Stage Door

The part was as a street walker in a touring production of The Fool.

At that time, Libby was living in a group home for young women in show business, the kind immortalized in the Broadway show and movie, Stage Door.

Stage Door would earn an Oscar nomination for its screenwriter, Morrie Ryskind, who adapted George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber's 1936 play.

12 years before the movie was released, Ryskind encountered Libby when he contributed to the book of her first major show.

In 1925, she was cast in The Garrick Gaieties, a review featuring satirical and topical songs by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart.

I thought she was a natural redhead.

I'm actually much more familiar with her around this time in this film and also in Stage Door, which I think was also 1938, than with her later more famous stuff.

So I just assume that in these films, in true Harpo style, she was red but filmed dark.

Yeah, I feel a little bad about the Lucille Ball of it all when we talk about room service.

So I presented to my patrons here at And The Runner Up Is a list of 15 films with women leads who did not earn Oscar nominations.

And to recap, the options were Stage Door, Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers; The Women, Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, and Rosalind Russell; The Children's Hour, Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine; Persona, Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann; Shampoo, Julie Christie and Goldie Hawn; 9 to 5, Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, and Dolly Parton; The Whales of August, Bette Davis and Lillian Gish; Beaches, Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey; Heavenly Creatures, Melanie Lynskey and Kate Winslet; Waiting to Exhale, Whitney Houston and Angela Bassett; Bound, Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gershon; The First Wives Club, Bette Midler, Goldie Hawn, and Diane Keaton; Romy and Michele's High School Reunion, Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow; Booksmart, Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein; and Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Noémie Merlant and Adèle Haenel, with the winner being Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine in The Children's Hour.

I saw you nodding along to a few of those as I listed those.

Any other favorites from that group?

The lineup opens with Little Woman from 1933 with Hepburn as Jo March and concludes with Morning Glory in 1933 and and backstage drama that brought her first Academy Award, and Song of Love from 1947.

The day also features Stage Door from 1937, Bringing Up Baby 1938 with Hepburn and Cary Grant in one of the screwball comedy's most beloved pairings, and The Philadelphia Story, the 1940 witty romantic comedy that helped restore Hepburn's box office standing after a string of flops.

And lastly, we have movies you'll love.

Mother Mary from 2026 is suspense, and this is starring Anne Hathaway and Akella.

Pandro was married.

In 1937, she starred in a Pangeo-produced film called Stage Door.

This was a stacked cast.

We have Ginger Rogers, Katherine Hepburn, Eve Arden, and Ann Miller.