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It came back last week in glossily finished celluloid, reshaped to Hollywood's uses by Play Doctors Anthony Veiller and Morrie Ryskind, superbly staged played acclaimed as a crushing rebuttal per se; of Kaufman-Ferber film-baiting. Not one to cry anything so banal as "Touche," Quipster Kaufman reputedly acknowledged the new Stage Door with dour originality. "Should have called it Screen Door," said he.
The Terry Randall of this new version is Katharine Hepburn. A stage-struck heiress, Terry arrives at the Footlight Club with a precise accent and pretty clothes, ambitious to be another Bernhardt. Replacing Hollywood as the villain is reliable Adolphe Menjou. playing the urbane Broadway Producer Anthony Powell, a man who has a coveted role in Enchanted April to bestow, and who is disposed toward mixing dalliance with casting problems. Linda Shaw (Gail Patrick), his early favorite, loses out to fiery Jean Maitland (Ginger Rogers). Terry outmaneuvers Jean, keeps Producer Powell on the level, wins the part, breaking the heart of Kaye Hamilton, who had never been able to show Powell what she could do.
As the Kaye Hamilton of the film, Andrea Leeds walks starry-eyed to her death in a scene which takes its place among the great expressionistic sequences of cinema legend. Kaye's despairing death transforms Terry into the great actress she has not been up to curtain time, leads to the tearful observation: "Does someone have to die to create an actress?"
Cinemagoers welcomed the return of Katharine Hepburn from farthingales and tippets, were agreeably surprised at Ginger Rogers' versatility. But the actress who nearly stole the show was Andrea Leeds. Graduate of the University of California at Los Angeles, tyro Leeds is 23, first appeared in films in a student production. Her chance came last year in Samuel Goldwyn's Come and Get It, another Edna Ferber contribution to the cinema. Her small part brought her fame because one day she had to kiss three men a total of 467 times during screen testing. Pressagents called her "Hollywood's Kiss Champion" (TIME. July 27. 1936), wangled page one breaks all over the U. S. with the story. As punishment for her refusal of a later part in Woman Chases Man, Mogul Goldwyn farmed her out to RKO Radio, quickly called her back from exile after her success there to participate in the Goldwyn Follies. Daughter of a mining engineer, her real name is Antoinette Lees. Between kisses and suicides she is a musician, writes publishable verse.
The Bride Wore Red (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). Few twists remain to the plot about Joan Crawford's brave but tortured heart and two boy friends. From the days of the mutely elemental struggles of the silent cinema, with lusties like John Gilbert and Ernest Torrence battling for her favor along Rum Row (Twelve Miles Out), through the promiscuous years of the early talkies (Laughing Sinners, This Modern Age), down to the whimsically urbane present (No More Ladies, The Last of Mrs. Cheyney), Miss Crawford has been the disciple of male multiplicity, the exponent of the huddle system in romance. With the matinee idols of each era grouped around her, she has flaunted her indecision in everything from a sarong to the latest Suzy.