In 1940, Hollywood offered audiences the quintessential White Collar Girl: Ginger Rogers as Kitty Foyle

Based on Christopher Morley's best-selling1939 novel of the same name-- advertised as "The Natural History of a Woman"-- the film laid claim to a special kind of realism based on Life magazine's "photographic research" into "the habits and habitat of an important species of American woman, the White Collar Girl."