One shouldn't be surprised to learn that Stage Door originated as a stage play, its heavy emphasis on tight-knit dialogue exchanges set over a minimal amount of different locales certainly makes that abundantly clear. Though certain stage shows have had trouble translating into the world of film, Stage Door manages to achieve a smooth translation mainly by taking advantage of all the opportunities the artform of film has to offer. For instance, feature films, by their very nature, bring the viewer much closer to the characters in visual terms, there's really no way to accomplish a close-up in a stage show. This means the movie version of Stage Door can incorporate more tiny details in costumes and props dealt with by ancillary characters that may never get seen properly in a stage version of the same story.
In the movie take on Stage Door, the camera zooms in on the conversations between the various female supporting residents of the Footlights Club, allowing us to get to know them each better. I'll certainly never forget the one lady who's constantly wandering around with a cat in her hands! It is into this club, home to a bevy of performers hoping to make it big in the world of New York stage acting, that Terry Randall (Katharine Hepburn) arrives. Whereas most of the members of the Footlights Club don't even have a whisper of a penny to their name, Terry is a wealthier girl who thinks of the idea of roughing it financially in order to pursue an acting career as a dandy excursion by choice.
This decision of hers puts her at odds with the other women in the hotel, including Jean Maitland (Ginger Rogers). Over the course of Stage Door, Terry tries her best to both connect with the other Footlights Club residents and score any kind of acting gig, including one coveted by fellow Footlights resident Kay Hamilton (Andrea Leeds). Stage Door's script gives Katharine Hepburn plenty of material to work with in regards to the actor's consistently brilliant trademark dynamite gusto. Hepburn delivers off her whip-smart lines with delightful levels of assuredness and a pivotal scene in which her character confronts a dismissive casting director works as intended because of the prowess Hepburn is able to convey as a performer. You totally believe she could stun a previously cocky casting director hot in their tracks simply by staring them down!
A perfectly cast Katharine Hepburn gets to share the silver screen in Stage Door with fellow classic cinema star Ginger Rogers. Stage Door is actually my first exposure to Ginger Rogers as a performer, and though I feel like a film where she actually sang and danced in traditional musical numbers would be a better intro to her, she still does sharp work here. Whereas Cary Grant provides a flustered counterpart to Hepburn's acting style in other 1930s features, Ginger Rogers chooses to play off Hepburn in a more dry-witted manner that reaffirms how the character has been through hell and back in her extensive experiences of trying to land any kind of acting work in New York City, of course even a character with Hepburn's indomitable spirit wouldn't fluster her.
Rogers makes for a solid foil to Hepburn in early scenes of Stage Door while being equally convincing in later sequences where she has to portray Jean becoming closer to Terry. Those later portions of the story of Stage Door do suffer a bit from suddenly having Kay Hamilton take center stage in the story after being such a background presence for much of the film. The lead actors, including Andrea Leeds as Kay Hamilton, help sell the intended pathos of these third act sequences, but the lack of proper prior build-up for the character of Kay Hamilton doesn't make the tragedy-laced climax ring as successfully as the earlier comedic scenes of Terry Randall trying to wiggle her way into hearts of the other Footlights Club members.
But even that more impromptu story turn has its benefits. That dimly-lit scene where Kay, as if in a trance, walks up the stairs of the Footlights Club in silence while echoes of voices dance around in her head is remarkably chilling and tragically captures how distraught she is after Terry lands a lead role she had been trying to nab for so long. Another climactic scene where Terry gives a big post-show speech in honor of Kay is shockingly moving and a wonderful demonstration of Katharine Hepburn's skills as a dramatic performer. Plus, the final scene of Stage Door is a surprisingly poignant ode to how both the newly developed friendship between Terry and Jean as well as the Footlights Club will be like Old Man River in how they'll just keep rolling along.
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