jbacardi

Sat last night and watched Stage Door on TCM. Enjoyed the heck out of it! I'm sure most of you are familiar with the basic story, but if you're like me and have always heard of it but have never seen it, here it is in a nutshell: A boardinghouse full of aspiring actresses and their trials and tribulations as they try to make it on the Great White Way. Boasting a stellar ensemble cast including a still-young Katherine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, Lucille Ball, and others, it was an hour and a half of fast-talking, wise-cracking dames with the occasional song-and-dance routine until the suddenly tragic end, which was remarkably affecting considering how much it's been parodied. Hepburn's performance had more layers than an onion...

But I'll tell ya- the main attraction for me, and the reason why I kept watching, was Rogers, whom I had always thought of as Fred Astaire's dance partner, kind of a Allen to Fred's Burns, and boy, I couldn't have been more wrong as it turns out. She was wonderful in what I read was her first dramatic role without Astaire, trading barbs and one-liners with Ball, Hepburn, and her rival Gail Patrick and delivering her lines with an amused/bemused smirk. Plus, she's another of those gorgeous blondes from the 30's and 40's that I seem to have such a soft spot for (cf. Priscilla Lane, Ann Sothern). Check it:



Haven't been watching TCM as much as I did there for a few years; they show a ton of excellent films, but I'm kinda getting to the point where I'm a bit burned out, I've seen so many of them so often. Nice to know I can get taken by surprise like that once in a while...