How sad is this?

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

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.

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.

When Phillips Holmes signed a contract with MGM at the end of 1932 he had had a very up and down career at Paramount. When he was good (ie "Stolen Heaven") he was great, but when he was given a one dimensional role (ie "Confessions of a Co-Ed") he didn't have the ability to rise above the part. Even though he worked hard in 1933 (9 movies) he was obviously considered just another actor - he wasn't even considered important enough to be given a reasonable part in MGM's prestigious "Dinner at Eight", being relegated to Madge Evan's boyfriend, a part of only a few minutes screen time. Alice Brady, on the other hand, was having a wonderful professional year. She had been an ingenue in movie's early days but after a few setbacks left the movies for the stage where she dazzled critics with her performances. By 1933 she was ready to give movies another go and in this one she played the title role a "stage mother" and her eccentric mannerisms were kept to a minimum.Life has not been kind to Kitty (Brady) - her first husband is killed during a high wire vaudeville act (Russell Hardie looks impossibly young - young enough to be her son, it is not a good look) and husband number two (Ted Healy) is divorced for being caught once too often in a chorus girl's dressing room. She then pins all her hopes on her daughter, Shirley (O'Sullivan) who had been brought up by a puritanical aunt. If Warners had made the film it would have been a hard hitting expose of the real life of a young performer but MGM made Brady's character sympathetic by giving her a lot of humour. She becomes a "stage mother", pushing and prodding her daughter into dancing lessons that eventually pave the way to a Broadway show. As played by the fetching Maureen O'Sullivan, Shirley appears to have got by on her looks as her dancing in the big production number "Beautiful Girl" (Bing Crosby had a big hit with the song) is at best quite amateurish. You will definitely not mistake the dance routines for any that Busby Berkeley created!!!But Shirley's heart has never been into "showbiz" and when she meets artist Warren (Franchot Tone) who has bought her childhood home, she soon dreams of wedding bells. That romance is quickly killed by Kitty, who is not above turning up at his parent's home and demanding $10,000 to call the wedding off and she is also not above blackmailing the producer of Shirley's current show into tearing up her 5 year contract so she will be free to star in "Rainbow Girl"!!! Kitty gets a taste of her own medicine when she and Shirley are forced to flee the country as some gangsters feel Shirley is getting too chummy with Broadway angel Al Dexter.It is on the continent that Shirley meets Lord Aylesworth (Phillips Holmes in a particularly thankless role that lasts only a few minutes) and finds out what the upper crust really thinks of her pushy parent. There is the usual showdown, in this case Shirley tearfully admits that she denied Kitty was her mother but just as quickly she is begging forgiveness as Kitty shows her a letter from Warren (that she had hidden!!!), where he confesses he will never stop loving her.A nice movie to watch on a rainy afternoon but not one you will remember.

Flying trapeze swinger Alice Brady (as Katherine "Kitty" Lorraine) is grounded when she becomes pregnant, then takes the baby girl to go live with her husband's family in Boston, Massachusetts. Eventually, with encouragement from comedian Ted Healy (as Ralph Martin), Ms. Brady returns to the vaudeville stage. When her daughter grows up to be gawky Maureen O'Sullivan (as Shirley), the now older Brady makes pretty Ms. Sullivan over as the leggy star of a successful Busby Berkeley-type chorus girls show."Stage Mother" attempts to convey some seedy theatrical realities, but they are hesitant and humorous instead of dramatic. Writer Bradford Ropes helped adapt his original novel, but obviously had to tone down much the sexual content; what's left is a little silly. Two attractive young men, painter Franchot Tone and cruiser Phillips Holmes, court pretty O'Sullivan. Brady slices through the leading role. A highlight is the production number for "Beautiful Girl", which effectively celebrates the female form.****** Stage Mother (9/20/33) Charles Brabin ~ Alice Brady, Maureen O'Sullivan, Franchot Tone, Phillips Holmes