Stage Door

Rating:
Summary: Another great Ginger Rogers RKO movie of the 1930's.
Review: "Stage Door" was released for RKO Radio Pictures in 1937, and was directed by Gregory LaCava, the man who gave us the great "My Man Godfrey" just a year earlier. It has a number of top stars, such as Ginger Rogers (who is easily the Best actress ever). Then you have Kate Hepburn, Adolphe Menjou (Who appeared with Ginger again in 1942's "Roxie Hart"), and Lucille Ball in an early supporting role. There is also a very early appearance from Ann Miller. Oh, and this movie is NOT a musical.

The film is set at a place called the "Footlight's Club". It's a boardinghouse full of wannabe actresses, who are there, in New York, to try and get themselves parts in Broadway shows. It would seem to be a fairly realistic look. Its full of amusing lines, and a few dramatic scenes now and again aswell. It does not have a very happy ending, at all, I would like to add, which in an odd way, makes it great.

The film is really a comedy, mixed with drama. It's a decent story, and the acting is extremely good from all of the stars, and it is a very enjoyable little movie, that I could recommend. Definately worth picking up a copy to add to your film collection.

Rating:
Summary: "The calla lilies are in bloom again..."
Review: "The Philadelphia Story" brought Katharine Hepburn's film career back from the oblivion of being considered "Box Office Poison" by the nation's theater owners, but she was making a string of first-rate pictures right before that classic 1940 film beginning with 1937's "Stage Door." Her next two films were "Bringing Up Baby" and "Holiday," both with Cary Grant, and all four films have Hepburn playing a rich girl. In "Stage Door" she is Terry Randall, a debutante and wannabee actress who comes to New York City to become a Broadway star. She moves into the Footlights Club, where she joins a company of poor, starving young actresses who are all trying to make it in show businesses.

Terry ends up rooming with Jean Maitland (Ginger Rogers), an acid-tongued but softhearted dancer. The two trade barbs over everything from Terry's extensive wardrobe to Jean's affair with Anthony Powell (Adolphe Menjou), a Broadway producer who is working his way through an endless procession of young women. His next big production is "Enchanted April," and in order to get funding he is cornered into giving the inexperienced and patently inept Terry the starring role. The part should have gone to Kaye Hamilton (Andrea Leeds), a talented actress at the club who is broke and on the verge of starvation. When Terry gets the part Kaye is crushed.

Based on the play by Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman, the script by Morrie Ryskind and Anthony Veiler retained the basic plot line regarding Terry, Jean, and Kay, while provided some wonderful crackling dialogue amongst the girls (some of which was supposedly based on overhearing the actresses chatting during rehearsals). One of the prime attractions of the film today are the faces that would become familiar in the future, such as Lucille Ball, Eve Arden, and Ann Miller.

The show piece of the film is the play-within-the-play sequences, which was remodeled after a scene in the third act of "The Lake," the infamous Broadway play were Dorothy Parker got off the famous shot "Katharine Hepburn ran the gamut of emotions from A to B." This is where the famous line "The calla lilies are in bloom again" is uttered by Hepburn. In rehearsal she butchers the line and the scene in the most horrendous fashion. But then, in the grand tradition of opening nights in such films, Terry turns in a transcendent performance. The comparison of the two scenes is ample evidence of the range of Hepburn's acting talents at this point in her career.

Admittedly it seems strange that Terry could be so inept, but the transformation is rewarding, as is the payoff of the film. However, Hepburn's performance was apparently overshadowed by the realization that Ginger Rogers was also a pretty good comedienne as well as a great dancer. Still, it is the ensemble nature of the film, with all those wisecracking young girls trying to make it in the big bad city that is the prime attraction. "Stage Door" received Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Writing (Screenplay), Best Director for Gregory La Cava, and Best Supporting Actress for Leeds.

Rating:
Summary: Another great Ginger Rogers RKO movie of the 1930's.
Review: "Stage Door" was released for RKO Radio Pictures in 1937, and was directed by Gregory LaCava, the man who gave us the great "My Man Godfrey" just a year earlier. It has a number of top stars, such as Ginger Rogers (who is easily the Best actress ever). Then you have Kate Hepburn, Adolphe Menjou (Who appeared with Ginger again in 1942's "Roxie Hart"), and Lucille Ball in an early supporting role. There is also a very early appearance from Ann Miller. Oh, and this movie is NOT a musical.

The film is set at a place called the "Footlight's Club". It's a boardinghouse full of wannabe actresses, who are there, in New York, to try and get themselves parts in Broadway shows. It would seem to be a fairly realistic look. Its full of amusing lines, and a few dramatic scenes now and again aswell. It does not have a very happy ending, at all, I would like to add, which in an odd way, makes it great.

The film is really a comedy, mixed with drama. It's a decent story, and the acting is extremely good from all of the stars, and it is a very enjoyable little movie, that I could recommend. Definately worth picking up a copy to add to your film collection.

Rating:
Summary: PLEASE release on DVD
Review: I am always amazed that when great classic movies are discussed, this gem is always left out. I discovered this movie when I was about 12 years old. I had grown so tired of the classics with quietly demure women in leading roles. This movie features spunky, smart, beautiful women. Leading male? Who needs a leading male when you have Hepburn, Rogers and Ball? Just watching these three interact is priceless.

Rating:
Summary: CANT WAIT for the DVD!
Review: I am SO glad that they (whoever) have decided to release this movie on DVD! It is SO good. I saw it for the first time on late tv only a few months ago.. it had Ginger Rogers in it, so I decided to tape it. Thank gosh I did!!
A favourite part of mone is when she comes back from her date totally DRUNK!! It is hilarious! Her brilliant drunken style was totally convincing to me, and I was laughing so much, when I watched it again I kept rewinding that part. So I can't wait for it to come on DVD!
Whoever hasnt seen it.. see it!!:):)
P.S. This is the type of movie where, if you don't pay attention, you might get a bit lost.
Babs

Rating:
Summary: Please release this on DVD!
Review: I find it truly sad that Animal House was adapted to DVD before Stage Door. Another example of true artistry losing out to the quick buck.

Rating:
Summary: At last......
Review: It's a shame it took the passing of Katharine Hepburn to bring her great early work to DVD. There are at least three to look forward to come March 2005. The quintessential screwball, Bringing Up Baby, a re-release of The Philadelphia Story, and this astute, bittersweet drama.

Stage Door has one of the best female ensemble casts - Kate Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, Lucille Ball, Eve Arden, and Ann Miller - and they all bring distinctive presences to this work about ambition and dreams. The women are aspiring actresses living together in a boarding house, co-existing in a lively, supportive group. They are wholesome and hopeful, but reality is ever present in failed auditions, making rent, and trying to make their mark in art.

Although the characters we get to know are all charming, the show really belongs to the patrician, idealistic newcomer played by Hepburn and the street-tough, hardy pragmatist that Rogers plays. The dialogue is smart and sharp, with Rogers and Hepburn trading barbs smooth as silk. Although loath to rely on each other, they both learn the strength of sorority as they deal with dishonest producers and even with crafting their trade.

The movie is mostly comedic with great characters, original lines, and palpable energy. The problems the women face are not simply explained away or brushed off with laughs. Since this underlies the whole story, this isn't quite a comedy, but not really a drama either. I can watch this in any mood because the actors bring authenticity and weight to their roles while still being entertaining.

Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers make this one well worth treasuring. Now if only the studios would also put Holiday and Sylvia Scarlett on DVD...

Rating:
Summary: Life (and death) at the Footlights Club
Review: Nearly 70 years after its original release, "Stage Door" continues to shine as one of the best movies of the 1930's, if not one of the best ever. Credit must be given to screenwriters Morrie Ryskind & Anthony Veiller as well as director Gregory LaCava for turning a mediocre stage production into a striking screenplay.

"Stage Door" can perhaps be regarded today as a 1930's period piece - specifically a realistic glimpse into the lives of a group of struggling Broadway actresses who live at the Footlights Club, one of the myriad boarding houses common in the West Forties & Fifties of Manhattan at that time. The actresses trade wisecracks between them as well as share their joys & sorrows.

The cast of "Stage Door" is just as sterling as the movie itself: Katharine Hepburn as Terry Randall, the society girl who tries to barge her way into the theater world; Ginger Rogers as Jean Maitland, the street-smart dancer; Adolphe Menjou as the cynical, womanizing producer Anthony Powell; Constance Collier as the hard up but still proud veteran actress who becomes Terry Randall's coach; a group of up-and-coming stars including Eve Arden, Ann Miller (who wasn't even 18 yet), and Lucille Ball; all the remaining members of the ensemble who contribute in their own small way, especially Phyllis Kennedy as Hattie the maid, and Norma Drury as Olga, the prospective concert pianist who'd rather talk about subjects other than men & the constant complaints re boarding house food.

But of all the performances in "Stage Door", the most outstanding & poignant is that of Andrea Leeds who received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress as the sensitive, tragic, defeated actress Kaye Hamilton who was a Broadway sensation a year earlier but now can't find a part to play anywhere & literally starves herself to be able to stay at the Footlights Club. Gregory La Cava called Ms. Leeds "...the best natural actress that has ever passed under my hands."

"Stage Door" is also famous for one of Katharine Hepburn's best-known & most-mimicked lines: "The calla lilies are in bloom again."

For one of the finest examples of moviemaking Hollywood has ever created, you cannot go wrong with this film.

Rating:
Summary: One of the richest little movies I've ever seen.
Review: One wonders whether or not STAGE DOOR could even be made today. Its primary story of aspiring actresses in a boarding house is set during the 1930's depression, and all through the film's scintillating 85 minutes, there is a theme of desperation, of blue-collar optimism- felt by just about every character in the story (even Katharine Hepburn's silver-spoon Terry). Though Hepburn and Ginger Rogers are essentially the leads as the oil-and-water roomates, Eve Arden, Lucille Ball, Andrea Leeds, Gail Patrick, and a disgustingly young Ann Miller (was she even 15 here?) are all marvelous in Morrie Ryskind and Anthony Veiller's sharp, caustic, wicked, lightning-fast screenplay. The punch lines alone ("when does your baggage get here?" "uh-oh, gangrene just set in!!" "when knighthood was in flower," "my grandpa sat around 'til he was 80," "speaking of funerals, these flowers just arrived for you") are platinum. I imagine it'll come to DVD eventually, but if you can get it even on VHS, get it!!

Rating:
Summary: excellent film featuring rising stars
Review: This film features many Golden Age actresses at the beginning of their careers: Eve Arden, Lucille Ball, Katharine Hepburn, and Ginger Rogers (in a non-musical role) amongst many others. The story centers around The Footlights Club, a boardinghouse for actress-wannabes newly arrived in New York to try and make it on Broadway. (Interesting side note: this house did exist -- though under another name -- during most of 20th century, and now the Museum of Modern Art occupies its address.)

The wisecracks are hilarious, and the relationships between the women as they strive towards the same goal -- a part in a major play --- are realistic. There is a "sisterhood" air to the scenes at the house, though there is jealousy and cattiness as well. Unlike the films of today, there are no pat happy endings and that just makes the film more captivating.