Cheap Stage Door (Video) (Katharine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers) (Gregory La Cava) Price

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Customer Reviews of Stage Door

Katherine has done this one a few times....the girl that wants to be a star and always gets the part but not without a struggle and some very important, humbling lessons. Teamed up with the likes of Ginger Rogers, Lucille Ball, Gail Patrick, Anne Miller, Eve Arden and her acting coach, the fabulous stage and screen great Constance Collier, this movie was all that and more!!

Witty and biting and a bit depressing, an all around entertaining feature film. Ms. Hepburn plays the rich, spoiled debutante, who wants to be an actress but wants more, in the beginning, to prove to her father that she can make it on her own. Set in New York. She shows up at a boarding house for aspiring, struggling actresses. Most of the films great lines are acted out in the "living room" where they talk about men and work or lack there of. Of course with Katherine's arrival a few want so bad to dislike her, especially her new room mate Ginger Rogers. Catty blow by blows are exchanged between Rogers and Patrick and Rogers and Hepburn. Who needs cussing and talk openly about sex to get you to blush? Some of the lines are priceless and timeless!!

The lessons in the story are about how Katherine is humbled and all of the girls in the story learn valuable lessons about the business and life. It all ends on a good but very sad, bitter-sweet note. But you will just have to watch it to know what I'm talking about.

I thought Lucille Ball looked gorgeous and Katherine was quite sophisticated and Ginger was very glamorous and had some of the best witty/catty lines in the story. She and Katherine played very well together, it's a shame they didn't do anything else together (or did they?). It would have been fun to have seen Katherine, Lucille and Ginger do another feature film together. I thought the chemistry between the 3 of them was very good. Ah, pipe dreams.

I hope we all are graced with this wonderful film on DVD soon. As I edit this review I wanted to express my sadness at the loss of the great Katherine Hepburn. She is missed but her works live on in the many wonderful films she added her majestic magic too, as well as the many books. I highly recommend her own book that she wrote and had published back in 1991, appropriately named "Me". Ah, The calla lilies are in bloom again....................

Life (and death) at the Footlights Club
Nearly 70 years after its original release, "Stage Door" continues to shine as one of the best movies of the 1930's, if not one of the best ever. Credit must be given to screenwriters Morrie Ryskind & Anthony Veiller as well as director Gregory LaCava for turning a mediocre stage production into a striking screenplay.

"Stage Door" can perhaps be regarded today as a 1930's period piece - specifically a realistic glimpse into the lives of a group of struggling Broadway actresses who live at the Footlights Club, one of the myriad boarding houses common in the West Forties & Fifties of Manhattan at that time. The actresses trade wisecracks between them as well as share their joys & sorrows.

The cast of "Stage Door" is just as sterling as the movie itself: Katharine Hepburn as Terry Randall, the society girl who tries to barge her way into the theater world; Ginger Rogers as Jean Maitland, the street-smart dancer; Adolphe Menjou as the cynical, womanizing producer Anthony Powell; Constance Collier as the hard up but still proud veteran actress who becomes Terry Randall's coach; a group of up-and-coming stars including Eve Arden, Ann Miller (who wasn't even 18 yet), and Lucille Ball; all the remaining members of the ensemble who contribute in their own small way, especially Phyllis Kennedy as Hattie the maid, and Norma Drury as Olga, the prospective concert pianist who'd rather talk about subjects other than men & the constant complaints re boarding house food.

But of all the performances in "Stage Door", the most outstanding & poignant is that of Andrea Leeds who received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress as the sensitive, tragic, defeated actress Kaye Hamilton who was a Broadway sensation a year earlier but now can't find a part to play anywhere & literally starves herself to be able to stay at the Footlights Club. Gregory La Cava called Ms. Leeds "...the best natural actress that has ever passed under my hands."

"Stage Door" is also famous for one of Katharine Hepburn's best-known & most-mimicked lines: "The calla lilies are in bloom again."

For one of the finest examples of moviemaking Hollywood has ever created, you cannot go wrong with this film.

Another great Ginger Rogers RKO movie of the 1930's.
"Stage Door" was released for RKO Radio Pictures in 1937, and was directed by Gregory LaCava, the man who gave us the great "My Man Godfrey" just a year earlier. It has a number of top stars, such as Ginger Rogers (who is easily the Best actress ever). Then you have Kate Hepburn, Adolphe Menjou (Who appeared with Ginger again in 1942's "Roxie Hart"), and Lucille Ball in an early supporting role. There is also a very early appearance from Ann Miller. Oh, and this movie is NOT a musical.

The film is set at a place called the "Footlight's Club". It's a boardinghouse full of wannabe actresses, who are there, in New York, to try and get themselves parts in Broadway shows. It would seem to be a fairly realistic look. Its full of amusing lines, and a few dramatic scenes now and again aswell. It does not have a very happy ending, at all, I would like to add, which in an odd way, makes it great.

The film is really a comedy, mixed with drama. It's a decent story, and the acting is extremely good from all of the stars, and it is a very enjoyable little movie, that I could recommend. Definately worth picking up a copy to add to your film collection.