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Stage Door
The play concerns a group of young girls who have come to New York to study acting and find jobs. The scene is Mrs. Orcutt's boarding house, where the hopes and ambitions of sixteen young women are revealed in scenes of entertaining comedy. Contrasted with this are the cases of the girl without talent and the elderly actress whose days are over. The central plot has to do with courageous Terry Randall, who fights against discouragement to a position in the theater where we are sure she will conquer. One of her fellow aspirants gives up in despair, one gets married, and one goes into pictures, but Terry, with the help of idealistic David Kingsley, sticks to her guns.
72 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1936
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About the author
Edna Ferber
287 books287 followersEdna Ferber was an American novelist, short story writer and playwright. Her novels were popular in her lifetime and included the Pulitzer Prize-winning So Big (1924), Show Boat (1926; made into the celebrated 1927 musical), Cimarron (1929; made into the 1931 film which won the Academy Award for Best Picture), and Giant (1952; made into the 1956 Hollywood movie).
Ferber was born August 15, 1885, in Kalamazoo, Michigan, to a Hungarian-born Jewish storekeeper, Jacob Charles Ferber, and his Milwaukee, Wisconsin-born wife, Julia (Neumann) Ferber. At the age of 12, after living in Chicago, Illinois and Ottumwa, Iowa, Ferber and her family moved to Appleton, Wisconsin, where she graduated from high school and briefly attended Lawrence University. She took newspaper jobs at the Appleton Daily Crescent and the Milwaukee Journal before publishing her first novel. She covered the 1920 Republican National Convention and 1920 Democratic National Convention for the United Press Association.
Ferber's novels generally featured strong female protagonists, along with a rich and diverse collection of supporting characters. She usually highlighted at least one strong secondary character who faced discrimination ethnically or for other reasons; through this technique, Ferber demonstrated her belief that people are people and that the not-so-pretty people have the best character.
Ferber was a member of the Algonquin Round Table, a group of wits who met for lunch every day at the Algonquin Hotel in New York.
Ferber was born August 15, 1885, in Kalamazoo, Michigan, to a Hungarian-born Jewish storekeeper, Jacob Charles Ferber, and his Milwaukee, Wisconsin-born wife, Julia (Neumann) Ferber. At the age of 12, after living in Chicago, Illinois and Ottumwa, Iowa, Ferber and her family moved to Appleton, Wisconsin, where she graduated from high school and briefly attended Lawrence University. She took newspaper jobs at the Appleton Daily Crescent and the Milwaukee Journal before publishing her first novel. She covered the 1920 Republican National Convention and 1920 Democratic National Convention for the United Press Association.
Ferber's novels generally featured strong female protagonists, along with a rich and diverse collection of supporting characters. She usually highlighted at least one strong secondary character who faced discrimination ethnically or for other reasons; through this technique, Ferber demonstrated her belief that people are people and that the not-so-pretty people have the best character.
Ferber was a member of the Algonquin Round Table, a group of wits who met for lunch every day at the Algonquin Hotel in New York.
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
September 28, 2025
"It'd be a terrific innovation if you could get your minds stretched a little further than the next wisecrack."
- Edna Ferber, Stage Door
Great play that I adored, especially because I was in it, when I was a teenager at my school. The plot was a blast. It is all about a group of actresses in NYC trying to make it big. It's a fun play and worth reading.
I know things have changed so much since this was written but I can guess it must have been, in its way, nice to share a place with more than a dozen other females, all of whom are obsessed with making it in the same industry. On the one hand,it would create all sorts of competition but on the other, who best to understand the little disappointments and the huge heartbreaks? All the ladies share a common bond. And as witty and fun as the play is it also succeeds in showing the superficiality of the whole movie making process as well as being an homage to Theatre. Highly recommended.
- Edna Ferber, Stage Door
Great play that I adored, especially because I was in it, when I was a teenager at my school. The plot was a blast. It is all about a group of actresses in NYC trying to make it big. It's a fun play and worth reading.
I know things have changed so much since this was written but I can guess it must have been, in its way, nice to share a place with more than a dozen other females, all of whom are obsessed with making it in the same industry. On the one hand,it would create all sorts of competition but on the other, who best to understand the little disappointments and the huge heartbreaks? All the ladies share a common bond. And as witty and fun as the play is it also succeeds in showing the superficiality of the whole movie making process as well as being an homage to Theatre. Highly recommended.
December 30, 2025
Stage Door, based on the play by Edna Ferber
Nine out of 10
This is a note on the film based on the play by Edna Ferber
Katharine Hepburn might be called the Meryl Streep of her age, for those who are unfamiliar with what is an illustrious, majestic name, the winner of 4 (four!) Academy Awards and such a legend that she has now quite a few films were some grand artist of the present plays her – for instance, Cate Blanchett is remarkable as Hepburn in The Aviator, directed by Martin Scorsese and with Leonardo DiCaprio in the leading role.
In Stage Door, the royal highness of cinema seems to play herself, at least in the timeframe wherein her character, Terry Randall, is the determined, brave, inventive, humorous, strong, role model, formidable upcoming actress that would eventually have a phase in which she is more subdued, humble, modest, emotional, delicate, showing that Hepburn has the complete mastery over all the panel of shades, for any imaginable character, probably…no, surely!
Miss Randall is a rich girl, but she decides to try her luck and, in opposition to the wishes of her father, she wants to see if she has enough talent to be an artist, without help from her money, using, or abusing influence, illegitimate ends to get to the top.
It is nevertheless a daunting, if not impossible task and the title of the motion picture refers to the painful access through the Stage Door and into the light of the projectors…in his autobiography, The Moon is a Balloon (http://realini.blogspot.com/2019/08/t...), David Niven, another brilliant actor of the last century, explains how troublesome it had been for him to get a role and that there were signs in Hollywood trying to deter candidates, stating that for every person who gets a role something like 1,000 had been rejected.
Another passage from the Stage Door reminds one of The Producers, where the main characters plan a failed performance in order to make a huge profit through a swindle and though there is no such scheme in this movie, the father desires so much that his daughter would renounce acting that he would be as happy as The Producers were she to perform badly in her first role…
Another supremo of the Golden Age of Cinema, Ginger Rogers, acts sometimes against Katharine Hepburn, though the two have a rather friendly relationship for some time, the way Terry maneuvers would antagonize Jean Maitland, another aspiring star, portrayed by Ms. Rogers.
The producer Anthony Powell – in an interesting coincidence we can suppose, he has the name of a genius, author of the Absolute Magnum Opus A Dance to the Music of Time - http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/04/b... - tries to play an early version of Harvey Weinstein, though without the efficiency of the now infamous monster, who had been responsible somewhat counterintuitively for some wonderful films, but then Paul Johnson, in his marvelous The Intellectuals, exposes the fact that some of the greatest minds of history, like Tolstoy, Ibsen, Rousseau and others, have proved in one way or another to be more than obnoxious men… Jean-Jacques Rousseau left his children at the door of an orphanage, at a time when something like nine out of ten would die…
Terry interferes to save Jean, but in the process, the latter is infuriated with what looks to her like a serious betrayal…
One last word about the author of the play that inspired the adaptation for the big screen, that is also theatrical, Edna Ferber is the author of another marvelous work, So Big - http://realini.blogspot.com/2018/06/s...
Nine out of 10
This is a note on the film based on the play by Edna Ferber
Katharine Hepburn might be called the Meryl Streep of her age, for those who are unfamiliar with what is an illustrious, majestic name, the winner of 4 (four!) Academy Awards and such a legend that she has now quite a few films were some grand artist of the present plays her – for instance, Cate Blanchett is remarkable as Hepburn in The Aviator, directed by Martin Scorsese and with Leonardo DiCaprio in the leading role.
In Stage Door, the royal highness of cinema seems to play herself, at least in the timeframe wherein her character, Terry Randall, is the determined, brave, inventive, humorous, strong, role model, formidable upcoming actress that would eventually have a phase in which she is more subdued, humble, modest, emotional, delicate, showing that Hepburn has the complete mastery over all the panel of shades, for any imaginable character, probably…no, surely!
Miss Randall is a rich girl, but she decides to try her luck and, in opposition to the wishes of her father, she wants to see if she has enough talent to be an artist, without help from her money, using, or abusing influence, illegitimate ends to get to the top.
It is nevertheless a daunting, if not impossible task and the title of the motion picture refers to the painful access through the Stage Door and into the light of the projectors…in his autobiography, The Moon is a Balloon (http://realini.blogspot.com/2019/08/t...), David Niven, another brilliant actor of the last century, explains how troublesome it had been for him to get a role and that there were signs in Hollywood trying to deter candidates, stating that for every person who gets a role something like 1,000 had been rejected.
Another passage from the Stage Door reminds one of The Producers, where the main characters plan a failed performance in order to make a huge profit through a swindle and though there is no such scheme in this movie, the father desires so much that his daughter would renounce acting that he would be as happy as The Producers were she to perform badly in her first role…
Another supremo of the Golden Age of Cinema, Ginger Rogers, acts sometimes against Katharine Hepburn, though the two have a rather friendly relationship for some time, the way Terry maneuvers would antagonize Jean Maitland, another aspiring star, portrayed by Ms. Rogers.
The producer Anthony Powell – in an interesting coincidence we can suppose, he has the name of a genius, author of the Absolute Magnum Opus A Dance to the Music of Time - http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/04/b... - tries to play an early version of Harvey Weinstein, though without the efficiency of the now infamous monster, who had been responsible somewhat counterintuitively for some wonderful films, but then Paul Johnson, in his marvelous The Intellectuals, exposes the fact that some of the greatest minds of history, like Tolstoy, Ibsen, Rousseau and others, have proved in one way or another to be more than obnoxious men… Jean-Jacques Rousseau left his children at the door of an orphanage, at a time when something like nine out of ten would die…
Terry interferes to save Jean, but in the process, the latter is infuriated with what looks to her like a serious betrayal…
One last word about the author of the play that inspired the adaptation for the big screen, that is also theatrical, Edna Ferber is the author of another marvelous work, So Big - http://realini.blogspot.com/2018/06/s...
February 1, 2016
High School Drama teachers ought to keep this play in mind which has lots of female parts thus making it ideal for a student production. The level of sophistication is also well suited teenage actors in that the characters have sufficient depth to offer a challenge to their developing skills.
The play itself is simply a compilation of all known clichés about life in the theatre as it contains starving actors fiercely competing for parts, banal dialogues, two-faced critics, vulgar audiences, roués who prey on innocent young actresses, and bankrupt troupes. In other words, Stage Door states that there is no business like show business with extraordinary energy and occasionally great wit.
Applaud loudly if your kid lands a part in the play; otherwise, you are well-advised to stay home.
The play itself is simply a compilation of all known clichés about life in the theatre as it contains starving actors fiercely competing for parts, banal dialogues, two-faced critics, vulgar audiences, roués who prey on innocent young actresses, and bankrupt troupes. In other words, Stage Door states that there is no business like show business with extraordinary energy and occasionally great wit.
Applaud loudly if your kid lands a part in the play; otherwise, you are well-advised to stay home.
July 7, 2022
THE play for starving theatre artists. This is their anthem, their battle cry. Even if you never see it, you should read the script-- incidentally, the movie is so substantially different they nicknamed it "Screen Door".
January 15, 2019
Fast read. I read it because I watched "Stage Door" with Ginger Rogers, Katherine Hepburn, etc recently and the box said Kaufman found it so altered they should have called it "Screen Door." I can see why. There are maybe 1-2 lines that made it into the movie out of the whole play, and only 1-2 character bits as well. The movie actually had a lot of really wonderful lines, real zingers, whereas the play had only one or two. So in that regard, to my surprise, the movie was better than the play. On the other hand, the movie had characters who go back on their principles in a way that made no sense, overly dramatic scenes too over the top, and a long plot thread of a white male producer seducer of vulnerable young women that was hard to watch. The play, blessedly, had none of that plot, and takes place entirely inside the Footlights Club where the women live.
It is a play that reads very much of its time if you're a theater outsider. From the other reviews, I gather it still resonates strongly with people inside the theater world. I agree with the reviewer who recommended it for schools that need a nearly all-female play, and that there isn't a pressing need to go see it unless you have a specific reason to do so, such as you know someone in the cast or you're studying Kaufman.
It is a play that reads very much of its time if you're a theater outsider. From the other reviews, I gather it still resonates strongly with people inside the theater world. I agree with the reviewer who recommended it for schools that need a nearly all-female play, and that there isn't a pressing need to go see it unless you have a specific reason to do so, such as you know someone in the cast or you're studying Kaufman.
February 11, 2022
All flash, no substance. I'll bet seeing it staged is great: the cast flying around, talking over each other, intertwining their stories, exciting the audience with their comings and goings. But on the page it's disjointed and unpleasant. Issues abound: for one, the women of the play aren't given sufficient characterization, leading them all to blend together. Then there's the plot, which gives the reader nothing to latch on to. Honestly, I only realized which girl was the protagonist and what the main conflict of the story was about halfway through. The play is also terribly dated. The theme of perseverance, of sticking to something meaningful instead of taking the cheap easy way out, certainly still rings true, but it's not enough to justify digging this one out of the dustbin.
February 10, 2024
wonderful
February 16, 2025
Loved the movie version. Formative, especially Hepburn.
July 7, 2023
Really found myself getting attached to the main character Terry and her journey.
June 30, 2014
One snippet of dialogue has two struggling actresses discussing how another actress of dubious talent managed to get cast in the play they just attended. “Sure, everybody on Broadway know,” says one. “The trouble with us is we’ve been hanging on to our virtue.” This seems to be the main concern with the, as many as sixteen, young ladies who board at The Footlights Club, not to mention any of the gentleman who come a-calling. Olga, the pianist chaffs at playing tin pan alley after having studied classical technique for fifteen years under Kolijinsky. Kaye is fleeing from a dream gone sour. Louise trades her dreams for the domestic life. Terry and Jean wrestle with the allure of Hollywood vs. the purity of live theater.
Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman deftly incorporate several side stories that enich the primary tale of Terry Randall’s pilgrimage. What may seem like a dated story, coming from 1936, still has relevance for today.
Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman deftly incorporate several side stories that enich the primary tale of Terry Randall’s pilgrimage. What may seem like a dated story, coming from 1936, still has relevance for today.
August 11, 2017
A fun slice of life at a depression-era boarding house for down on their luck actresses. So many lovely lady characters here that you can tell would be fun to play (Olga was my favourite). I don't mind the meandering plot line, but I was a bit dismayed when the plot I was most invested in was awkwardly dropped with the end of Act Two, Scene One, but I imagine this is something that is corrected when staged.
March 6, 2016
This is the literal struggle of a Broadway actor trying to be noticed. All aspiring actors can relate. Doing this play in school next week and playing as Ellen Fenwick, not a huge role but like I said this play is about the struggle of at least getting a role you want or a huge role.
January 19, 2011
ok story of wanna be actresses in NY
May 2, 2012
Period show business play that still holds truths for today.
May 22, 2012
I don't think i would have liked it nearly as well if I hadn't seen the Katherine Hepburn film. It's actually much better with the movie running in the back of one's head.
November 14, 2013
Currently in this play. I'm playing Big Mary!
July 19, 2014
Lots of good female parts and witty dialogue. It's different from the Katherine Hepburn film, but still a good story.
January 4, 2017
Pretty cute for the most part. I liked Terry Randall! :)
April 5, 2020
Confusing but funny(?)
December 28, 2011
'Comedic' play. Couldn't stop reading! Lovely descriptions.
Read
February 16, 2016I was Little Mary in a high school production!
March 28, 2016
read it as I'm little mary in a school production
April 11, 2017
This is an old stage play, with cultural references that modern audiences might not be familiar with. The plus side to this script is that it has a LOT of female roles, most of them being young female roles.
The down side is that it is rather slow, with concepts that present day culture wouldn't understand or agree with.
The down side is that it is rather slow, with concepts that present day culture wouldn't understand or agree with.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews