Marjorie Morningstar (1958) starring Gene Kelly and Natalie Wood

Gene Kelly and Natalie Wood in a publicity still for "Marjorie Morningstar" (1958) directed by Irving Rapper


Marjorie Morningstar (1958) starring Gene Kelly, Natalie Wood, Carolyn Jones, Claire Trevor, etc.

Marjorie Morningstar is a 1955 novel by Herman Wouk, about a woman who wants to become an actress. In 1958, the book was made into a Hollywood feature movie starring Natalie Wood, also titled Marjorie Morningstar.

While working as a counselor at a summer camp, college-student Marjorie Morgenstern (Natalie Wood) falls for 32-year-old Noel Airman (Gene Kelly), a would-be dramatist working at a nearby summer theater. Like Marjorie, he is an upper-middle-class New York Jew (born 'Ehrman'), but has fallen away from his roots, and Marjorie's parents object among other things to his lack of a suitable profession, such as medicine or law. Noel himself warns Marjorie repeatedly that she's much too naive and conventional for him, but they nonetheless fall in love.

As they pursue an on-again-off-again relationship, Marjorie completes her studies at Hunter College, and works to establish an acting career, while Noel first leaves the theater for a job with an advertising agency, but later completes a musical he'd started writing before he and Marjorie had first met. Meanwhile, their relationship deepens (though, consistent with '50s Hollywood mores, the more full-fledged sexuality in their relationship is never explicitly communicated). They plan to marry, but after the musical's critical failure on Broadway, Noel runs away. Marjorie finally tracks him down at the summer theater where they first met.