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29 Q3 2017 / CINEMONTAGE THIS QUARTER IN FILM HISTORY the multiple, overlapping conversations. Late in the movie, Cass creates a remarkable sound montage for Leeds' last scene as the talented yet forgotten Kay Hamilton. As she walks up the stairs after giving Hepburn advice for her opening night, she hears Hepburn leaving and the others in the sitting room below, the sounds of which are mixed with the echoes of memories of her triumphant opening and the rain coming down outside. This surely contributed to Leeds' Oscar nomination for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. Script changes continued throughout production. La Cava brought in Godfrey co-writer Morrie Ryskind — who had also written the Marx Brothers' A Night at the Opera (1935) with Stage Door playwright Kaufman — to revise Veiller's screenplay. Day by day, director and writer rewrote each scene as they came to it to ensure the spontaneity La Cava demanded. Then, night after night, La Cava would consult three uncredited writers for more outlooks to get sparkling, "off-the-cuff " dialogue: Hollywood old-timers S.K. Lauren and William Slavens McNutt, and newcomer George Seaton. Unfortunately, another factor fueling the director's style was his alcoholism, in the form of Earl Grey tea spiked with gin. Producer Berman told Hepburn biographer Charles Higham, "Greg got drunk all through the picture; he fell off the podium of the Biltmore Theatre in downtown Los Angeles while we were shooting a scene." One other uncredited contributor to the movie's stage authenticity was long-time Astaire collaborator Hermes Pan, who choreographed all of the Astaire/Rogers films and much more in a career spanning five decades. He directed Stage Door's dance sequences, including the duets with Rogers and Miller. An editor since 1923 and with RKO since 1931, William Hamilton cut the picture as the scenes came in. Regularly assigned major projects — from the epic western Cimarron (1931), Morning Glory (1933) with Hepburn in her first Oscar-winning role, and all the Astaire/ Rogers pictures, to the 1939 Hunchback of Notre Dame and Hitchcock's Suspicion (1941) — his tight cutting kept viewers attuned to the characters' emotions. Brief rhythmic montages of close-ups and two-shots of specific characters set up early in the story are echoed much later to resonantly convey dramatic shifts in their relationships. The picture wrapped on July 31 and Hamilton completed a cut within two weeks. After one suggested alteration, the PCA's Breen wrote to Berman on August 17 that after "the elimination of the scene of Miss Rogers changing into her nightclothes, we are pleased to say it is our opinion that the picture now complies with the provisions of the Production Code and should encounter no reasonable censorship difficulties." With a final budget of about $950,000, the picture grossed more than $1.75 million over the next five years. In addition to Leeds' Oscar nomination, Stage Door was nominated for Best Picture, La Cava for Best Directing, and Ryskind and Veiller for Best Writing, Screenplay. The movie was named one of the Top Ten Films of 1937 by both the National Board of Review and The New York Times, and La Cava Best Director by the New York Film Critics Circle Awards. Eighty years later, Stage Door lives and breathes outside its own time to be enjoyed as one of the all- time best movies about women, with no qualifiers. Its laughter is unforced and its tears earned honestly. f Stage Door. RKO/Photofest