The films reviewed here represent those I have liked or loved over the years. It is not a list of my favourite films but all the films reviewed here are worth seeing and worth seeking out. I know many of you won't agree with me on a lot of these but hopefully you will grant me, and the films that appear here, our place in the sun. Thanks for reading.
Wednesday, 9 October 2024
STAGE DOOR
Some of the best dialogue ever heard in an American movie delivered by a mostly female cast all of them at the top of their form. The setting is a theatrical rooming house populated by wannabe actresses. There's Katharine Hepburn, (the high-brow Vasser type), Ginger Rogers, (the low-brow chorus-girl type), and the others, (Lucille Ball, Constance Collier, Eve Arden, Ann Miller and Andrea Leeds who was Oscar-nominated as the tragic Kay).
Amongst the men are Adolphe Menjou, (a big producer, what else!), Jack Carson, Grady Sutton and Franklin Pangborn, none of them a match for the girls. Of course, the source material was a play by Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman which might account for the sharp wit though this cast certainly helped. The director was the great and undervalued Gregory La Cava who won the New York Film Critics' Best Director prize for his work. Something of a classic, in fact, that deserves to be better known.
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