YESTERDAY’S JOYS OF RESEARCH concluded with citing my youthful weekly fix of Double-Crostic puzzles. Caitlin Lovinger describes this word game in “Variety: Acrostic,” The New York Times, July 17, 2020. Kindly enough, she even provides an example.
Image from The New York Times.
Though Daughter Suz and I have a long streak of Sunday New York Times crosswords to our credit, it was only in reading Lovinger’s article that I realized my subscription would have given me access to Double-Crostics. Alas, they discontinued them two years ago.
Kitty Foyle, Novel and Movie. Wikipedia notes, “Kitty Foyle is a 1939 American novel by Christopher Morley. A bestseller in 1939 and 1940, it was adapted as a popular 1940 film, and was republished during World War II as an Armed Services Edition.”
Kitty Foyle, by Christopher Morley, Grosset & Dunlap, 1939.
Wikipedia continues, “The novel [and film] tells of a white-collar girl who falls in love with a young socialite, despite the objections of his family…. The story is told by Kitty in the first person. A sociologist suggests that ‘Kitty, in her observations of the mores and behavior patterns of the upper class acts as the anthropological alter ego of Morley, viewing the upper class from the outside.”
Of the film, Wikipedia recounts it’s “a 1940 drama… starring Ginger Rogers, Dennis Morgan, and James Craig, based on Christopher Morley’s 1939 bestseller Kitty Foyle. Rogers won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of the title character, and the dress she wore in the film became known as a Kitty Foyle dress.”
Ginger Rogers made the cover of Life as Kitty Foyle, 1940.
A Personal Note: I’m told my mom liked Dennis Morgan.
Another Christopher Morley. In my Googling “Christopher Morley,” Google’s first hit was Christopher Morley (actor). Wikipedia describes “Christopher Jarman Morley (July 22, 1951–November 2, 2023) was an American actor and female impersonator. He specialized in cross-dressing roles in television and film, most notably in Freebie and the Bean (1974) and General Hospital (1980). In the latter he portrayed Sally Armitage, owner of a bar and friend of principal character Laura. “The role was played straight,” Wikipedia notes, with an evolving plot every bit as complex as Kitty Foyle’s.
Research. I conclude with “my” Christopher Morley’s posthumous message to us all: “Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of a unanimity.”
I would add, “research, every day, something no one else is researching.” ds
© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2025