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39-486: Stage Door is a 1937 American tragicomedy film directed by Gregory La Cava . Adapted from the 1936 play of the same name , it tells the story of several would-be actresses who live together in a boarding house at 158 West 58th Street in New York City . The film stars Katharine Hepburn , Ginger Rogers , Adolphe Menjou , Gail Patrick , Constance Collier , Andrea Leeds , Samuel S. Hinds and Lucille Ball . It

78-503: A dual ending. In this respect, a number of Greek and Roman plays , for instance Alcestis , may be called tragicomedies, though without any definite attributes outside of plot. The word itself originates with the Roman comic playwright Plautus , who coined the term ( tragicomoedia in Latin) somewhat facetiously in the prologue to his play Amphitryon . The character Mercury, sensing

117-415: A happy ending" eventually developed into melodrama , in which form it still flourishes. Landgartha (1640) by Henry Burnell , the first play by an Irish playwright to be performed in an Irish theatre, was explicitly described by its author as a tragicomedy. Critical reaction to the play was universally hostile, partly it seems because the ending was neither happy nor unhappy. Burnell in his introduction to

156-508: A movie star. Kay Hamilton does commit suicide, but for completely different reasons and not on an opening night. The film received very good reviews and was a moderate success at the box office. The reviewer in The Times wrote of January 3, 1938, after the film's London premiere at the Regal on December 31, 1937: Stories of life on the stage have always appealed to Hollywood: here success

195-669: A place steeped in human tragedy and suffering. Films including Life is Beautiful , Mary and Max , Parasite , Jojo Rabbit , The Banshees of Inisherin , Beau is Afraid , Robot Dreams , and Memoir of a Snail have been described as tragicomedies. Television series including Succession , Killing Eve , Breaking Bad , Better Call Saul , Fleabag , I May Destroy You , BoJack Horseman , South Park , Steven Universe Future , Moral Orel , Barry , Made for Love and The White Lotus have also been described as tragicomedies. Gregory La Cava Gregory La Cava (March 10, 1892 – March 1, 1952)

234-440: A result of the positive response to this performance, RKO immediately cast her opposite Cary Grant in the screwball comedy Bringing Up Baby (1938). Stage Door made a small profit of $ 81,000. After Kay commits suicide, there is a brief shot of her grave as part of the montage of the success of the play, which was once edited out on all TV showings and is not in the original videotape release (either VHS or Betamax). The shot

273-504: A room. The writers listened to the young actresses talking and joking off set during rehearsals and incorporated their style of talking into the film. Director Gregory La Cava also allowed the actresses to ad lib during filming. Hepburn's famous lines during the play within the film, "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," are from The Lake (1934),

312-447: A secondary way on how close the action comes to a death. But, as Eugene Waith showed, the tragicomedy Fletcher developed in the next decade also had unifying stylistic features: sudden and unexpected revelations, outré plots, distant locales, and a persistent focus on elaborate, artificial rhetoric. Some of Fletcher's contemporaries, notably Philip Massinger and James Shirley , wrote popular tragicomedies. Richard Brome also essayed

351-438: A tragic story was told with a happy or comic ending ( tragedia a lieto fine), which he thought were better suited for staged performances as opposed to tragedies with unhappy endings which he thought were better when read. Even more important was Giovanni Battista Guarini . Guarini's Il Pastor Fido , published in 1590, provoked a fierce critical debate in which Guarini's spirited defense of generic innovation eventually carried

390-680: A tragicomic impulse in modern theatre with Luigi Pirandello who influenced many playwrights including Samuel Beckett and Tom Stoppard. Also it can be seen in absurdist drama. Friedrich Dürrenmatt , the Swiss dramatist, suggested that tragicomedy was the inevitable genre for the twentieth century; he describes his play The Visit (1956) as a tragicomedy. Tragicomedy is a common genre in post- World War II British theatre, with authors as varied as Samuel Beckett , Tom Stoppard , John Arden , Alan Ayckbourn and Harold Pinter writing in this genre. Vladimir Nabokov 's postmodern 1962 novel Pale Fire

429-433: A wealthy Midwest family. Over the strong objections of her father, Henry Sims ( Samuel S. Hinds ), she is determined to try to fulfill her dreams. In the boarding house, Terry's only supporter is aging actress Anne Luther ( Constance Collier ), who appoints herself Terry's mentor and acting coach. When Powell sees Jean dancing, he decides to dump Linda. He arranges for Jean and her partner Annie ( Ann Miller ) to get hired for

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468-415: Is a film of unusual insight and characterization. (...) The dialogue is brilliant, with typical American point and brevity, but nearly always spiteful and cruel, for these girls are the product of a hard environment. Three stand out from among the rest: Miss Katharine Hepburn (...) Miss Ginger Rogers (...) Miss Andrea Leeds. Hepburn's four movies preceding Stage Door had been commercial failures. However, as

507-411: Is a tragicomedy preoccupied with Elizabethan drama. American writers of the metamodernist and postmodernist movements have made use of tragicomedy and/or gallows humor . A notable example of a metamodernist tragicomedy is David Foster Wallace 's 1996 magnum opus , Infinite Jest . Wallace writes of comedic elements of living in a halfway house (i.e. "some people really do look like rodents"),

546-439: Is for his work in sound films of the 1930s—especially comedies—that he is best known today. And though he did not always get credit, he also often had a hand in creating the screenplays for his films. Among the sound films he directed are: During the 1940s, his career floundered when his output dropped severely. He only officially directed one film after 1942, Living in a Big Way (1947). La Cava and his first wife, Beryl, had

585-411: Is sensational and meteoric, and failure equally sudden and dramatic. We know the formula by heart, and expect of our entertainment that it shall be rowdy, aggressive, and spectacular, culminating in the rise of the central character to fame in the bright lights of Broadway. Stage Door is rowdy and aggressive, and it does end in success for one of its characters and failure for another, but for all that it

624-677: The CBS Television series The Best of Broadway . It starred Rhonda Fleming , Elsa Lanchester , Diana Lynn , and Victor Moore . Tragicomedy There is no concise formal definition of tragicomedy from the classical age. It appears that the Greek philosopher Aristotle had something like the Renaissance meaning of the term (that is, a serious action with a happy ending) in mind when, in Poetics , he discusses tragedy with

663-591: The "living comic strips" they contained. La Cava's main fault as a producer and director was that his cartoons were too clearly animated comic strips, hampered by speech balloons when rival Bray Studio was creating more effective series with original characters. He was apparently aware of this fault, and he had his animators study Charlie Chaplin films to improve their timing and characterization. But he didn't have time to achieve very much, because in July 1918, Hearst's bankers caught up with him and International Film Service

702-710: The Footlights Club, a theatrical boarding house in New York. Her polished manners and superior attitude make her no friends among the rest of the aspiring actresses living there, particularly her new roommate, flippant, cynical dancer Jean Maitland ( Ginger Rogers ). From Terry's expensive clothing and her photograph of her elderly grandfather, Jean assumes she has obtained the former from her sugar daddy , just as fellow resident Linda Shaw ( Gail Patrick ) has from her relationship with influential theatrical producer Anthony Powell ( Adolphe Menjou ). In truth, Terry comes from

741-413: The day. Guarini's tragicomedy offered modulated action that never drifted too far either to comedy or tragedy, mannered characters, and a pastoral setting. All three became staples of continental tragicomedy for a century and more. In England, where practice ran ahead of theory, the situation was quite different. In the sixteenth century, "tragicomedy" meant the native sort of romantic play that violated

780-437: The film, replaced Gail Patrick as Linda Shaw. The radio broadcast was included as a bonus feature on the 2012 Turner Entertainment DVD release of the film. Stage Door was presented on CBS Radio again on December 5, 1941 on Philip Morris Playhouse . The 30-minute adaptation by Charles Martin starred Geraldine Fitzgerald as Terry Randall. On April 6, 1955, a 60-minute version of the play, adapted by Gore Vidal , aired on

819-514: The floor show of a nightclub he partly owns. He then starts dating Jean, who starts falling for him. Meanwhile, well-liked Kay Hamilton ( Andrea Leeds ) had great success and rave reviews in a play the year before but has had no work since and is running out of money. She clings desperately to the hope of landing the leading role in Powell's new play, Enchanted April . She finally gets an appointment to see Powell, only to have him cancel. She faints in

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858-470: The form, but with less success. And many of their contemporary writers, ranging from John Ford to Lodowick Carlell to Sir Aston Cockayne , made attempts in the genre. Tragicomedy remained fairly popular up to the closing of the theaters in 1642, and Fletcher's works were popular in the Restoration as well. The old styles were cast aside as tastes changed in the eighteenth century; the "tragedy with

897-471: The indecorum of the inclusion of both kings and gods alongside servants in a comedy, declares that the play had better be a "tragicomoedia": I will make it a mixture: let it be a tragicomedy. I don't think it would be appropriate to make it consistently a comedy, when there are kings and gods in it. What do you think? Since a slave also has a part in the play, I'll make it a tragicomedy...— Plautus , Amphitryon Two figures helped to elevate tragicomedy to

936-499: The law of writ and the liberty, these are the only men." Some aspects of this romantic impulse remain even in the work of more sophisticated playwrights: Shakespeare 's last plays, which may well be called tragicomedies, have often been called romances . By the early Stuart period, some English playwrights had absorbed the lessons of the Guarini controversy. John Fletcher 's The Faithful Shepherdess , an adaptation of Guarini's play,

975-586: The news. When Jean shows up unannounced, Terry sees the opportunity to save her friend from the philandering Powell. She pretends that Powell is trying to seduce her. It works. However, it makes things uncomfortable around the boarding house. Terry's landing on the plum part breaks Kay's heart. The inexperienced Terry is so woodenly bad during rehearsals that Powell tries to get out of his contract with Sims. On opening night, after she learns from Jean that Kay has committed suicide, Terry decides she cannot go on. Anne Luther tells her that she must, not just for herself and

1014-423: The play for which Dorothy Parker panned Hepburn's performance as "running the gamut of emotions from A to B." The movie has almost nothing to do with the play, except in a few character names, such as Kay Hamilton, Jean Maitland, Terry Randall, Linda Shaw, and Judith Canfield. In the play, Terry Randall is from a rural family whose father is a country doctor, and Jean Maitland is actually a shallow girl who becomes

1053-516: The printed edition of the play attacked his critics for their ignorance, pointing out that as they should know perfectly well, many plays are neither tragedy nor comedy, but "something between". Criticism that developed after the Renaissance stressed the thematic and formal aspects of tragicomedy, rather than plot. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing defined it as a mixture of emotions in which "seriousness stimulates laughter, and pain pleasure." Tragicomedy's affinity with satire and "dark" comedy have suggested

1092-435: The reception area, the result of malnutrition and disappointment. Seeing this, Terry barges into Powell's private office and berates him for his callousness. As a result, the other boarding house residents start to warm up to the newcomer. Terry's father secretly finances Enchanted April on the condition that Terry is given the starring role, hoping she will fail and return home. Powell invites Terry to his penthouse to break

1131-400: The status of a regular genre, by which is meant one with its own set of rigid rules. First was Giovanni Battista Giraldi Cinthio , a dramatist working in the mid-sixteenth century who developed a treatise on drama modeled on Roman comedies and tragedies as opposed to early Greek-based treatises that became the model for Italian dramatists at the time. He argued for a version of tragicomedy where

1170-414: The tradition of the theatre, but also for Kay. She does and gives a heartfelt performance. She and the play are a hit, much to the chagrin of her father, who is in the audience. At her curtain call , Terry gives a speech in tribute to her dead friend, and Terry and Jean are reconciled. The play remains a success after months, but Terry continues to board at the Footlights Club. A newcomer shows up looking for

1209-577: The unities of time, place, and action, that glibly mixed high- and low-born characters, and that presented fantastic actions. These were the features Philip Sidney deplored in his complaint against the "mungrell Tragy-comedie" of the 1580s, and of which Shakespeare's Polonius offers famous testimony: "The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individuable, or poem unlimited: Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light. For

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1248-628: Was a member of the Art Students' League . Around 1913, he started doing odd jobs at the Barré Studio . By 1915, he was an animator on the Animated Grouch Chasers series. Towards the end of 1915, William Randolph Hearst decided to create an animation studio to promote the comic strips printed in his newspapers. He called the new company International Film Service , and he hired La Cava to run it (for double what he

1287-615: Was an American film director of Italian descent best known for his films of the 1930s, including My Man Godfrey and Stage Door , which earned him nominations for Academy Award for Best Director . La Cava was born in Towanda, Pennsylvania . His father was a shoemaker, and the family moved to Rochester, New York. La Cava reported for the Rochester Evening News and studied at the Art Institute of Chicago . He

1326-676: Was making with Barré). La Cava's first employee was his co-worker at the Barré Studio, Frank Moser . Another was his fellow student in Chicago, Grim Natwick (later to achieve fame at Disney ). As he developed more and more of Hearst's comics into cartoon series, he came to put semi-independent units in charge of each, leading to the growth of individual styles. La Cava also had the significant advantage over other studios of an unlimited budget: Hearst's business sense completely broke down when it came to his Hearst-Vitagraph News Pictorial and

1365-413: Was now known), but La Cava was not, since Goldwyn-Bray had several producers of its own and La Cava was not interested in starting over. Instead, he moved west to Hollywood. By 1922, La Cava had become a live-action director of two-reel comedies, the direct competitor to animated films. Among the actors he directed in the silent era are: La Cava worked his way up to feature films in the silent era, but it

1404-481: Was produced and distributed by RKO Pictures . Eve Arden and Ann Miller , who became notable in later films, play minor characters. The film was adapted by Morrie Ryskind and Anthony Veiller from the play by Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman , but the play's storyline and the characters' names were almost completely changed for the movie, so much so in fact that Kaufman joked the film should be called "Screen Door". Terry Randall ( Katharine Hepburn ) moves into

1443-431: Was produced in 1608. In the printed edition, Fletcher offered a definition of the term, stating that: "A tragi-comedie is not so called in respect of mirth and killing, but in respect it wants deaths, which is enough to make it no tragedy, yet brings some neere it, which is inough to make it no comedie." Fletcher's definition focuses primarily on events: a play's genre is determined by whether or not people die in it, and in

1482-567: Was restored for the DVD and is now included in TV showings of the restored version. A 60-minute radio version of Stage Door was performed on Lux Radio Theatre on February 20, 1939, broadcast over the CBS Radio network. Ginger Rogers and Adolphe Menjou reprised their roles from the film, while Rosalind Russell replaced Katharine Hepburn as Terry Randall. Eve Arden, who played minor character Eve in

1521-448: Was shut down. Hearst still wanted his characters animated, so he licensed various studios to continue the IFS series. La Cava and most of the IFS staff got jobs with John Terry's studio (not surprising since John Terry himself was an IFS alumnus). This only lasted a few months before Terry's studio went out of business. The animators were immediately hired by Goldwyn-Bray (as Bray Productions

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