Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Just perfect...

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

Spoilers. Observations. Opinions. Pleasant. Eva Lovelace wants to make it big in NYC. She admires pictures of stage stars of an earlier era, and wants to be one of them. She is small-town, broke and possesses none of the furry finery of some other female thespians. Their animal hides reflect trashy kept-women, and their haughty personalities engage in you're-too-fat insults. Today, we know little if anything about the actresses who portrayed those fur-adorned creatures, and they are not the star of this show. Hepburn is, she of the famous four Oscars. This Pre-Code outing shows Hepburn portraying Eva as ambitious, aspiring actress, knowing somehow in the back of her naive mind that she would have to endure the casting couch if she ever wanted to get anywhere. It was the Great Depression. Actors could get little work. Well-knowns were fortunate to get any kind of small character part. Witness the character of Hedges (C. Aubrey Smith), formerly a big star who is now forced to take anything that the producer can arrange. This was a reflection of real life during the early 1930s, where a large number of people in all types of professions were unemployed or sometimes-employed. The Great Depression must have killed a lot of stage actors' careers. A few went to Hollywood and were successful, perhaps a few stars and many bit-part character actors. The 1929 stock market crash killed many producers' careers, including a well-known FZ showman who passed away in 1932, broke and owing a ton of unpaid bills. I am a university degreed historian, actress, singer, dancer, stage makeup artist, film critic and movie reviewer.

Katharine Hepburn won the first of her record four Best Actress Academy Awards playing an actress; one from a small town, with stars in her eyes, that makes her way to New York to be a star.When first we see her, she is wistfully admiring the paintings hung on the walls of a theater lobby of Ethel Barrymore, Sarah Bernhardt etc.. She makes her way to the offices of a successful producer she'd heard of, Louis Easton (Adolphe Menjou). He is conspiring with his writer/friend Joseph Sheridan (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) to get Rita Vernon (Mary Duncan), an actress they work with, to do a mediocre play and ultimately star in one of Sheridan's plays.At the same time, in Easton's office reception area, Eva Lovelace (Hepburn) meets Hedges ( C. Aubrey Smith), a character actor who's also hoping to get a part in the play. Eva's "don't take no for an answer" appeal charms Hedges into "taking her on" as a student, for future payment, and her persistence also enables her to meet Easton and Sheridan.After an indeterminate amount of time has passed, we learn that Eva got a chance to play a small part in an Easton production, did not do well, and is now literally a "starving artist" living in the streets. After a successful opening night of a different Easton play, Hedges finds Eva in a small coffee shop and insists on helping her home. However, since he was on his way to a party at Easton's place, he takes her there instead.There she meets several famous people including another producer and a critic, while getting rather inebriated herself. Her true personality and her persistent outgoing nature lead her to perform a scene from Romeo and Juliet in front of the partygoers, causing Sheridan to fall for her. However, she passes out in Easton's lap and, later, spends the night with him. The next morning, not realizing Sheridan's infatuation with her, Easton tells him what happened and asks him to help him get rid of his one night stand.But, never fear, all will turn out O.K. in the end. A happy Hollywood ending using a "much duplicated since" plot vehicle will bring "us" what we all want.

When Katharine Hepburn first appeared on cinema screens, she was deemed a great new star, even winning an Oscar – for the film under review – almost instantly; however, before long, audiences had grown tired of her particular brand of histrionics and the actress was quickly declared "box-office poison"! She then wisely changed pace to screwball comedy with Howard Hawks' BRINGING UP BABY (1938), was subsequently handed a once-in-a-lifetime part on a silver platter (by playwright and personal friend Philip Barry, no less!) with "The Philadelphia Story" (superbly filmed by George Cukor in 1940), eventually became an institution when she teamed up (for 9 films and in real life) with Spencer Tracy, and ultimately grew into the "First Lady of Acting" – going on to win 3 more golden statuettes, a record, several years after her first! But, for what it is worth, it all started here...Truth be told, I have never been much of a fan of Hepburn's – though I concede that she has appeared in many a fine film throughout her lengthy career. Anyway, the role she plays here fits her like a glove i.e. that of an ambitious young actress rising to the top out of pure chance and sacrificing stardom for love (indeed, the title is a trade phrase for such meteoric members of the profession). Actually, the narrative is not quite as maudlin as it appears from this plot line – and, yet, the brief 74-minute running-time does not give it much of a chance either: we are told that Hepburn seeks acting lessons from aged luminary C. Aubrey Smith (but we never see them at it) and, crucially, her crowning achievement on the stage is only represented by the enthusiastic applause of the audience and the bows she takes at the curtain call!! That said, her thespian skills are displayed in a drunken party sequence at the home of her producer (Adolphe Menjou, with whom Hepburn would be reunited for another classic about the artistic vocation i.e. STAGE DOOR {1937}), where she dutifully quotes a couple of Shakespearean perennials ("Hamlet", "Romeo And Juliet")! For the record, director Sherman had himself been a prominent actor (his most notable appearance perhaps being that of the washed-up film director in Cukor's WHAT PRICE Hollywood? {1932}) who briefly made the switch behind the camera before his untimely death in 1934.The afore-mentioned STAGE DOOR was characterized by the bitchiness among the myriad female performers, here represented by the original temperamental (and blackmailing!) star of the production which ultimately gives understudy Hepburn her one shot at glory. The heroine (which, at a low ebb in her striving to make it on her own, is reduced to appearing in vaudeville!) is infatuated with the much older Menjou (who quashes her romantic illusions by stating that she now belongs to no man but to Broadway alone, a line which has since become a cliché in this type of film!); consequently, she overlooks the attentions of love-struck young author Douglas Fairbanks Jr. (playing a character named Joseph Sheridan!). In the film's closing moments, after finally confessing his feelings to her but ready to back down so as not to be in the way of her success, she is persuaded to make the right choice for herself (obviously, happiness) by the company's elderly personal assistant – herself a former leading light of the so-called "Great White Way" but whose single-minded pursuit of fame had rendered lonely and bitter! It must be pointed out that MORNING GLORY would be remade 25 years later by Sidney Lumet: renamed STAGE STRUCK, it was still good but inferior overall, and starred Susan Strasberg, Henry Fonda, Christopher Plummer and Herbert Marshall.

Morning Glory (1933) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Katharine Hepburn, in her third film, won her first Oscar for her performance Eva Lovelace, a young woman who dreams of being on Broadway. Everyone can tell she's very ambitious but no one is quite sure of her actual talent so she begins seeking advice from an elder actor (C. Aubrey Smith), a producer (Adolphe Menjou) and a playwrite (Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.). This is a mildly entertaining film that hasn't aged too well due to the rather stagey production but I guess that should be figured since this was based on a stage play. The movie features some very good performances and that includes the work of Hepburn, although I'll be honest and say I'm not sure the performance is actually Oscar-worthy. I think the best thing about her performance is that her character could be looked at at being incredibly annoying yet Hepburn never crosses that narrow line. Instead, she plays the character right down the middle to the point where we begin to feel and root for her. I'm pretty sure Hepburn won her Oscar for a single scene in the film, which just happens to be the highlight, and that's where she's "drunk" and decides to put on an audition even though no one asked for it. The supporting cast offers up some fine work as well with Menjou, Mary Duncan and Smith all suiting their roles just fine. Fairbanks is equally as impressive as Hepburn and nearly steals the film as the tortured playwrite. The movie doesn't seem to have enough meet to carry the rather brief 74-minute running time and I think the thing will mainly appeal to those wanting to see a legendary actress in her first award-winning role.