STAGE DOOR (1937)

Directed by Gregory La Cava

RKO, 92 minutes, Pre-ratings system

★★★★

 

Stage Door is often tagged as a tragicomedy. Although something quite sad happens to one of the characters, this Gregory La Cava-directed movie is heavier on the second half of that portmanteau. The movie followed the script of a play written Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman that closed the year before the movie appeared. It made money and garnered Oscar nominations, but it was one of increasingly rare incidences in which the play earned more money.

 

If you allow for the fact that this is a Great Depression-era film, your viewing pleasure will increase. It follows the constant flow of aspirant and briefly successful actresses in and out of a boarding house controlled by a booking agency. The cast is large and impressive, though the fame of many of the headliners would come later. This older movie definitely passes the Bechdel Test, as it is a film about women talking to women. Most of the men in the Stage Door are cads. If you know anything about (if not, consult Wikipedia) Ferber or Kaufman, you can count on a lot of barbed, acerbic, and funny badinage between boarding house residents. It’s the kind of movie that could be labeled “catty,” but these women are more predator tigers than domesticated tabbies.

 

The principals include Judy Canfield (Lucile Ball), a good-times gal; Kay Hamilton (Andrea Leeds), who was a star for a season who hasn’t had a part in ages and needs money; Jean Maitland (Ginger Rogers), a sharp-tongued vixen prone to mean acts such as pilfering the silk stockings from Linda Shaw (Gail Patrick) and ruining what was likely an expensive gift from Linda’s beau, Anthony (Adolph Menjou). That was quite a nasty thing to do at a time in which good stockings sold for today’s equivalent of over $36.

 

There are several odd-fitting residents, including newbie Terry Randall (Katharine Hepburn), who Maitland and her hangers-on ridicule for using big words, her fancy wardrobe, and her polished demeanor. They assume she comes from money, but that’s only partially true. Her father is loaded, but cuts off her allowance when she insists on pursuing a stage career. They don’t know who her father is, so they assume she has a “sugar daddy.” The implication of that term is that Terry is a “kept” woman who exchanges sex for fancy duds. The irony of this is that just about every woman in the boarding house, except Terry, yearns to have a boyfriend who will treat them. I will again remind you that this is a 1936 movie. In the film the women are “man-hungry” and the men know it. Boyfriends are generally older than their dates, are well-heeled, are clearly trying to bed them, and play musical conquests from among the boarding house population. It’s a mutual exploitation society of sorts. Many of the men are somehow connected to the theatre (directors, producers, underwriters, etc.) and the women are literally hungry as well as looking for a husband. Only Hattie (Phyllis Kennedy) has the chutzpah to date a butcher!

 

The other oddballs are Southern belle Mary Lou (Margaret Early), who finds out the New York isn’t Louisiana.  Ann Miller also has role as “Annie,” a fan-girl companion to Jean who dreams of being a dancer. (Miller succeeded in that quest, though she lied about her age and was just 14 when she scored a part in Stage Door.)

 

As you can see, Stage Door had what might be called an A-level cast: Ball, Hepburn, Miller…. At the time, though, Eve Arden and Constance Collier–two of the residents– and Patrick were better known, and film critics tabbed Early for an Oscar nomination. In a way, a lot of 1930s’ movies were akin to the 1933 version of 42^nd Street in which understudy Ruby Keeler dances to fame. Hepburn-as-Terry gets a similar chance to show off her talent, courtesy of a lot of help from Eve (Eve Arden) and aging resident Ann Lutheir (Collier), though Terry has something more serious in mind.

 

It’s hard to do justice to films with a big cast. There are more serious things in the film–a tragedy, veiled critiques of backstage immorality, and sexism–but the writing is razor-sharp. Give it a try.

 

Rob Weir