Stage Door
After skimming the talk above, I decided to go for it. I mean, Katherine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers and Lucille Ball in the same film? Then adding in Eve Arden and Phyllis Kennedy to support? It must be rollicking!
You named Phyllis Kennedy, and I had to look her up. I know her work, but until now not her name.
And it is. A pretty smart script, Gold Diggers of 1933 without the music and an ending we wouldn't expect, it is full of fast talking' wise crackin' too smart for their own good women, just the way I like it.
I like Hepburn's observation that they're all so consumed by making wisecracks instead of trying to get work.
Then when Rogers and Hepburn are in a room alone, the wit is so sharp, I thought they were juggling knives at first.
I swim in this era of movies and that's one of the best written and performed scenes from this time.
The casting couch scenes were a wonderful two subversions of a trope, and I thought Weinstein would harm those scenes, but instead I can see him getting his comeuppance.
Adolphe Menjou is an actor you think would be typecast, but I've seen him play a wide range, including the original Walter Burns in The Front Page. (Cary Grant's role in His Girl Friday.) His butler, Franklin Pangborn, I saw in a documentary on character actors where Edgar Wright cited him as his favorite. He usually plays Hotel Managers who raise an eyebrow in suspicion, but I think this is his best work. He lives up to the hype of his ability to tiptoe backwards out of a room.
Unfortunately, I think that while Andrea Leads hit exactly the right tone and Rogers became appropriately demure, Hepburn couldn't carry it to the end. In my opinion, she missed the proper tone and pulled me right out of the film when I was ready to go through it. Now that I read the notes from Sandy and 1SO, I see that I'm in the minority here, but I calls it like I sees it.
Curious if you can pinpoint where she falters for you, though I can understand if you can't. I questioned her decision
to stay at the ratty Footlights Club, especially when she didn't seem to be doing anything to improve it and the tenants. (Lucille Ball did more in flirting the butcher into promising to sneak some chicken into the lamb.)
Ginger Rogers is starting to become my female Jimmy Stewart, the person I will always watch just because she's in the film.
When the Unspooled podcast talked about Swing Time they were really blown away by Ginger Rogers, even though the Musicals are typically Astaire's domain. It's true though, and I continue to find obscure films where Rogers delights.