Stage Door is a 1937 American tragicomedy film directed by Gregory La Cava. Adapted from the 1936 play of the same name, it tells the story of several would-be actresses who live together in a boarding house at 158 West 58th Street in New York City. The film stars Katharine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, Adolphe Menjou, Gail Patrick, Constance Collier, Andrea Leeds, Samuel S. Hinds and Lucille Ball. It was produced and distributed by RKO Pictures. Eve Arden and Ann Miller, who became notable in later films, play minor characters.
Ginger Rogers was an American actress, dancer and singer during the Golden Age of Hollywood. She won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her starring role in Kitty Foyle (1940), and performed during the 1930s in RKO's musical films with Fred Astaire. Her career continued on stage, radio and television throughout much of the 20th century.
Heaven Can Wait is a 1943 Technicolor American supernatural comedy film produced and directed by Ernst Lubitsch. The screenplay was by Samson Raphaelson based on the play Birthday by Ladislaus Bus-Fekete. The music score was by Alfred Newman and the cinematography by Edward Cronjager.
Bachelor Mother (1939) is an American romantic comedy film directed by Garson Kanin, and starring Ginger Rogers, David Niven, and Charles Coburn. The screenplay was written by Norman Krasna from an Academy Award-nominated story by Felix Jackson written for the 1935 Austrian-Hungarian film Little Mother. With a plot full of mistaken identities, Bachelor Mother is a light-hearted treatment of the otherwise serious issues of child abandonment.
The year 1938 in film involved some significant events.
Helen Phyllis Shipman was an American singer, dancer and actress who starred in various Broadway musicals, in musical comedies in vaudeville, and in films.
Beulah Bondi was an American character actress; she often played eccentric mothers and later grandmothers and wives, although she was known for numerous other roles. She began her acting career as a young child in theater, and after establishing herself as a Broadway stage actress in 1925, she reprised her role in Street Scene for the 1931 film version.
The Devil and Miss Jones is a 1941 American comedy film directed by Sam Wood and starring Jean Arthur, Robert Cummings, and Charles Coburn. Its plot follows a department store tycoon who goes undercover in one of his Manhattan shops to ferret union organizers, but instead becomes involved in the employees' personal lives.
Of Human Hearts is a 1938 American Drama Western film directed by Clarence Brown and starring Walter Huston, James Stewart and Beulah Bondi. Stewart plays a proud and ungrateful son who rebels against his preacher father and neglects his poverty-stricken mother. Bondi was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
John Elmer Carson, known as Jack Carson, was a Canadian-born American film actor. Carson often played the role of comedic friend in films of the 1940s and 1950s, including The Strawberry Blonde (1941) with James Cagney and Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) with Cary Grant. He appeared in such dramas as Mildred Pierce (1945), A Star is Born (1954), and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958). He worked for RKO and MGM, but most of his notable work was for Warner Bros.
Flying Down to Rio is a 1933 American pre-Code RKO musical film famous for being the first screen pairing of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, although lead actors Dolores del Río and Gene Raymond received top billing. Among the featured players are Franklin Pangborn and Eric Blore. The songs in the film were written by Vincent Youmans (music), Gus Kahn and Edward Eliscu (lyrics), with musical direction and additional music by Max Steiner. During the 7th Academy Awards, the film was nominated for the new category of Best Original Song for "Carioca", but it lost to "The Continental" from The Gay Divorcee, the next Astaire and Rogers film.
The Unholy Wife is a 1957 Technicolor film noir crime film produced and directed by John Farrow at RKO Radio Pictures, but released by Universal Pictures as RKO was in the process of ceasing its film activities. The film features Diana Dors, Rod Steiger, Tom Tryon and Beulah Bondi. The screenplay was written by William Durkee and Jonathan Latimer
Tender Comrade is a 1943 black-and-white film released by RKO Radio Pictures, showing women on the home front living communally while their husbands are away at war.
James Ellison was an American film actor who appeared in nearly 70 films from 1932 to 1962.
Carefree is a 1938 American musical comedy film directed by Mark Sandrich and starring Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers and Ralph Bellamy. With a plot similar to screwball comedies of the period, Carefree is the shortest of the Astaire-Rogers films, featuring only four musical numbers. Carefree is often remembered as the film in which Astaire and Rogers shared a long on-screen kiss at the conclusion of their dance to "I Used to Be Color Blind," all previous kisses having been either quick pecks or simply implied.
The Tammy movies are a series of four light-hearted American films about a naive young lady from Mississippi. They were produced by Universal between 1957 and 1967, and based on the character created in Cid Ricketts Sumner's 1948 book Tammy Out of Time.
Kitty Foyle, subtitled The Natural History of a Woman, is a 1940 drama film starring Ginger Rogers, Dennis Morgan, and James Craig, based on Christopher Morley's 1939 bestseller Kitty Foyle. Rogers won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of the title character, and the dress she wore in the film became known as a Kitty Foyle dress.
Tom, Dick and Harry is a 1941 American comedy film directed by Garson Kanin and starring Ginger Rogers, George Murphy, Alan Marshal, Phil Silvers, and Burgess Meredith. It was produced and released by RKO Radio Pictures. The screen play written by Paul Jarrico, Rogers was working on the film when she was awarded the Oscar as Best Actress for her 1940 performance in Kitty Foyle. It was her first film released after her Oscar win. It was remade as The Girl Most Likely (1957), a musical which was also the last film released by RKO.
Lucky Partners is a 1940 American romantic comedy film starring Ronald Colman and Ginger Rogers. Directed by Lewis Milestone for RKO Radio Pictures, it is based on the 1935 Sacha Guitry film Good Luck. The picture was the only film pairing of Colman and Rogers, and Rogers' eleventh and final film written by Allan Scott.
The Captain Is a Lady is a 1940 American comedy film directed by Robert B. Sinclair and written by Henry Clark, adapted from the play by Rachel Crothers. The film stars Charles Coburn, Beulah Bondi, Virginia Grey, Helen Broderick, Billie Burke and Dan Dailey. It was released on June 21, 1940, by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
