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Released September 29, 1933
Featuring Ted Healy and Larry Fine (Solo)
MGM
84.5 min. (Feature Film)

Showbiz melodrama about vaudeville actress Kitty Lorraine (Alice Brady), pregnant and then widowed when her acrobat husband falls to his death during a performance. The in-laws offer to take her and infant daughter Shirley in, if she will give up show business. Finally fed up with their disapproval after several years, she leaves Shirley with them, and impulsively marries and runs off to the Australian vaudeville circuit with old vaudeville friend Ralph Martin (Ted Healy). The marriage fails due to Ralph's womanizing and drinking, and when Kitty returns home a few years later, she learns that age has caught up and she can't find stage work. She determines to make Shirley (Maureen O'Sullivan) a show business success, and becomes the ultimate stage mother, never to be satisfied until her daughter's name is lit on Broadway. Kitty's ambition extends to lies and blackmail, destroying Shirley's love affair with artist Warren Foster (Franchot Tone), and eventually driving her into a loveless relationship with Lord Reggie Aylesworth.

The Hollywood Reporter (per TCM.com) reported that all three Stooges were to appear in this film. They do not, only Larry in a bit cameo, but there are costume & makeup test photos that show this to be true. These photos show Larry as a bearded Scotsman, Moe as an elfin European, and Curly as either [indeterminate] a Mexican or Mongol. Maureen O'Sullivan's character becomes a Broadway star, and the film presents some musical sequences from that which show her in a fantasy "around-the-world" song & dance. That musical number was apparently edited, and the Stooges were intended as characters in that. The aforementioned test photos of Moe, Larry & Curly also include the three posing with director Charles Brabin, MGM producer David Selznick, clowning with Ted Healy, Alice Brady and Jimmy Durante, and with a studio guard.

Costar Maureen O'Sullivan achieved stardom one year earlier, as 'Jane' in TARZAN, THE APE MAN (1932). Her daughter is actress Mia Farrow (PEYTON PLACE, ROSEMARY'S BABY).

View the original theatrical trailer at TCM.com

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Avg. Rating: [6.80/10]
 
STAGE MOTHER on IMDb

Alice Brady
Katherine 'Kitty' Lorraine

Maureen O'Sullivan
Shirley Lorraine

Ted Healy
Ralph Martin

Franchot Tone
Warren Foster

Russell Hardie
Fred Lorraine

Ruth Gillette
Kitty's blonde showgirl friend

Lillian Harmer
Fred's mother

Tom Ricketts
Fred's father

Sam Ash
Mark Thorn

Ben Alexander
Francis Nolan

Alan Edwards
Al Dexter

Bradley Page
Tom Banton

Phillips Holmes
Lord Reggie Aylesworth

Buddy Messinger
Young man in audience

June Gittelson
Laughing fat woman in audience

Hank Bell
Sheriff in audience

Monte Vandergrift
Stage lighting hand

Beal Wong
Stage extra

Larry Fine
Music customer

Elspeth Dudgeon
Music customer

Nora Cecil
Miss Gilford

Phillips Smalley
Music Dept. manager

Tammany Young
Taxi driver

Harrison Greene
Stage manager

Guy Usher
Theater owner

Bert Moorhouse
Navy officer

Jay Eaton
Mr. Sterling

Glen Walters
Dancing girl's mother

Tiny Jones
Dancing girl's mother

Alice Belcher
Dancing girl's mother

Greta Meyer
Dancing girl's mother

Mary Ann Jackson
Auditioning child dancer

Gladden James
Audience member

Bill Elliott
Audience member

Alice Lake
Audience member

Bud Geary
Orderly

Larry Steers
First nighter

Lowden Adams
Dexter's butler

Larry Steers
Party guest

Bill Elliott
Party guest

Harry Holman
Mr. Rumley

John Elliott
Politician

Frank O'Connor
Man at gangplank

Florence Wix
Passenger

Luis Alberni
Room service waiter

Unidentified STAGE MOTHER 3
Shirley as a child

Unidentified STAGE MOTHER 7
Music dept. customers

Unidentified STAGE MOTHER 8
Backstage onlookers

Unidentified STAGE MOTHER 9
Train station passengers

Unidentified STAGE MOTHER 13
Thorn's girlfriends

Unidentified STAGE MOTHER 21
Shipboard reporters


Hunt Stromberg
Associate Producer

Bradford Ropes
Book and Screenplay

John Meehan
Screenplay

George J. Folsey
Photography

Frank E. Hull
Film Editor

Stanwood Rogers
Art Director

Douglas Shearer
Recording Director

Louis Silvers
Conductor

Maurice De Packh
Original Music

Arthur Freed
Original Songs

Nacio Herb Brown
Original Songs

Edwin B. Willis
Set Decoration

Adrian
Gowns

Albertina Rasch
Choreographer

Joseph M. Newman
Assistant Director


















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