Pros: Nice ensemble. The refreshing lack of romance.
Cons: Somewhat bewildering.
The Bottom Line: Lucille Ball wasn’t always like fingernails on a chalkboard, but Katharine Hepburn sits with me like mild indigestion. I haven’t made up my mind about Ginger Rogers.
The opening sequence of 1937’s Stage Door left me feeling like I’d accidentally walked into the wrong bathroom. The scene is a boarding house for aspiring actresses, where a dozen girls run their mouths a mile a minute, me struggling just to start placing names and faces. Now I’m horrible with names to begin with. Don’t bother introducing yourself, I'll forget your name the moment you turn around. But here, in black and white, with all these women about the same age, with about the same hair, and with about the same attitude. It was more or less a blur.
Thankfully, things slowly resolved themselves. Times are hard for these young would-be starlets. It isn’t easy to find work. Some resort to dating lumbermen. Others target producers, accepting roles offstage when they can’t get one on. And the girl with true talent withers, unable to land a part since her smashing debut a year previously.
Enter Terry Randall (Katharine Hepburn), an aristo with a hankering for theater. She wants the whole experience, and that includes slumming it with the other wannabes. Needless to say, she doesn’t fit in. Her clothes and talk are both too rich, and the other girls, who spend their time tossing barbs back and forth, can’t seem to slip one through her polished exterior. She ends up rooming with Jean Maitland (Ginger Rogers), the most acid wit on the block.
Terry is bemused and perplexed by the girls’ sarcasm. She suggests they focus more on their work and less on their wordplay. To Jean she quips, "It’d be a terrific innovation if you could get your mind to stretch a little further than the next wisecrack." At the same time, she proves able to hold her own, and in a movie based on banter, some of the best is between her and Jean. Other gems come between Jean and her arch nemesis, Linda Shaw (Gail Patrick), who has taken on a producer as sugar daddy. When she comes down the stairs sporting a new fur coat Jean says, "Say, I think it’s very unselfish of those little animals to give up their lives to keep other animals warm." Linda condescends to reply, "You know, they’re very smart animals. They never give up their lives for the wrong people." Jean shrugs it off, "Well, you understand the rodent family much better than I do."
In all, the banter is the best part of the movie. It’s very well done for the most part, with a quick stage play timing. It’s true wit, smart not stupid, and requires some attention to process. In fact, it draws away from everything else. From the story, which isn’t a great loss, and from the acting, which is. Katharine Hepburn fits the role of Terry very easily. The accent, the haughtiness, and the warmth underneath, which she shows as she comes to care for the other girls. In the long and sometimes tiresome tradition of self-reflective framing (plays about plays, actors playing actors), she has the opportunity to portray an actress with no talent, and later an actress of great talent. Hepburn is a problem for me. Her skill is undeniable, but I see nothing personable in her, nothing attractive. I admire her, but I do not like her.
Ginger Rogers as Jean is hard-bitten steel. If not for the barbs her character would be intolerable. Even so, you wouldn’t want to room with her. Her rivalry with Linda drives a significant portion of the plot, leading Jean further down a dangerous road. Ultimately her motivation becomes dubious. Does she chase Linda’s sugar daddy to spite Linda? For her own security? She can’t have been gulled, can she? There’s an ambiguity there that allows Rogers a wide range which she delivers nicely. But the character becomes puzzling.
Adolphe Menjou plays Anthony Powell, the sugar daddy who gives Linda fur coats, Jean a job, and Terry a part in the play he’s producing. There’s little remarkable about the performance, though it’s generally well done. Powell is the right age, the right demeanor, and the right combination of cynical businessman whose seductions succeed more through consideration of his pocketbook than through any finesse.
I’ve mentioned principal actors, but the movie is an ensemble piece. Gail Patrick, Constance Collier, Andrea Leeds, Ann Miller, Eve Arden, and in a surprisingly palatable role, Lucille Ball (before she became both fabulously popular and noxious). Many other young actresses fill out the boarding house, and the whole is very effective, and was probably a lot of fun to shoot.
The story carries little substance, serving mostly to portray these actresses putting a bright, if caustic, face on the dreary reality of unemployment in show business. The developing relationships between Terry and the others, especially Jean, are an added enjoyment.
A great jolt is delivered near the end of the movie, entirely derailing the established tone. Kay’s walk up the stairs is a masterful sequence. Andrea Leeds’ acting is generally good, and climaxes with her soft-faced numbness here. Director Gregory La Cava and crew deserve credit for the shot, downward on Leeds’ luminous face, matching her ascent step by step. Even the sound, remembrances of Kay’s night on the stage through a veneer of slight distortion, amplifies the momentous mood. This is a well-paced, well-acted, well-shot scene that delivers exactly what it was meant to. But it’s extremely discordant with the rest of the movie. I don’t think I necessarily disagree with the intention, but the about face comes so forcefully that the material of the movie seems to break more than bend.
In the end, the best that Stage Door has to recommend it is its quick banter and the interest some might have in seeing Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers team up.
The Footlights Club the primary setting for much of STAGE DOOR is a remarkable creation. The result of a collaboration between director Gregory La Cav...More at Family Video
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