Ginger Rogers had 3 key partnerships in the 1930s; with director Willam Seiter, with dancer Fred Astaire, and with director Gregory La Cava. With Seiter, she moved from B film leading lady to A-list superstar; with Astaire she invented and re-invented genres still being explored today; with La Cava she made 3 films, left musicals and Astaire far behind her, and became one of the great dramatic actresses of the Golden Age of Hollywood.
This dramatic period or phase in her career consists of only 3 films (4 if one correctly counts 'Stage Door'), but it was profoundly influential on all of Hollywood because of her complete departure from all her previous roles. Suddenly and to a certain extent permanently, studios that had insisted on typecasting actresses had the ground cut from under their arguments; the entire acting community immediately began clamoring for wider choice of roles, pointing to Ginger's successes. And then, having already climbed to the top of the serious-acting mountain, Rogers promptly abandoned drama, to make hugely successful propaganda films for the war effort.
Of the three films La Cava and Rogers made together, 'Stage Door' comes closest to displaying Ginger's own profession.
Audiences "trained" to watch films from only one point of view are sure to misunderstand this film. It is very, very funny but in no way is it Comedy. It is Tragedy. Nor is Hepburn important to this film, although on the surface it appears that she is. These fundamental features of deception and of perception are part of the depth and the genius of Gregory La Cava's films. Nothing is ever as it seems. His films are presented in the style and the jargon and slang of old Hollywood movies, and they are perfectly watchable on that surface level, without looking any further. But if one watches them carefully it slowly emerges that this director, almost alone among his peers, is grappling with perception and with truth.
Rogers' character, Jean Maitland, is a musical actress. She is terrified of the future, knowing just as Ginger knew, that for musical actresses a career is pretty much over at 30. In interviews at the time, Rogers talked at length about this very subject, how her goal had always been to keep her solo film career front and center, separate and right alongside her movies with her dancing partner. And she hinted that she thought it was time to move on. Numerous accounts state that Astaire was furious, even though he had been saying exactly the same thing - in writing - to the RKO studio executives since 1934.
Unlike Ginger Rogers, though, Jean Maitland isn't a superstar at the top of her field. She is dead broke, with no prospects and a grim future before her. Maitland knows the only way to get work is to get into producer Anthony Powell's limousine.
Rogers gives a stunning, quicksilver performance, one that probably can't be fully understood in a single viewing. Jean Maitland is nothing less than the alpha she-wolf of the Footlights Club. She bares her teeth, dominating the pack, and when new competition appears she instantly puts it in its place and keeps it there. Jean faces a brutal world with an equally brutal snarl.
Yet when one of the girls, Kay Hamilton (Andrea Leeds, with a performance so powerful she would have stolen almost any other film, but not this one with Ginger Rogers running on full blast), grows despondent Jean is sympathetic and kind and tries to help her out of her despair. When Maitland herself finally gives in and accepts Powell's advances, she has no illusions. She breaks up with her boyfriend and goes into the lair of the alpha male wolf with eyes wide open. She gets thoroughly drunk in order to take the next, hideous, step. She-wolf of her world, but still raised in the culture of Western society, she is devastated and humiliated to find Powell isn't willing to have any full-time partner.
Life among wolves.
So far, La Cava has given us a brilliant movie. But then it is promptly wrecked, although it isn't really his fault. Watching 'Stage Door' is like admiring the front of a sleek sports car and then walking around it and seeing the passenger side is smashed in.
Despite Pandro Berman's later myth-making, RKO Studios had lined up Margaret Sullavan, a great actress and one of Ginger Rogers' closest friends, for the role of Terry Randall, but Sullavan couldn't take the job. The studio brought in a failed actress, Hepburn, for the part. The film suffers greatly as a result, with Hepburn inevitably turning Terry Randall into the same character she always played - a rich, ageing spinster.
The film moves abruptly away from Jean's story and correspondingly droops when Rogers is not onscreen. It is a bizarre, jarring attempt by the studio to give screen time to another actress and it immediately causes all momentum to be lost, never to be regained. This failure of focus permanently damages the film. For the movie to have a full story arc, the actress who should have gotten the stage role is obviously Gail Patrick's character (Linda Shaw), both as reward for submitting to Anthony Powell's casting couch, and as emotional sledge-hammer upon the shattered Kay Hamilton.
Still, Rogers gives an amazing performance, one of the finest displays of acting in the history of film, fully rounded and emotional and with a lithe, muscular grace that overwhelms the screen. The best actress award for 1937 is arguably the worst mistake the Academy Awards has ever made. By this time, Rogers was well into her most important period in film, 1934-1946, and while critics acclaimed her performance in 'Stage Door' as a breakthrough, in reality critics were only now waking up to what audiences had already known for years; Ginger was a phenomenal actress.
Like another pair of masterpieces of early sound film, Jean Harlow's "Hold Your Man' and 'Dinner at Eight,' and like Greg La Cava and Ginger Rogers' last collaberation, 1940's 'Primrose Path,' critics have been quick to look at 'Stage Door' as a comedy. But that is only looking at the surface, and failing to see the emotional power of these stories. In fact, all four of these films are Shakespearean in their depth of character and the enormous emotional range required of their actresses, in plot, and in the use of humor to ease the pain of tragedy.
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