Cathardincu Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Stometer Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Claysaba Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

drednm STAGE MOTHER is almost a great film, starring Alice Brady as a so-so Vaudevillian who pushes her daughter (Maureen O'Sullivan) into "the business" when it's clear she can't make it on her own. As in Applause (1929), we see the seedy side of the business with lots of backstage scenes. Film starts out with pregnant Kitty (Brady) watching her husband do an aerial act that goes bad. After she has the baby she goes to "his people" in Boston and is grudgingly taken in by the stereotypical Boston family. Eventually she can't stand it and moves out, leaving the kid. Years later she gets the kid back and pushes her into dancing lessons etc. Of course she becomes a star. She's preyed upon by men (Ben Alexander) and has romances with a couple guys (Franchot Tone and Phillips Holmes) before the end credits.Brady is great as the ferocious mother whose life centers on controlling her daughter while she lives off her. O'Sullivan (looking very busty indeed) is very good until she's supposed to be this dancing and singing mega star. O'Sullivan can't do either, so it's long shots of some other performer while O'Sullivan smiles sweetly in the close-ups. Tone and Holmes are fine as the romancers. Ted Healy plays a ham comic and the second husband. Others include Russell Hardie as Fred, Larry Fine (minus More and Curly) as a store customer, Lillian Harmer as the Boston mother, and C. Henry Gordon as the hood. No IMDb info on who plays the old maid sister or the auditioning kid singer.Songs include "Beautiful Girl," which also showed up that same year in GOING Hollywood and the infectious "Dancing on a Rainbow," which is a big production number. This MGM production has the look and feel of a Warners backstage musical, which in this case is a good thing.

bkoganbing If you find yourself humming the songs from Gypsy after seeing this film you can't help it. What Alice Brady does with the title role in Stage Mother makes what Ethel Merman did on stage and Rosalind Russell on the big screen as Mama Rose would make Mama blush.Left with a baby daughter to raise after her husband is killed during a performance of their high wire act, Brady takes the little girl to her in-laws in Boston where they still frowned on associating with the theatrical profession. She can't provide so for a while she leaves the girl with the in-laws and takes up with fellow performer Ted Healy.But eventually Brady quits the stage for the business end of show business working for a booking agent. And when she discovers that her daughter who grows up to be Maureen O'Sullivan and has talent, watch out world.Watching this film all I thought of was how unfortunate Gypsy wasn't written two generations earlier. What Brady could have done with Mama Rose.Sad to say that the film is spoiled by a really bad ending which I won't reveal. Look for good performances by Franchot Tone and Phillips Holmes as a pair of callow youths O'Sullivan takes up with. Holmes comes with a title as well. Also if you look quick you'll see Larry Fine of the Three Stooges in a small part.Snappy before the Code dialog and a great performance by Brady are wasted in an unreal climax.

John Seal Stage Mother is one of those astonishingly camp early '30s musicals that are worth watching for their outrageously over-the-top production numbers--in this case, Dancing on a Rainbow ("I'm higher than a kite!"). If that isn't pre-Code enough for you, however, there's also a swishy dance instructor (Jay Eaton) who chants "we are fairies, we are elves" and some extremely translucent dance wear that shows off some shapely gams to good effect. As for the story--well, the less said the better. Brassy Alice Brady is awful as titular pushy parent Kitty Lorraine, who forces ugly duckling daughter Shirley (Maureen O'Sullivan, horribly mis-cast) to take up a career as an entertainer. The low-point comes when O'Sullivan bursts into song: her 'voice' clearly belongs to another, and little effort was made to align the actress' mouth with the words supposedly coming from it.

marcslope For most of its length, a good, tough melodrama of a mama (Alice Brady, excellent) living her life through her reluctant daughter (Maureen O'Sullivan), pushing her into show business and scaring away her suitors, and with them any chance of happiness.Co-screenwriter Bradford Ropes, who also wrote the novel on which "42nd Street" is based, knew this tawdry milieu intimately and wasn't afraid to expose its seamy sides; fortunately, the movie came just before the Production Code, so its portrayal of the shabbiness and moral compromises of the show biz doesn't pull its punches. It resembles "Gypsy" and the great early talkie "Applause," and in particular, its look at backstage and onstage vaudeville is historically fascinating. Its main shortcoming is a too-fast, too-tidy final reel that races unconvincingly toward a happy ending. Also, Maureen O'Sullivan, pretty and spirited as always, doesn't really convince as a young miss aiming to become the toast of Broadway. (She's dubbed, and that's clearly a double dancing in the long shots.) Till that rushed denouement, though, it's a brash and winning backstager, and Brady's uncompromising, unsympathetic performance stays with one for days.