SnoopyStyle The Footlights Club is a boarding house for aspiring actresses in New York City. Among the gals, Linda Shaw (Gail Patrick) has a relationship with rich sleazy producer Anthony Powell (Adolphe Menjou). New arrival Terry Randall (Katharine Hepburn) is confident and rich. Her manners make her an outsider with all the girls including her sassy dancer roommate Jean Maitland (Ginger Rogers). Anne Luther (Constance Collier) is an older actress who presumes to be a mentor. Kay Hamilton (Andrea Leeds) is a nice girl who is struggling to hang on after an initial success. Jean's dancing catches Powell's eyes.The girl power in this movie is amazing. A sharp eye will even notice a young Lucille Ball. I've never been impressed with Ginger Rogers' acting skills. Her dancing prowess is without a doubt but she is not relying on that in this movie. She's a bit overshadowed by Hepburn in this one despite being the co-lead. The rapid fire dialogue fits Hepburn very well. I actually like that she's not particularly good at the rehearsal. This tackles a lot of casting couch issues and female relationship issues. One scene made me assume that Kay has an eating issue but her mental issues are more generalized than that. The stress of making it overwhelms her. It may serve the movie better by concentrating on Terry as the main protagonist early on. Not only is Hepburn the superior actress, her character is connected to every aspect of the movie.

Prismark10 A film about struggling actresses in the 1930s living in a boarding house which despite some rapid fire lines looks a bit creaky now.Katherine Hepburn plays Terry, daughter of a wealthy father determined to make it big on her own but not knowing that her father is pulling some strings to get her a role in a new play. Terry is tough and self assured but at odds with the other actresses in the boarding house but willing to fight their corner if needed.Ginger Rogers plays Jean a struggling dancer always at odds with Terry especially when Terry bags a stage role that was coveted by their roommate Kay who is pushed over the edge by this latest setback.The film has a cynical but comedic look at show business, a producer who refuses to see the actresses who come each day to hopefully audition for him and who thinks they should be at home cooking. We have a lecherous casting agent who looks to take advantage of the ladies in exchange for advancing their careers.

vert001 I don't understand why STAGE DOOR isn't better remembered. Even modern politics would seem to work in its favor. As for its competitors as a female bonding film, there wouldn't seem to be that many: THE WOMEN and STEEL MAGNOLIAS come to mind, and possibly a couple of westerns (THE BEGUILED?), but these are few and far between and none seem to entirely measure up to STAGE DOOR's excellences. First is the cast, considered exceptional at the time and in retrospect a cast for the ages: Katherine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, Constance Collier, Lucille Ball, Gail Patrick, Eve Arden, Ann Miller, and even the male contingent is strong though only one has much to do: Adolphe Menjou, Jack Carson, Franklin Pangborn, Grady Sutton. And it was an important film to practically all of them. Hepburn was in her 'box office poison' phase, and a look at her previous 8 or so movies will tell you why (only ALICE ADDAMS appeals to me from that group); Rogers was trying to broaden her career horizons beyond the Astaire musicals, and after STAGE DOOR I don't think anyone doubted that she had a future after Fred; for Menjou it was probably just another nice part, but practically everyone else was an up-and-comer looking to be noticed. Lucy may be representative. Though having appeared in around twenty movies, she had just finished three of the Astaire/Rogers musicals. In one she was a model and had a closeup; in another she was a flower shop girl and had a line of dialogue; finally in FOLLOW THE FLEET she had an actual, albeit small, part. She's hardly a dominant figure in STAGE DOOR but director Gregory La Cava did make her noticeable. He made them all noticeable. STAGE DOOR is very much an ensemble piece with Rogers, Hepburn and Menjou first among equals.STAGE DOOR is even structured in a modern fashion, and I don't particularly mean that positively. The first hour plays as a comedy, even a screwball comedy in the manner of TWENTIETH CENTURY or HIS GIRL Friday, featuring lightning-quick dialogue (much of it overlapping) and wisecracks galore, though there is a certain undercurrent of psychological suffering in the aspiring actresses and dancers who, after all, don't seem able to get anywhere no matter how hard they try. The overwhelming nature of their struggles eventually comes to the fore in the person of Kaye (Andrea Leeds) in what actually does qualify as a tragic flaw in her character (her greatest virtues as an actress, absolute dedication and emotional intensity, eventually crack and destroy her). I'm not sure if that radical shift in tone was properly prepared for by La Cava and Leeds. Leeds was the actor who got the Academy Award nomination from this movie. To me it's the least of STAGE DOOR's performances, possibly because it's the center of the one part of the script that doesn't quite work. Interestingly, decades later a similar movie, STEEL MAGNOLIAS, would make a similar emotional ploy which seemed, if anything, even less successful. It's a tricky thing to pull off. THE APARTMENT comes to mind as a film that did so brilliantly. Many others have tried.But until then STAGE DOOR gives us one of the finest hours of cinema that I've ever come across. Though nothing much happens, the pacing is exhilarating (one example: besides overlapping dialogue we get overlapping entrances and exits, i.e., a scene which has centered on Katherine Hepburn's character has Hepburn exiting up the stairway in the middle-ground while in the background Jack Carson and friend simultaneously are entering the boardinghouse to continue the action), the wisecracks are hilarious ("Don't eat the bones and give yourself away") and the performances are electric. These performances are no doubt helped along by the fact that La Cava famously shaped the dialogue to the personalities of the performers. For example, in a scene on a stairwell in which Leeds and Rogers are commiserating, Allen Scott, a veteran writer of the Astaire/Rogers series and other Rogers vehicles, was called in with the instructions: 'You know her. How would Ginger react in a situation like this?' And the class antagonisms between Kate and Ginge practically scream behind-the-scenes reality.STAGE DOOR proved a great success with the critics but only a mild box office winner. That it turned a profit at all was likely attributed to Ginger Rogers' popularity, that it was a disappointing profit no doubt was blamed on Katherine Hepburn. Whatever the justness of such a business judgment, aesthetically it seems to me one of Kate's three best performances of the decade (I'd call Alice Addams her best one), and simply one of thirty or so brilliant performances that Ginger Rogers graced us with throughout her career. That so many find Ginger's acting in STAGE DOOR to be a revelation suggests that they're not very familiar with her beyond TOP HAT and the like. Too bad. Her way with a quip had been just as brilliant in 42nd STREET and plenty of other lesser films, and her range was evident any time she was stretched.Still, in a way the most amazing thing about STAGE DOOR is that Ann Miller was only 14 when doing it. She had achieved her full height and only if you zeroed in on her chest, which was undeveloped, would you believe that she could be so young.

AaronCapenBanner Gregory La Cava directed this comedy/drama that stars Katharine Hepburn as rich socialite Terry Randall, who has dreams of breaking onto Broadway as an actress without the assistance of her father, who nonetheless has plans to back a play she may appear in... Ginger Rogers plays Jean Maitland, who is interested in a play directed by a notorious womanizer(played by Adolphe Menjou) that she isn't interested in romantically ...Lucille Ball also stars as another of the many women staying in the all girls theatrical boarding house. Mediocre film is passable,and more successful as comedy than drama, with both Rogers & Ball more interesting than Hepburn!