STAGE DOOR

US, 1937, 92 minutes, Black and white.
Katharine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, Adolphe Menjou, Gail Patrick, Constance Collier.
Directed by Gregory La Cava.

Stage Door was nominated as best film for 1937 along with its director Gregory La Cava and Andrea Leeds as best supporting actress.

The film is a theatrical story, set in New York. It focuses on a boarding house where young aspiring actresses want to make it big on the stage. The film deals with the interactions between the women, humorous, bitter, gossipy.

The film has a very strong cast with Katharine Hepburn (already an Oscar winner for Morning Glory), Ginger Rogers who had made the headlines dancing with Fred Astaire and who was to win an Oscar in 1940 for Kitty Foyle, Lucille Ball, Eve Arden with her wisecracks, Ann Miller as the dancer, Gail Patrick and her aloofness, Andrea Leeds as the sweet young lead. Constance Collier also appears as a fading actress. The men are in the background but Adolphe Menjou is the producer. Other small roles are played by Jack Carson and Grady Sutton, Franklin Pangborne.

The film is based on a play co-written by Edna Ferber (Show Boat) and George S. Kaufman (The Man Who Came to Dinner).

1. How enjoyable a film? Its impact in the thirties, now? The reasons, for differences?

2. How evident that the film was based on a play? Theatre style? The black and white photography, the sound and the sets of the thirties?

3. How well did the film create and communicate the atmosphere of the thirties? New York City, the hostel for aspiring actresses, the world of the theatre, its hopes and cruelty? Characters as moulded by the atmosphere? Contributing to this atmosphere?

4. The world of the hostel and its ethos? The people running it, the reasons for the girls being there, their way of life, interactions with one another, hopes and fears and ambitions? The importance of the detail in re-creating, the hostel?

5. Why did the world of the theatre have such ambitions for the girls? As illustrated in the small jobs that they got - small parts, dance routines? What did the girls hope to achieve? How was this illustrated in each of their characters?

6. Jean as one of the central characters? Her wisecracking style, her own ambitions, her friendliness, her antagonism towards Terry, the reasons for the hostility, the accusations about the death, her final change of heart?

7. How well drawn were the minor characters in the hostel? How interesting were they as pictures of American women?

8. The reason for Terry coming to the hostel? The explanations of her background, wealth and society, her conversations with her father? Her aims in the theatre, standing on her own feet, her motivation?

9. The explanation of her success? The reason for her ambition and her drive? How much was it at the expense of others? How much was it success in her own right? The emotional impact of her final performance?

10. The contrast with Kay? her melancholy, her first success, her continuing failure, her niceness to the others, the sense of doom and her death?

11. What comment did the film make on theatre types in the person of Powell? The personality, his use of others, his use of Terry? How ugly a picture of the theatre manager and producer?

12. Themes of death, success, love and hate?

13. The atmosphere that the ending provided: with the reprise of the way the film started? The same stories over and over again?