Stage Door

Stage Door (1936), a play by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber. [Music Box Theatre, 159 perf.] While boarding at the Footlights Club, a home for aspiring young actresses, Terry Randall ( Margaret Sullavan) finds her loyalty to the theatre sorely tested. Her fiancé, the radical playwright Keith Burgess ( Richard Kendrick), is tired of living “on bread and cocoa for days at a time,” so he abandons her and the stage for a lucrative film offer, as does a sexy but untalented fellow resident. Another girl commits suicide after being fired from a part. But it is a motion picture scout, David Kingsley ( Onslow Stevens), who urges Terry to have the courage of her convictions. She does, thereby winning a juicy role and David as well. Most critics compared the Sam H. Harris mounting unfavorably with earlier Kaufman‐Ferber collaborations, The Royal Family and Dinner at Eight, but enjoyed reading certain parts as identifiable caricatures, such as Keith Burgess, who mirrored the history of playwright Clifford Odets.