Cinema Sunday: Stage Door

Sometimes a work of art will take an unexpected turn. A movie, play, TV show or book, it has been one type of thing then suddenly there is a sharp turn towards the tragic, a dramatic change of course. 

You're watching what is ostensibly a comedy and then someone dies? 

Such an abrupt change in tone occurred in a movie Andrea and I were watching from 1937 called Stage Door, a story about several would-be actresses living together in a New York City boarding house. 

There's a lot of fast paced dialogue loaded with snarky quips and zingers as a group of young women vie for a shrinking number of Broadways roles. It is a weird balance of competition and mutual support as these women struggle for their big break. Or any break really.

A fun time is had by all. 

Until tragedy strikes.

Terry Randall (Katharine Hepburn) moves into the Footlights Club, a theatrical boarding house in New York. Terry is the daughter of a wealthy mid-western family who against her family's wishes has come to New York to fulfill her dreams of being an actress.  

Terry's polish and sophistication are an odd fit with the baudier ladies who reside there. 

Particularly irked by Terry's superior attitude is Jean Maitland (Ginger Rogers), a dancer by trade and a bitter, cynical soul by practice. Lots of practice. It's a rare moment when Jean isn't running someone through with her rapier wit and brutal honesty.

Theatrical producer Anthony Powell (Adolphe Menjou) factors into the lives of the women the Footlights Club. Powell uses the boarding house as a personal hunting ground for a pretty young thing to have on his arm when he's out on the town. The women pretty much roll with this. Jobs are scarce and he takes his chosen women out to really nice dinners which are a significant improvement on the ubiquitous lamb stew served nightly at the Footlights Club.  

It's Powell's ostensible job as a theatrical producer that causes the most problems for the women at the Footlights Club.  With X number of roles to cast and x times a thousand number of women looking to play them, Powell has a nasty habit of not being available to meet with any of them. 

Which is a problem for Kay Hamilton (Andrea Leeds).  A year ago, she was in a play with rave reviews. But that was a year ago and now there is no work and no money. Kay really anxious to get the lead in Powell's next play, Enchanted April.  Kay knows this script up and down, front and backwards and sideways. 

Kay gets an appointment with Powell who cancels on her. She faints in Powell's office, the culmination of weeks of malnutrition, due to not eating due to no money for food.  

Terry barges into Powell's office to tell him off. Terry's bold movie in defense of Kay puts her in good standing with the other ladies in the boarding house.

Except...

Shenanigans!!

Terry's father is secretly financing Enchanted April on condition that Terry be given the starring role, hoping she will fail and return home. 

Well,damn! 

And it seems like the plan might work. In rehearsals, it is clear that Terry has no damn idea what she's doing. Never mind her wooden acting skills but she's lacks experience in technical stuff like entering on cue or hitting her marks. 

Kay is completely heart broken. She lost the role in Enchanted April that she most fervently wanted.  She lost to a woman who she thought was looking out for her. And that woman is incredibly bad at acting.

It's enough to make you want to throw yourself off the roof of the Footlights Club.

Which is what Kay does.

Whoa! Who does what when now?

OK, up until now, we've had a fun banter filled romp about a group of women trying to make the best of it in New York's theater world and someone has to die?

As Kay was climbing the stairs, Andrea was watching this with me and she immediately began to worry about Kay's fate.

I reassured Andrea that this was not that kind of movie and surely someone will stop Kay before...

What the hell? Kay's dead?!?

It's opening night for Enchanted April and right before the curtain is set to go up, Jean tells Terry that Kay killed herself and it's all Terry's fault. 

Which is more than a bit cruel.  Terry did not know about Kay's obsession with getting the part and does not know about the secret machinations of her father that put Terry in the lead in the first place. 

But something about Kay's death changes Terry, inspires her.

After weeks of dreadful rehearsals, Terry enters on stage on cue and delivers her opening lines with a sense of feeling and passion she has never exhibited before.  

Powell, fully expected Enchanted April to open and close in one night is astonished by Terry's performance. So are the other ladies from the boarding house. And so are New York's critics whose reviews push Enchanted April into one of the season's biggest hits.

Well...

Damn it! 

The best bits in Stage Door take place with the ensemble in the boarding house, lots of chaos and cross talk as the women as the women snark off about omni-present lamb stew, their clothes, bad jobs and the lack of jobs. It's very funny and sounds very natural.  The actresses talking and joking off set during rehearsals was incorporated into the script and the director allowed them to ad-lib as well. 

Mostly, Stage Door is a light hearted movie. Yes, these woman have it rough, trying to make it in a tough industry (Broadway) in a tough time (the Great Depression is still a thing) which is hardly a light topic but the women's collective wit and will in the face of their obstacles makes this a mostly positive experience.

In a manner most cruel and heartbreaking, we are harshly reminded it is not always a positive experience. 

In retrospect, Kay's tragic fate may not be as abrupt as I make it out to be. Of all the women at the Footlights Club, Kay is not part of the chaos, not engaged in the back and forth zingers between the rest of the women.  Her drive to regain the success she once had and her fixation on getting the lead in Enchanted April isolates her from everyone else.  So when Kay loses the lead in Enchanted April (and to Terry of all people), she has nothing left. 

Still, Kay's suicide is still such a tone shift from the rest of the movie that has gone before, it is very shocking.

Think Penny's death at the end of Dr. Horrible's Sing A Long Blog.

Or the tonal shift on the second half of Into The Woods*.

*RIP Stephen Sondheim who passed away over Thanksgiving at the age of 91.

All that has gone before does not prepare you for what happens next.  

I might guess the original stage play of Stage Door was more nuanced, more of an overall balance of comedy and drama while the film version emphasized comedic elements more.   

The "It's That Person Who Was In That Thing" Dept.

• Lucille Ball (who I wrote about last week in Dubarry Was A Lady) is on hand, still a brunette. 
• Ann Miller is on hand as well.  Ann was in other movies I've covered in Cinema Sunday such as the Marx Brother's Room Service, Too Many Girls (another early Lucille Ball film) and Kiss Me Kate.  
• Franklin Pangborn as Harcourt, Powell's butler was in Design For Living as a theatrical producer. So Franklin went from playing a producer in 1932 to playing a producer's butler in 1937.   

"Take That, Dorothy Parker"

Terry's opening line in Enchanted April is "The calla lilies are in bloom again. Such a strange flower, suitable to any occasion. I carried them on my wedding day and now I place them here in memory of something that has died." 

The line is from a 1934 play called "The Lake" where Katherine Hepburn's performance was panned by Dorothy Parker as "running the gamut of emotions from A to B."

Stage Door can be a fun movie, especially when the collective ensemble of women are bantering in the boarding house.  

It's just a shame that Kay has to die to make Terry a better actress.