Stage Door (1937) on Netflix
Approved19371h 32mComedyDramaRomance
Terry Randall moves into a New York boarding house full of aspiring actresses, set on a stage career without her father's money. Her polished manners alienate her roommate Jean Maitland.
- Netflix4.3/5
- IMDb7.7/109,981 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes96%
Trailer
Plot summary
At the Footlights Club, a theatrical rooming house in New York, young actresses share rooms, auditions and disappointments. Jean Maitland, a cynical dancer, trades barbs with Linda Shaw, who has caught the attention of the producer Anthony Powell. Terry Randall arrives, and her polished manner and superior air turn the other residents against her, her roommate Jean first of all. Terry's Midwest family is rich, but her father, Henry Sims, disapproves of her stage ambitions and stops her allowance, so she means to make her own way. The aging actress Anne Luther takes her on as a pupil. Kay Hamilton, praised the year before, has had no parts since and her money is nearly gone; she hopes for Jeanette in Powell's coming production, Enchanted April, and Powell calls off her interview.
Cast
- William Corsonas Bill
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Stage Door (1937)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Playwright George S. Kaufman joked that the film of his and Edna Ferber's play should be called "Screen Door," because the movie almost completely changed the play's storyline and the characters' names.
- Katharine Hepburn's four films before Stage Door were all commercial failures, but the positive response to her performance led RKO to cast her opposite Cary Grant in the screwball comedy Bringing Up Baby (1938).
- Ginger Rogers, a close friend of Lucille Ball, suggested Ball to producer Pandro S. Berman for the role of Judy Canfield.
- Burgess Meredith and Barton MacLane were considered for a role in Stage Door, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. was considered for the part of Tony Powell, which went to Adolphe Menjou.
- Katharine Hepburn's calla-lily speech in the play within the film is taken from The Lake (1934), the play for which Dorothy Parker panned her performance as "running the gamut of emotions from A to B."
- Director Gregory La Cava let the actresses ad-lib and improvise dialogue during filming, which earned him praise from Andrea Leeds and Ginger Rogers.
SPOILER
A brief shot of Kay Hamilton's grave, part of the montage of the play's success, was once edited out of all television showings and is missing from some early home media releases; it was restored for DVD and later TV broadcasts.
