Saturday Night Cinema: Stage Door Canteen

Here’s a look at an America long gone. Patriotic, proud — a Hollywood giving all for the fight for freedom. It’s a shock to the system. Today we can expect mocking, hate and cynicism of the American ideals and principles. But this is glorious to watch — to imagine what was before the left took over and took a club to it all. It’s a delicious look at Hollywood legends of the era.

. This star-studded musical drama was largely financed by Theatre Guild, with all proceeds going to various wartime fundraising concerns. Most of the story takes place at the Stage Door Canteen, a Manhattan-based home away from home for soldiers, sailors and marines (the real-life Canteen on 44th street was too busy to lend itself to filming, thus the interiors were recreated in Hollywood). Within the walls of this non-profit establishment, servicemen are entertained by top musical, comedy and and dramatic acts, and waited on by such Broadway luminaries as Lunt and Fontanne, Katharine Hepburn, Jane Cowl, Katherine Cornell, Tallulah Bankhead, Helen Hayes, Cornelia Otis Skinner, Sam Jaffe and Paul Muni. Though the plotline-one of the Canteen servers, a girl named Eileen (Cheryl Walker) falls in love with one of the visiting soldiers (William Terry), despite the establishment’s strict “no dating” rules-is merely an excuse to link together a series of specialty acts, it is superbly and touchingly directed by Frank Borzage. Not all of the film has weathered the years too well: particularly hard to take is Gracie Fields’ cheery ditty about “killing Japs!” For the most part, however, the film works, and the guest performers-including comedians Ray Bolger, Harpo Marx, George Jessel and Ed Wynn, and singers Ethel Waters and Kenny Baker-are in fine fettle. If nothing else, Stage Door Canteen offers the only appearance on film of the great Katherine Cornell, who offers a vignette of the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet. Incidentally, the actor playing “Texas”, Michael Harrison, later gained fame as cowboy star Sunset Carson. Originally released at 132 minutes, Stage Door Canteen is now generally available in the 93-minute TV version. The six big bands that appear and perform in the film are those of Kay Kyser, Count Basie, Xavier Cugat, Guy Lombardo, Benny Goodman and Freddie Martin. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

And the NY Times wrote:

Stage Door Canteen (1943)

By BOSLEY CROWTHER

Published: June 25, 1943

A taste of the fun and entertainment which service men share each night at the famous Stage Door Canteen—in fact, a full banquet of it—is now to be had by the public in a bulging and generally heart-warming film entitled (so that no one can possibly mistake it) simply “Stage Door Canteen.” This is the film which Sol Lesser produced here and on the West Coast, the film for which virtually every actor and entertainer in the business did a stunt and the one from which all of the profits—or some 90 per cent of them—are to go to the support and advancement of the American Theatre Wing. So money put down at the wicket of the Capitol (where it is showing) is money well spent. You’ll not get so much entertainment in a good cause if you shop the whole town.

For show folks are temperamentally generous when it comes to giving of themselves to a service in which the hearts are bound up. And devotion freely flows at the Canteen. In this film, the locale is wholly—except for a few connecting scenes#8212;the service men’s recreation center which is down one flight just west of Broadway. And in it you will see such rare divertissement as only a uniform can really buy. You will see Katharine Cornell distributing oranges and speaking lines from “Romeo and Juliet,” you will see Alfred Lunt washing dishes and Producer Brock Pemberton emptying ash trays.

You will also see Edgar Bergen, with Charlie McCarthy, doing a liberally long act, Gracie Fields solemnly singing “The Lord’s Prayer,” and Ray Bolger doing a very funny dance. And you will hear the bands of Benny Goodman, Kay Kyser, Freddy Martin and— well, see above the lengthy list of participants—making music for the boys and volunteer girls. To name everything that you will see would be a two-and-half hour job—just like the film. (We can’t help, though, mentioning one song, “Sleep, Baby, Sleep in Your Jeep,” which is a whiz.)

But you will also get in this picture a rather obvious but very touching romance between a soldier boy and a hostess, which is the thread that holds it all together. And that is the thing which gives it, as a picture, a plain and moving gallantry. For this, after all, is a true glimpse of that little corner of New York where the people of the theatre and the show world are making lonesome youngsters happy for a spell. No matter how you look at it, there is poignancy and bravery in the scene.

And the makers of this film have looked at it without any artificial stuff. The gags are old and corny, just like youngsters’ gags. The romance is awkward and sudden, which somehow it usually is. Entertainment is pitched to the level popular with youth and parting is such sweet sorrow when the band plays “Goodnight, Sweetheart.” The youngsters who play the slight story are all of them right in their roles—Cheryl Walker as the girl, William Terry as the soldier and Marjorie Riordan, Lon McCallister, Fred Brady and the several other “unknowns” who hold hands briefly at the Canteen.

This may not be the picture to arouse the sophisticates. But it will fetch honest thrills, tears and laughter from millions throughout the land.

War Town

A tough, realistic picture of the problems which have to be met in caring for the thousands of extra persons who swarm into a war industry town is presented in the OWI’s one-reeler, “War Town,” which opened in first-run theatres yesterday. The town in this instance is Mobile, Ala., and the film in its brief runing time leaves a vivid impression of the great task which certain areas confront—and of what is being done.
STAGE DOOR CANTEEN; original screen play by Delmer Daves; directed by Frank Borzage; produced by Sol Lesser and presented by Mr. Lesser in association with the American Theatre Wing; a United Artists release; songs by Al Dubin, Jimmy Monaco, Richard Rodgers. Lorenz Hart, Johnny Green and Gertrude Lawrence. At the Capitol.
Eileen . . . . . Cheryl Walker
“Dakota” Ed Smith . . . . . William W. Terry
Jean . . . . . Marjorie Riordan
“California” . . . . . Lon McCallister
Ella Sue . . . . . Margaret Early
“Texas” . . . . . Michael Harrison
Mamie . . . . . Dorothea Kent
“Jersey” . . . . . Fred Brady
Lillian . . . . . Marion Shockley
The Australian . . . . . Patrick O’Moore
The Captain . . . . . Louis Jean Heydt
OTHERS IN THE CAST
Judith Anderson
Henry Armetta
Benny Baker
Kenny Baker
Tallulah Bankhead
Ralph Bellamy
Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy
Ray Bolger
Helen Broderick
Katharine Cornell
Lloyd Corrigan
Ina Claire
Jane Darwell
William Demarest
Virginia Field
Dorothy Fields
Gracie Fields
Lynn Fontanne
Arlene Francis
Vinton Freedley
Lucile Gleason
Virginia Grey
Helen Hayes
Katharine Hepburn
Hugh Herbert
Jean Hersholt
Sam Jaffe
Allen Jenkins
George Jessel
Roscoe Karns
Tom Kennedy
Otto Kruger
June Lang
Betty Lawford
Gypsy Rose Lee
Alfred Lunt
Bert Lytell
Harpo Marx
Aline MacMahon
Elsa Maxwell
Ed Wynn
Helen Menken
Yehudi Menuhin
Ethel Merman
Ralph Morgan
Alan Mowbray
Paul Muni
Elliott Nugent
Merle Oberon
Franklin Pangborn
Brock Pemberton
George Raft
Lanny Ross
Selena Royle
Martha Scott
Cornelia Otis Skinner
Ned Sparks
Bill Stern
Ethel Waters
Johnny Weissmuller
Arleen Whelan
Dama May Whitty
THE BANDS
Count Basle
Xavier Cugat
Benny Goodman
Kay Kyser
Guy Lombardo
Freddy Martin

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Mark Espinola

8 years ago

This World War Two era picture was star studded.

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