, is given loathsome dialogue and exaggerates it, without doubt to her satisfaction, while the direction is listless and the screenplay lacks imagination, with only Spacek's reactions, although not always precisely matching her circumstances, shining through this frippery.

I was definitely curious to check out Ginger in the Morning when I randomly stumbled upon it. The cast alone makes it worth a look. Unfortunately, the dated and uninspired dialogue, weak script, and unimaginative direction all conspire to deliver this very disappointing little film. It is kind of interesting as a snapshot of the first half of the 70's. Sissy Spacek does write and perform many of the songs throughout the film, which is another plus. The story is just one cliche after another and it's just never able to gather momentum. Sorry to everyone who worked on Ginger in the Morning but I just cannot recommend it, unless maybe for those Sissy Spacek fans out there, you might enjoy it.

Cutesy drama, almost unendurably dated--and with clichéd characters and dialogue to boot--features a young Sissy Spacek as a health-conscious, free-spirited woman, a hippie folk singer hitchhiking with her guitar across the country; she gets a ride from Monte Markham, a just-divorced businessman who's been advised to find himself a new girl to forget the old one. There are some surprisingly fine shots by cinematographer William K. Jurgensen of Spacek thumbing it on the road, but her relationship with Markham is pure cookie-cutter. Second-feature caught Spacek just before her career was about to take off, though this is one title she'd probably like to erase from her resume. Her acting is likable enough, but her character Ginger is nothing more than a lighter version of the hitchhiker Laurie Heineman played in "Save the Tiger"--in other words, a refugee from a TV sitcom or movie-of-the-week. *1/2 from ****