TCM 31 Days of Oscar - Today S's cont, T's

I'm watching Stage Door. I think it's one of Ginger Rogers best performances. She's got a huge comic range, doing physical comedy, accents, and rapid fire wisecracks, along with a pretty good drunk act. She plays the dramatic scenes beautifully. Perhaps competition with Katharine Hepburn upped her game. The one thing that is not top class is her dance with Ann Miller. It makes you recognize that without Fred Astaire to demand that extreme perfection of line form and precision, she was just a hoofer, and not really star quality.

I like Ginger Rogers but on the old IMDB I had a rant about how stuffy and full of herself she got after her Oscar win for Kitty Foyle. She played great lady and the only films I liked her in made fun of those prétentions. Once upon a Honeymoon, Black Widow and Barkelys of Broadway were fun although her appalling speech as Sarah Bernhardt deserved every wisecrack Oscar levant could throw at it. I love her in Monkey Business, because she has fun with the duality of the role, really cutting up as the teenage half of the jeckyll and Hyde .

Stagecoach was the film Orson Welles watched when he made Citizen Kane, to learn more about how to edit a movie.

Stagecoach was also called the first grown-up western, as the western genré had fallen down to matinées during the 1930s, that included serials and singing cowboys.

The movie is filled with a lot of character actors, and don't forget Claire Trevor was the actual star of this movie on original posters.

Thomas Mitchell won the Oscar for this role and not for his role in Gone With the Wind. Back in the days when strong coffee was thought of making people sober, but that is also the charm of seeing old movies.