Danseuse étoile

Husband wife high wire act Freddy and Kitty Lorraine split up the team while she tends to having a child. When dad is killed in a fall she and the new baby move in with his staid New England parents. Buzz killers from the outset Kitty decides to take kid Shirley (Maureen O'Sullivan) on the road and push her into a stage career. With mom managing her career gets traction and she's soon headlining. Making a nostalgic visit to her old home in Boston she meets Warren (Franchot Tone) a painter and the two fall in love. When mom gets wind of it though she puts a stop to it as well as shake down his family for ten grand. Shirley is devastated and seeks to get out from under the influence of her mother.

Stage Mom is Alice Brady's picture as she cajoles and plays hardball with all comers to advance her daughter's career including pimping her to a prominent politician causing things to get hot enough to blow town and head for Europe. Brady's raspy voice suits her hard bargaining style well as she negotiates with some pretty tough customers along the way. O'Sullivan's Shirley is sharp innocent counterpoint to a point of insipid. She dances poorly and remains naive and childlike most of the picture while her suitors (Franchot Tone and Phillip Holmes) can only wish they had a backbone like Kitty.

The dance scenes are flat and uninspired as director Charles Brabin does his best to mask O'Sullivan's abysmal hoofing abilities with close-ups while at the same time offering some pretty racy pre code enforcement shots of the chorus replete in diaphanous costume.

There are a handful of well played scenes (particularly with C. Henry Gordon) in Stage Mother as Brady brawls her way to the top with tough talk and a touch of extortion void of sentiment but in the end it depends on sentimental tug to bring the curtain down and the limpid denouement forcing Kitty to go meekly simply reinforces the films mediocrity.

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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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.

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

For most of its length, a good, tough melodrama of a mama (Alice Brady, excellent) living her life through her reluctant daughter (Maureen O'Sullivan), pushing her into show business and scaring away her suitors, and with them any chance of happiness.

Co-screenwriter Bradford Ropes, who also wrote the novel on which "42nd Street" is based, knew this tawdry milieu intimately and wasn't afraid to expose its seamy sides; fortunately, the movie came just before the Production Code, so its portrayal of the shabbiness and moral compromises of the show biz doesn't pull its punches. It resembles "Gypsy" and the great early talkie "Applause," and in particular, its look at backstage and onstage vaudeville is historically fascinating. Its main shortcoming is a too-fast, too-tidy final reel that races unconvincingly toward a happy ending. Also, Maureen O'Sullivan, pretty and spirited as always, doesn't really convince as a young miss aiming to become the toast of Broadway. (She's dubbed, and that's clearly a double dancing in the long shots.) Till that rushed denouement, though, it's a brash and winning backstager, and Brady's uncompromising, unsympathetic performance stays with one for days.