Watch Marjorie Morningstar For Free

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

I have reviewed well over 13,000 films here on IMDb. Because of that, I have noticed that with most films there is a certain sameness and predictability about them. And, in light of this, I was very pleasantly surprised by "Marjorie Morningstar"--a truly unique and lovely film from start to finish.Natalie Wood plays Marjorie Morganstern--a very impressionable 18 year-old who goes off to work at a summer camp. There she meets an older man (while the character was supposed to be 32, Gene Kelly was 46 at the time) who seems very talented and highly attractive. It's no surprise she falls for him, but all he really wants, at first, is to score with her. For 1958, the film is very blunt about this and even uses the word 'sex'--very, very unusual for its time. However, she wants more. When her parents find out about him, her mother is particularly worried--at 32, Noel (Kelly) should be more than just a summer camp counselor. As far as Marjorie is concerned, however, Noel is a genius--and will one day be a great playwright. It's clearly a case of a young girl seeing a man as she HOPES he'll be versus who he really is. What's next? See the film.The film has many strong things going for it other than the uniqueness of the plot. For Kelly, it's a wonderful opportunity to get away from his pretty-boy song and dance persona and show some depth. And, for Wood, it's one of her first non-child roles where she is a serious leading lady. Apart from their nice work as well as some strong support from Ed Wynn and Martin Milner, the film has a gorgeous musical score--very haunting and sweet. Overall, this is a lovely film--- with so much more going for it.UPDATE: I just saw a rerun of an old fifties TV show "Four Star Playhouse" and noticed that "Breakfast in Bed" actually had a lot in common with the film. However, while the film was hard-edged and rather sad, the show was more comedic...and less interesting.

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

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.

I recently saw this movie after adoring Gene Kelly's musicals since I was a kid. It is quite a departure of what I'm used to seeing him in, but still wonderful. This is pretty standard fare for Natalie Wood, but it is a rare treat to see Gene Kelly in a dramatic role. After reading his biography, it is a sad irony that his character somewhat mirrored what was happening in Gene Kelly's personal life, in that his days of glory were something of the past. This is not the Gene Kelly you know, but if you want to see him in something different, take the phone off the hook, grab a box of Kleenex and sit down with Marjorie Morningstar. It will stay with you.