Stage Door (1937, Gregory La Cava) is an ebullient woman’s picture comedy-melodrama tearjerker that conceals its darker subject matter which it gradually reveals as an indictment of systemic abuse by the combine of the theatrical scene in New York threshing away the many hopeful innocents that seek success in its blades. It’s also got a boarder who wears a cat drooped down her neck like a shawl.
Wake up. Finally a real star. Kate Hepburn kills. She’s got the force of a man but she’s not masculine like a say, Rosalind Russell. Hepburn plays TERRY RANDALL, new girl moving into the Footlights Club, a theatrical boarding house for broke aspiring actresses, and it’s full of ‘em. A young Ann Miller is so cute in this prototypical Mulholland Drive. Plucky Ginger Rogers holds her own as Hepburn’s nemesis. My empathy pours out for Lucille Ball as the girl who has to go on dates with some lumber men from Seattle who knew her from her childhood whose company she suffers because she needs the dinners they pay for.
The volley of dialogue fired off in this place is pandemonium and you think you’re in for a treat. But no. It turns into something else entirely.
The other half of Stage Door emerges when Adolphe Menjou as TONY POWELL turns out to be this predatory casting couch impresario who makes you miss Oscar Jaffe. Great detail in its poignancy is after Ginger Rogers’ character sobs her way out the door when we see Powell immediately begin flipping through his little black book.
But it’s really this KAY character who overshadows the rest of the picture. Every time I watch this movie, as soon as Kay walks in that door for the first time the way her light is dimming to a flicker weary struggling to stay hopeful, I cry. I also cry when we first meet MISS LUTHER because of her age and how she still hasn’t given up and how she pathetically keeps her rumpled theater notices from some long forgotten distant past. Stage Door is a three hanky picture. Kay floats through in some melancholy fugue as if she belongs in a different movie altogether. It’s so sad that quick line never mentioned again or elaborated on when Kay says “except someone I’ll never go back to” back home traumatic pain. Although Miss Randall steals her part, it’s more complex than that. Because once Kay took a part from some other actress. And Miss Randall didn’t earn her opportunity, it was bought for her through nepotism. Kay and Terry are both such great examples of an active protagonist. In this movie neither of them would mean anything to us without without the other. That’s impressive writing.
Can’t shake the haunting sequence where Kay walks up that gothic lit staircase hearing voices. Kay’s broken. Her mental illness is pure psychological horror. And the climax is heavy. Devastating. “What’s more important than a career?” says that louse Powell. Stage Door is really about young women’s hopes and dreams. It’s really about our own hopes and dreams. And these are the types of movies that know how to be the most heart wrenching. When Powell says "oh she's still around" about Kay that's such a punch in the gut. It stays with you. Yet again from this period it makes one ask how many of these comedies end right back where they started? We get the message.
The volley of dialogue fired off in this place is pandemonium and you think you’re in for a treat. But no. It turns into something else entirely.
The other half of Stage Door emerges when Adolphe Menjou as TONY POWELL turns out to be this predatory casting couch impresario who makes you miss Oscar Jaffe. Great detail in its poignancy is after Ginger Rogers’ character sobs her way out the door when we see Powell immediately begin flipping through his little black book.
But it’s really this KAY character who overshadows the rest of the picture. Every time I watch this movie, as soon as Kay walks in that door for the first time the way her light is dimming to a flicker weary struggling to stay hopeful, I cry. I also cry when we first meet MISS LUTHER because of her age and how she still hasn’t given up and how she pathetically keeps her rumpled theater notices from some long forgotten distant past. Stage Door is a three hanky picture. Kay floats through in some melancholy fugue as if she belongs in a different movie altogether. It’s so sad that quick line never mentioned again or elaborated on when Kay says “except someone I’ll never go back to” back home traumatic pain. Although Miss Randall steals her part, it’s more complex than that. Because once Kay took a part from some other actress. And Miss Randall didn’t earn her opportunity, it was bought for her through nepotism. Kay and Terry are both such great examples of an active protagonist. In this movie neither of them would mean anything to us without without the other. That’s impressive writing.
Can’t shake the haunting sequence where Kay walks up that gothic lit staircase hearing voices. Kay’s broken. Her mental illness is pure psychological horror. And the climax is heavy. Devastating. “What’s more important than a career?” says that louse Powell. Stage Door is really about young women’s hopes and dreams. It’s really about our own hopes and dreams. And these are the types of movies that know how to be the most heart wrenching. When Powell says "oh she's still around" about Kay that's such a punch in the gut. It stays with you. Yet again from this period it makes one ask how many of these comedies end right back where they started? We get the message.
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