On The 80^th Anniversary- On The Great White Way-Broadway-Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers’ “Stage Door” (1937)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Leslie Dumont

[This review was in the pipeline in 2017 but due to some internal problems kind of got lost in shuffle so 80^th anniversary is still appropriate. Greg Green]  

Stage Door, starring Katharine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, Adolphe Menjou, 1937  

Sometimes we of the later feminist-friendly generations are clueless by means or happenstance about the efforts of earlier generations of women to get ahead in this man’s world (less so that before but as the recent sexual harassment scandals of 2016 point out this bad ass stuff runs deep among important segments of the male population). Still it was nice to have Greg Green the new site manager call me up to do this review since the previous site manager, Allan Jackson, who I had known for years refused to do so. Even when one of his best friends, Josh Breslin, from back in the 1960s in California was my companion for many years (and we still talk now more frequently since we are both working at this site). Refreshing too to do basically an all women film like Stage Door at a time when such efforts were rare, certainly rare than today and where for the most part men take the background although always have a lingering presence.

The beauty of this one is that a number of then well-known women actresses like Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers work the crowd with up and coming types like Lucille Ball and Eve Arden. Of course the story-line is important here as well since well know Algonquin Roundtable writers Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman provided the original premise if not the bulk of the screenplay dialogue. Moreover it is very good that this ensemble do their thing not in glamour puss Hollywood but in the Great White Way, Broadway, which used to be called, and maybe still is by some, the legitimate theater. Of course the backdrop of stuck on stardom and its pitfalls is the same in both locations with the same failure rates and broken dreams of the thousands who headed either East or West to get themselves noticed.

The set-up, a great idea used many times to good effect in ensemble efforts, of this one is that all the main female actors reside in one lunatic asylum of a women’s hotel, famous lodgings near good old Broadway. The banter thus is close in and sharp. In the old days some would say catty particularly when Katharine Hepburn’s haughty character charges through the door. You have the whole range of experiences from last year’s up and coming star who is now on the road to bust to a bright-eyed novice dilettante who wants to make the big show on her own terms. The central action though is between Terry, played by poor little rich girl out slumming (at some level) and Jean, played by Ginger Rogers who will take whatever she can get from some two-bit dance routine to the boss’ bed if necessary. Those are the poles and all the others from that last year’s fallen wonder to truly second-rate talents who should think about a career change (fat chance) run the string out.      

We see it all, all the back story of the uphill battle the average woman faced to get her foot in the door, from the cancelled appointments to don’t call us, we’ll call you to the infamous, and in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein line of sexual harassment and other sexual crimes, insidious casting couch which beckoned to Jean by the main male figure, Anthony Powell, played by Adolphe Menjou whose way of operating seemed eerily portentous. Not to worry though Terry, after a traumatic experience, finds her voice-she despite, or because of, that good breeding has star quality-that certain “it.” (Of course figuring that out was a no-brainer since almost all these actresses had that star quality). The only discordant note, a note which I am not sure rung true and certainly broke away from the wit and sarcasm that drove the film was the suicide of that last years’ star when she was on the way to down and out. How many wannabe actors wind up in that extreme situation I am not sure of but it did throw me off a bit as the key event to get Terry to emote like crazy in the play she was starring in and show that “it.”