Stage Door

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Audience Member Director Gregory LaCava apparently liked to hit the bottle and so had a spotty career, but Stage Door is his masterpiece. Not in some personal, auteurist way, but in having achieved an almost ideal example of Depression-era movie entertainment. Its venue is the Footlights Club, a theatrical boarding house near Broadway, where lamb stew and broken dreams are the nightly staples. Among the gals with stiletto tongues but hearts of gold are Lucille Ball, Eve Arden, Ann Miller, Gail Patrick and formidable Constance Collier ("Could you see an older woman in the part?"). But the movie centers on the rivalry between roommates Katherine Hepburn, as a spoiled rich kid who tries acting as a lark, and Ginger Rogers, as a plucky thespian waiting for her break. Believe it or no, those diametrical opposites (aristocratic, ethereal Kate and tough, pragmatic Ginger) work like a dream together. The script negotiates a delicate path between pathos and bathos, and somehow keeps its balance, even when one of the troupers loses her grip on reality and...Well, enough said. Best of all: this is the movie in which Hepburn gets to elocute: "The calla lilies are in bloom again...." Sheerest heaven. Rated 4.5/5 Stars •  Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 02/08/23 Full Review Audience Member Not mentioned enough for the classic it is. Adore Katherine Hepburn in everything I've ever seen her in but this might be the best of them all. The dialogue in particular is so fast and so sharp, while the film in general is charming, funny and even very emotional towards the end. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 01/22/23 Full Review william d The wisecracks are not funny and the story of Hepburn's character's rise to stardom is implausible. Still, I enjoyed the movie. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 03/31/23 Full Review ionut m Sadly, not much has changed in the world of theater since this film was made, that why it's easy for it to stand the test of time. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 03/31/23 Full Review steve d In a film of legends it is Andrea Leeds who steels the show. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 03/30/23 Full Review Audience Member Adaptations of Edna Ferber's plays and novels have generally rubbed me up the wrong way as Giant (1956) and Cimarron (1931) touch on important issues like racism and feminism and then choose to abandon them to present overwrought love triangles or support the idea of an all knowing alpha male. Fortunately this film makes significant deviations from her play which attempts to support the idea that theater is superior to films and presents the casting couch as a necessary evil. This film becomes a surprisingly prescient documentation of the negative effect that sexual harassment can have on young women while supporting the idea of women helping one another and pursuing their professional goals in favor of a life as a housewife or socialite. At the theatrical boarding house "The Footlights Club" actresses struggle to survive as they are all out of work due to the limited positions available and rely on the money of wealthy men eager to trade sexual favors for furs, jewelry and expensive dinners. One of the aspiring performers who uses these men to support herself is the plucky Jean Maitland, Ginger Rogers, who immediately clashes with the upper class Terry Randall, Katharine Hepburn, when the new boarder is assigned to live with her. Randall has little experience and is going against the wishes of her father Henry Sims, Samuel S. Hinds, by becoming an actress but wins the favor of her fellow boarders when she calls out the womanizing, manipulative talent agent Anthony Powell, Adolphe Menjou. Powell has been toying with the affections of various actresses including Maitland but has to swallow his pride when Sims comes to him offering money to have Randall star in a new play with the hope that she will be humiliated and abandon her career ambitions. Meanwhile the emotionally fragile Kay Hamilton, Andrea Leeds, considers committing suicide while she struggles to obtain roles and earn enough money to pay for food and board. The film combines an Altman-esque slice of life drama with a bitchy All About Eve (1950) style satire on show business and somehow makes it work. We hear snippets of various conversations carrying on between the boarders as they discuss the difficulties they go through trying to get work and the sexual harassment they endure from the men they go out with. There is humor in these interactions as the women are unusually frank in their confessions for a film from this time period and their dialogue sounds naturalistic with all of the shrieks and giggles uttered by a regular twenty something girl around her friends. Where the film really digs into dark commentary is in scenes where we hear Maitland referencing the fact that men she goes out for dinner with force themselves on her afterwards and hearing about the tactics Powell uses to ensnare women in his trap. There is a straightforwardness to the way that Maitland accepts this abuse as a fact of life and this reinforces the sadness of the situation that women attempting to pursue careers during this time stepped into. Powell is also seen as the predator he is as the film does not let him off the hook for leveraging his power over women and even mocks him in all his disgusting behavior as he even employs a fake wife and son to convince women to sleep with him. The joy of the film is also in the performances as some truly iconic actresses work at the height of their powers in this film as Hepburn and Rogers are expectedly delightful while Eve Arden and Leeds steal scenes in the background. One of the smartest things that the film does is play on Hepburn's reputation as a dislikable figure who looks down her nose at everybody in show business while being relatively inexperienced herself. Her opening scenes make you hate her as she references the "Inferior upbringing" of Rogers when she first meets her and displays a disgust for anything that she sees as below her. There is of course the obligatory scene in this film where Hepburn is humbled and she does a fantastic job at playing a terrible, wooden actress but unlike The Philadelphia Story (1940) and Woman of the Year (1942) her humbling allows her to develop as a person and an actress. In other films she has starred in this humbling served as a sort of masochistic fantasy for the male audience members who hated her in all of her confidence and self sufficiency. She does not submit to any man in this film and instead decides to train in order to become better at her job and befriend the women who have supported her. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/01/23 Full Review Read all reviews

Stage Door

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