Play vs. Film: Stage Door

     Whenever I rummage around for my next read, a procedure that sometimes takes days, I may or may not remember to check out the dark, tucked-in-the-corner shelves in my house; but when I do, I always find something that causes me to think, "Oh, yeah, I forgot all about this one."

     I've watched the film Stage Door (1937, Katharine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers) countless times over the past Lord-knows-how-many years. My old hardbound copy of the play by Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman has been gathering dust on one of those remote shelves for well over a decade. So when I stumbled upon it the other day in the quest for my next read, I immediately thought of this blog series. Previously, I wrote "Play vs. Film" posts comparing the stage scripts of Same Time, Next Year, Crossing Delancey, Holiday, and The Time of the Cuckoo (retitled Summertime on film) with their screen versions.

     I will say right off: the film Stage Door bears little resemblance to its stage play counterpart. The fact that the principal writers of the screenplay were not Ferber and Kaufman, but Morrie Ryskind and Anthony Veiller, may have a lot to do with it. Both versions take place in a boarding house for actresses (the Footlights Club, a real place in New York City), they have characters in common, one of the characters commits suicide in both, and one of the characters leaves to become an ordinary housewife in both (but in the play she comes back to the Footlights Club, apparently having left her husband). But that's about as far as the resemblance goes. Which isn't altogether a bad thing.

     The primary relationship in the film is the one between Terry Randall (Katharine Hepburn) and her roommate Jean Maitland (Ginger Rogers). Their initial meeting, when Terry Randall arrives and moves into Jean's room, is probably my favorite scene in the whole film. It's filled with barbs and banter, each girl sizing the other up and trying to outdo her in quick wit and caustic comebacks. It is of course inevitable that they become close friends, comrades in the battle to scrape together a viable career on the stage. Jean comes to see the human being beneath Terry's society girl veneer and accepts her when she realizes she is sincere in her love for theater. Terry comes to see the vulnerability beneath Jean's streetwise exterior and learns that what she first mistook for cynicism was a mere defense. But all the boarders in this house for struggling actresses, consciously or not, hang on to each other for dear life, pooling their resources and sharing their clothing.

     In the play, Terry is already firmly ensconced in the house when the action begins; she is not a society girl, but the daughter of a hardworking small-town doctor and a general favorite among the boarders. Beautiful Jean leaves for Hollywood in the first act and goes on to become a bona fide movie star, though she can't act her way out of a tin can. So we are deprived of my favorite scene. It is Kaye Hamilton who is new girl and becomes Terry's roommate. Kaye is sweet but very closed-mouthed, reluctant to speak of anything about her personal life, but she is clearly hard up for funds and can barely support herself. She is not the truly gifted actress she is in the film; actually, Terry is the big talent from the start (there is no "the calla lilies are in bloom again" debacle in the play). In the play, after some coaxing from Terry, we eventually learn the reason for Kaye's reticence and why she has come to New York, whereas in the film, it is only hinted at.

     Another big difference from the film is that, in the play, Terry has two boyfriends—the first is a young, struggling, seemingly noble playwright with a leftist social conscience who "sells out" when one of his plays suddenly becomes a material and critical success. One of the minor characters describes him, "He's one of those fellows started out on a soapbox and ended up in a swimming pool" because he takes his big Broadway success and rides on it straight to Hollywood where he ends up writing B romances. Terry, who has supported him and helped him write his big play, is left high and dry.

     Terry's other amour is David Kingsley, a theater producer whose career has taken him to Hollywood but whose heart remains firmly entrenched in the theater. He is the man principally responsible for Jean's film career, but he knows that, while Jean is physically dazzling, Terry is the real actress. Jean does reappear in the third act, a full-fledged movie star whose "people" have set up a play for her to star in on Broadway and eventually in the prospective film version. The reasoning of these "picture people" is that theatergoers will come in droves to see the play simply because it boasts a movie star in its cast, not because said movie star can actually act.

     But I don't want to give away the whole play. I will just say in closing that if you love the film and are curious about the material upon which it was based (however loosely), then do read the play, because it will surprise you in many ways. The way the characters pace the dialogue in the film, sometimes even talking over each other in a very realistic way, can of course only be imagined when one reads the stage script.

     Ferber and Kaufman's play is an homage to the theater and all those who devote their lives to it, even if it means years and years of struggle and near starvation. Hollywood is the true nemesis of the piece, the tinsel and glitter factory that churns out cookie-cutter, albeit gorgeous, celebrities. The film version, as one would expect, excludes all allusions to this negative assessment of the industry, and gives us instead a simpler but equally compelling story of the lives of aspiring actresses and the friendships that are forged among them.