Danseuse étoile

If you find yourself humming the songs from Gypsy after seeing this film you can't help it. What Alice Brady does with the title role in Stage Mother makes what Ethel Merman did on stage and Rosalind Russell on the big screen as Mama Rose would make Mama blush.

Left with a baby daughter to raise after her husband is killed during a performance of their high wire act, Brady takes the little girl to her in-laws in Boston where they still frowned on associating with the theatrical profession. She can't provide so for a while she leaves the girl with the in-laws and takes up with fellow performer Ted Healy.

But eventually Brady quits the stage for the business end of show business working for a booking agent. And when she discovers that her daughter who grows up to be Maureen O'Sullivan and has talent, watch out world.

Watching this film all I thought of was how unfortunate Gypsy wasn't written two generations earlier. What Brady could have done with Mama Rose.

Sad to say that the film is spoiled by a really bad ending which I won't reveal. Look for good performances by Franchot Tone and Phillips Holmes as a pair of callow youths O'Sullivan takes up with. Holmes comes with a title as well. Also if you look quick you'll see Larry Fine of the Three Stooges in a small part.

Snappy before the Code dialog and a great performance by Brady are wasted in an unreal climax.

Kitty Lorraine (Alice Brady) was one of those parents that drives their children to be something they may or may not want to be. Kitty was in the entertainment biz so she wanted her daughter, Shirley (Maureen O'Sullivan), to be in the entertainment biz. As a result, she dominated her life. She made every decision for her and had her whole life mapped out. She would live vicariously through her daughter, and she was indicative of millions of other parents out there.

We tend to hear about the sports parents, or the stage parents because their children become famous and let the world know about their upbringing. We don't hear about those sports parents or stage parents whose children never made it big. We also don't hear about the doctor parents, lawyer parents, or other career parents who drive their children just as hard.

Shirley didn't have a normal childhood, and what's worse is that when she became a young adult, she was just as attached to her mother as when she was a child. It's like once the parents get their hooks into their children they never let them go.

I thought "Stage Mother" was spot on. The movie focused on lost love due to mothering which was following with the sentiments of that era. If a (s)mother(er) was going to make her daughter miss out on anything back then it would be love, not another career or simply being happy. Shirley's happiness had to be directly attributable to the man she fell in love with and it would've been sacreligious to think her happiness came from some other source.

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Flying trapeze swinger Alice Brady (as Katherine "Kitty" Lorraine) is grounded when she becomes pregnant, then takes the baby girl to go live with her husband's family in Boston, Massachusetts. Eventually, with encouragement from comedian Ted Healy (as Ralph Martin), Ms. Brady returns to the vaudeville stage. When her daughter grows up to be gawky Maureen O'Sullivan (as Shirley), the now older Brady makes pretty Ms. Sullivan over as the leggy star of a successful Busby Berkeley-type chorus girls show.

"Stage Mother" attempts to convey some seedy theatrical realities, but they are hesitant and humorous instead of dramatic. Writer Bradford Ropes helped adapt his original novel, but obviously had to tone down much the sexual content; what's left is a little silly. Two attractive young men, painter Franchot Tone and cruiser Phillips Holmes, court pretty O'Sullivan. Brady slices through the leading role. A highlight is the production number for "Beautiful Girl", which effectively celebrates the female form.

****** Stage Mother (9/20/33) Charles Brabin ~ Alice Brady, Maureen O'Sullivan, Franchot Tone, Phillips Holmes

This is one of the MGM feature films Ted Healy did, while still with Howard, Fine and Howard. Along with Healy, Larry Fine has a cameo, as a music store customer. That was an interesting scene because, in record stores in 1933, to sell records, live singers would sing samples of the song and charge 50 cents for the actual song on a record. It's the 1930s version of going to iTunes. In Stage Mother (1933), a pregnant theater-singer loses her trapeze artist husband, in a tragic accident. I wasn't ready for that. It was a good start to this film. Although, when the doomed husband landed on the ground, you could clearly see the giant mattress he safely lands on. In the next shot, he's lying on a hard stage floor. This was a technical mistake, that could have been fixed, even in 1933. Later on in the film, after the baby has grown to three years old, the mother Kitty Lorraine (Alice Brady), has to give the kid up to the in-laws, because the theater life isn't a place for a child. Healy, who's character, Ralph Martin, a friend of Kitty's, goes after her quickly, with desires for marriage. They go off, get married, make it through things, for about a decade and then Martin becomes a drunk, that ruins their theater act. This is an eerie sequence of events, considering the real-life story, that happened to Ted Healy in his real life.

The crazy life of a theater performer in the 1930s, is the main drive of the plot. The kid grows up to be Maureen O'Sullivan. Yes, that Maureen O'Sullivan. The one, who would go on to play Jane, in six of the Johnny Weissmuller, Tarzan films. After staying with her grand parents for a number of years, Shirley is reunited with her mother, Kitty. She is 16 years old and this is the point O'Sullivan steps in for her character. In fact, I was impressed with the way the filmmakers made-up 22 year old O'Sullivan, to age from 16 to her 30s. So, stage Mother wants her daughter to be a dancer. An idea, Shirley isn't to keen about, but accepts the direction her life is about to go in, thus setting up a possible Mommy Dearest scenario. Fortunately, Shirley will age to a point, that the Mommy Dearest phase doesn't fester.

When Shirley goes for her first try-out, the collection of kids routines were pretty funny. I did notice some bad edits in Stage Mother (1933), even by 1933 standards, but the camera work was really nice. 55 minutes into the film, Shirley breaks up sadly, with her man she is seeing and minutes later, does a great show, with some amazing sets, created for the dance numbers. Some may question moments of the acting in the movie, but I liked C. Henry Gordon as Ricco. The film ends kind of quickly and abruptly, plus there's a uneasy feeling, that things didn't go the way you thought they would. The happy music, playing out to the film's end, doesn't hide the real anguish behind Shirley's eyes. Did Mommy Dearest actually win? Stage Mother (1933), is still a cinematic artifact, from an earlier time. I thought it was cool. It's not a great film, but still, fairly good.

6.3 (D+ MyGrade) = 6 IMDB.

STAGE MOTHER is almost a great film, starring Alice Brady as a so-so Vaudevillian who pushes her daughter (Maureen O'Sullivan) into "the business" when it's clear she can't make it on her own. As in Applause (1929), we see the seedy side of the business with lots of backstage scenes. Film starts out with pregnant Kitty (Brady) watching her husband do an aerial act that goes bad. After she has the baby she goes to "his people" in Boston and is grudgingly taken in by the stereotypical Boston family. Eventually she can't stand it and moves out, leaving the kid. Years later she gets the kid back and pushes her into dancing lessons etc. Of course she becomes a star. She's preyed upon by men (Ben Alexander) and has romances with a couple guys (Franchot Tone and Phillips Holmes) before the end credits.

Brady is great as the ferocious mother whose life centers on controlling her daughter while she lives off her. O'Sullivan (looking very busty indeed) is very good until she's supposed to be this dancing and singing mega star. O'Sullivan can't do either, so it's long shots of some other performer while O'Sullivan smiles sweetly in the close-ups. Tone and Holmes are fine as the romancers. Ted Healy plays a ham comic and the second husband. Others include Russell Hardie as Fred, Larry Fine (minus More and Curly) as a store customer, Lillian Harmer as the Boston mother, and C. Henry Gordon as the hood. No IMDb info on who plays the old maid sister or the auditioning kid singer.

Songs include "Beautiful Girl," which also showed up that same year in GOING Hollywood and the infectious "Dancing on a Rainbow," which is a big production number. This MGM production has the look and feel of a Warners backstage musical, which in this case is a good thing.