During the 1980s, some of the most successful sitcoms were based on witty women exchanging clever barbs. "The Golden Girls", "Designing Women", and "The Facts of Life" were hardly revolutionary, however, as their formula had been established many decades before.

The 1930s began with elaborate film musicals taking advantage of the advent of sound. A plot was needed to string together the musical numbers. Typically, this amounted to a young woman from a small town trying to make it big on Broadway or in Hollywood.

As the popularity of chorus line musicals faded, their stories became more complex. Gold Diggers of 1935 had the young women facing hardship together during the Great Depression, with both wit and courage. Eventually the musical trappings were removed altogether, with Stage Door and The Women (1939) relying on the personalities and relationships between an ensemble cast of women.

Stage Door was the most successful of the genre, largely because of the quality of its cast. While Katherine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers were already stars, the supporting cast including rising actresses Lucille Ball, Ann Miller, and Eve Arden. They traded sharp but good-natured insults, but their tough exterior was just a front for facing their career setbacks. The only actress with an unflattering role is Gail Patrick, whose character is a snob and an second-choice mistress.

The screenplay was loosely based on the Broadway play written by Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman. Kaufman was among the most accomplished playwrights of his era, twice winning the Pulitzer Prize. But the dialogue was largely replaced for the script. Allegedly, much of the backstage chatter of the real-life actresses was written into the script, per orders of director Gregory La Cava.

Katherine Hepburn, who receives top billing, has the largest part of the ensemble cast. Her role is similar to that in Morning Glory, for which she won her first of four Best Actress Academy Awards back in 1934. She is once again a headstrong, well-educated, star-struck amateur, but this time she is rich as well.

Hepburn's monotone reading of her play entrance line, "The calla lillies are in bloom again", was fodder for comics for the rest of her career. It would be a spoiler to reveal how her character becomes a good actress, but I can say that you'll either roll your eyes or cry. To be honest, I was rolling my eyes.

The ladies dominate the film. The few men that are present are generally stereotyped. Adolphe Menjou plays a smug Broadway producer who uses his position to seduce much younger women. Jack Carson, in one of his earliest films, plays a good natured but rather slow-witted lumberjack. Samuel S. Hinds is a humorless wheat magnate who predictably doesn't want his daughter in show business. The most rewarding male supporting role is given to Franklin Pangborn, who is a riot as Menjou's obsequious butler.

Stage Door received four Academy Award nominations, including the major categories of Best Picture, Best Director (Gregory La Cava) and Best Screenplay (Morris Ryskind and Anthony Veiller). Despite being surrounded by much better known actresses, it was tearjerking Andrea Leeds who landed the remaining nomination, for Best Supporting Actress. (70/100)

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Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children up Ages 8
Special Effects: Well at least you can't see the strings